Public Library and other stories by Ali Smith

We’re getting to a point where a library isn’t a library anymore. As Ali Smith humorously discovers in the opening of her new book of short stories, a building in central London marked library is now more likely to be a private members’ club that is focused on lists of cocktails rather than sharing literature. Despite the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act in the UK which states local councils are under a legal obligation to provide library services, over ten percent of the libraries in this country are under threat of closure. We’re told there isn’t enough money for libraries; we’re told banks need the money more. Campaigns have been afoot across the country to save these vital cultural institutions. This book is a way of weaving together the way in which literature is a physical part of our everyday lives. Interspersed with the stylistically-daring short stories in this collection are testimonies about our personal relationships with libraries by people ranging from authors such as Helen Oyeyemi, Kate Atkinson, Kamila Shamsie, Miriam Toews and Jackie Kay to fabulous, passionate people in publishing like Anna Ridley and Anna James. Libraries make authors and publishers who make more books which in turn make more libraries and authors and publishers. Ali Smith’s “Public Library” is a vibrant, loving tribute to libraries, our passion for books and how they are an integral part of our communities.

In several stories there are seemingly closed systems which the characters struggle against. One narrator tries to convince a newspaper that he’s still alive after they publish a false story about his death – twice! Another narrator argues with a credit card company that she never purchased a plane ticket which has appeared on her statement. One narrator speaks on the phone with a doctor’s office about the tree which is growing out of her/his chest until the important things being said fade into the background and there is just the beauty of the blossoming tree. There is a lot of drifting away from the trivial everydayness of the world and rigid ways in which people can limit language. Drawn by thoughts of poetry, fiction and song characters walk away from important meetings, important people, important places. Literature draws them into the imagination, into the unknown because you never know what you’ll find between the covers of a book. If you crack a book open there may even be poetry sewn into its spine. People lose themselves in books (as the title of one story states) to take them to “The art of elsewhere.”

As clever and as sophisticated as Ali Smith’s stories are, they always pay close attention to the importance of human relationships so the characters feel immediate and real. They have arguments, misunderstandings, money worries and jealousy. The voices of these characters shine through. It feels like it could be Smith herself stating her writing mission when one character remarks: “I want it to be about voice, not image, because everything’s image these days and I have a feeling we’re getting further and further away from human voices.” It’s amazing the way Smith is able to make her characters feel so familiar even though in many cases the protagonists remain nameless and sometimes we don’t even know their gender. They speak intimately about grief, fear and love in a way that draws you into their experience and you can absorb it into your own life.

There is also so much lively humour in this book. There’s confusion between D.H. Lawrence and DHL “The deliveryman.” There is a boy/girl who pleads to pay for a new toaster with flowers. There is a character whose partner is so engaged with Katherine Mansfield’s life and writing that she becomes like an ex-wife between them. There is wordplay: it’s explained that a girl whose father is in and out of prison “from time to time, did time.” It’s as if Ali Smith can peel open words to consider their origins and the way they are commonly used to then blend them into her narrative and conversations between characters to give them whole new meanings.

Most importantly, “Public Library” shows the way literature is a part of our consciousness, shaping and moulding who we are and influencing our actions. It’s not abstract or separate from our everyday lives. It’s physical. Smith shows that long dead authors themselves are still a solid presence in the world. D.H. Lawrence’s ashes could be scattered anywhere. Remnants of Katharine Mansfield are a part of the wings of planes. The records and recorders of our culture don’t hang in an ethereal way above our lives; we interact with them every day. These stories make the world feel refreshing and new. They draw you back into life. They make you want to run to your nearest library.

Since this book is filled with so many moving personal statements about what libraries mean to us, I’m going to give my own…

In 1999, I left my small college in Vermont (which is close to a town called Norwich) in order to live for several months in Norwich, England. I went as part of a study abroad programme, but really I made the hasty decision to leave the US after the breakdown of a relationship. What can be more satisfying than casually mentioning to your former lover who has left you: “Oh, didn’t you know? I’m moving to England.”

Arriving at the stark concrete University of East Anglia campus which is surrounded by fields with rabbits and Shetland ponies, I was suddenly on my own and I had no idea what I was doing there. I found out there was something called a Union Pub & Bar where members of my student residential building took me to drink and socialize. I didn’t like to drink (at that time) and I could never hear what people were saying over the loud music. Soon I made a hasty retreat to the large library on campus.

There on the quiet floors filled with books my friend Carolyn and I played games like “who can find the gaudiest-looking book in the library” and there she introduced me to the first book I read by Joyce Carol Oates who would go on to be my favourite author. There I discovered a much-battered old edition of a book containing two holograph drafts of Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves” where you can see copies of the actual words crossed-out and additions she made in the margins when writing it. There I watched a black and white VHS recording of an interview between Lorna Sage, Malcolm Bradbury and Iris Murdoch who all smoked throughout the discussion making the screen appear like a hazy intellectual fantasy set in heaven.

There I sat in the library one dreary lonely afternoon taking notes and plotting the key points of a literary graph I planned to mark the years of key publications by modernist authors so I could physically see where they intersected. It wasn’t a class project – just a fun thing to put on the wall in my little dorm room. I was excited to find that T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” came out the same year as Virginia Woolf’s “Jacob’s Room” and the same year as D.H. Lawrence’s “Aaron’s Rod” and the same year as James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” And there, surrounded by my reference books and poster board and ruler and pencils and mess of notes, a man who I’d go on to live with and love for the next sixteen years approached me and said with an amused grin, “Hi, aren’t we in the same creative writing class? What on Earth are you doing?”

The Curator by Jacques Strauss

This is the third new book from South Africa that I’ve read this year and it’s rather startling to discover common themes between all of them. SJ Naude’s book of stories “The Alphabet of Birds” describes a variety of characters’ estrangement from South Africa where they seek to build a new life elsewhere or struggle against seemingly insolvable social systems within their own country. Eben Venter’s “Wolf Wolf” follows the plight of a son seeking to prove he can be financially independent from his dying father. There are issues of alienation, insecurity, masculinity and severe family strife in both. These themes are also strongly represented in Jacques Strauss’ novel “The Curator.” The chapters in this novel alternate between a rural South African town of Barberton in 1976 and the more urbanized environment of Pretoria in 1996. We primarily follow Werner Deyer who is calculating, sexually-repressed and dangerously angry, but seeks to find an expression of something intangible in art through a copy of Salvador Dali’s representation of Christ and later in the house of a victim of a brutal childhood attack who now obsessively paints scenes of that attack. The reasons why Werner is like this gradually unfold over the course of this frequently disturbing, but gripping novel. The novel also powerfully deals with racial attitudes in South Africa, sexual molestation and the breakdown of family.

I didn’t think there could be a book published this year with content as disturbing as “A Little Life,” but in some ways I feel that “The Curator” is even darker. Of course, they deal with difficult issues in a very different way, but let me explain why I found reading certain aspects of this novel even more harrowing.

Firstly, the deadly violence in “The Curator” is directed between family members in a way which is terrifyingly insidious. Werner’s family hears news of a nearby farmer who shot his entire family before shooting himself. Werner’s father Hendrik fixates upon this story and has fantasies of dispensing with his own family – even going so far to employing a maid who witnessed the family attack and finds himself becoming sexually obsessed with her. Twenty years later, Werner becomes fixated on killing his father Hendrik who is now severely disabled after an anonymous attack. The author skilfully shows the way violence percolates in the closed environment of the home: “This is how it started. Before you knew it, you were hitting and beating and kicking and shooting everything in sight to make things okay again.”

Secondly, like “A Little Life,” this novel also deals with sexual molestation, but we’re shown this from the perspectives of both the abuser and the abused. Steyn is a man who works on the Deyer’s property and drinks heavily after leaving his family. He takes advantage of the adolescent Werner and seems to disturbingly believe that we are cognizant of acts of desire even at a young age: “If there is one thing we are born knowing about, it is sex.” Steyn eventually moves on to taking advantage of Werner’s younger brother Marius which makes Werner very jealous for the attention he’s no longer receiving. It’s unsettling the way this book shows how the desire for affection, especially for vulnerable children who aren’t receiving any love from their parents, can become dependent on adult sexual predators.

Finally, “The Curator” shows the pernicious long-term racism that occurs from longstanding social divisions. The white characters in this novel show an extremely derogatory attitude towards the majority of black people they encounter. There is also a class division between white people who live with certain privileges and poor white people who are viewed as no better than “kaffirs” (a contemptuous term for a black Africans). In one scene the mother of the family Petronella is disgusted by how dirty a neighbouring white girl has become so she aggressively bathes her: “she wanted to wash away the kaffir, so that everything was wholesome and normal.” There is a strong desire shown to keep the races separate. These divisions are rigorously reinforced through social pressure and there is a strong sense throughout the book that the characters fear crossing these racial boundaries. The novel also demonstrates what a heavily dominant and repressive force men make in this society. Petronella feels so belittled over time that she pleads that “I want to be treated like a human being.”

'Christ of St John of the Cross' by Salvador Dali

It feels as if there is something stirring in the political and social atmosphere in South Africa at this time which is provoking authors to create such compelling new novels with similarly frustrated characters who perpetually feel like outsiders. These authors have something important to say which is different from the most prominent South African writers who are globally well known. At one point in this novel Werner thinks he’ll pretend to be a writer when staying at a hotel and looking at a Scandinavian family he muses: “Those two stern-looking adults and their beautiful offspring probably have a lively interest in post-colonial literature; would want to discuss Coetzee and Gordimer and Lessing. He imagines having dinner with the family. He could tell them how he grew up not far from here and how those early years still exert a significant force on his work. In what way? They would ask. Oh, you know, the politics, but also the land. There is something, he would say, about this place that is unforgiving.” Jacques Strauss makes a powerful statement with this story about the “unforgiving” aspect of South African society where some issues are suppressed causing people to explode into violent action.

Having enumerated all the ways “The Curator” deals with such hard issues, you may be scared away from it. But I think this is an absolutely striking, original and skilfully written book that you won’t regret reading. It gave me such fascinating insights into a culture and conflicted consciousness so different from my own. By honestly representing and discussing issues raised in such a powerful novel, Jacques Strauss is bearing witness to the violence that can erupt in a repressed society.

The Blue Guitar by John Banville

When John Self wrote on his blog about Benjamin Wood’s novel “The Ecliptic” (a novel that I also greatly admired and wrote about here), he noted how novelists have a curious appeal towards writing about visual artists as there have been a string of books about them recently. And here is another by the great John Banville! Perhaps writers like to focus on visual artists because they sometimes imagine it would be easier to grapple with the tactile challenge of creating a painting rather than the literary challenges of writing. In Banville’s new novel his narrator moans “How treacherous language is, more slippery even than paint.” Interestingly, Banville previously wrote a novel called “Eclipse” whose title sounds so similar to Wood’s novel, but whose meanings differ sharply. The only book by Banville I’ve read previously is his Booker Prize winning “The Sea” which is about a retired art historian. “The Blue Guitar” is written from the perspective of a retired artist Oliver Orme or, as he jokingly refers to himself, a painter who lives as if he was dead: “Rigor artis.” The novel is similar to Wood’s “The Ecliptic” in that they are both largely about a crisis in the artistic process whereby these successful artists haven’t been able to create any new work in some time. But where Wood’s protagonist Elspeth ardently seeks to rediscover her muse, Oliver has resolutely given up painting and retreated to his previously abandoned home to mull over his life and make connections. His story is a tragedy which keeps brightly bobbing along in a sea of melancholy because of the verve and humour of his narrative voice. The admirable precision and revelatory turns of phrase used in Banville’s writing entertain while he makes fascinating insights about life, our relationship to the physical world and his protagonist’s insistently self-justified kleptomania.

The bulk of this novel concerns Oliver’s love entanglements, particularly his secret affair with his friend’s wife Polly. They have heated encounters in the artist’s studio, but soon their love affair descends into the farcical where Oliver finds himself squatting in Polly’s childhood home while her father makes awkward conversation and her mother suffers from the onset of dementia. Yet still Oliver lusts and curses “What a shameless cullion it is, the libido.” Meanwhile, he is estranged from his wife whose care for him died with their three year old daughter Olivia. Banville makes meaningful observations about the stretch and pull of love and love affairs over time. He uses powerfully descriptive language to describe the pinch of its attendant emotions: “Is there anything more overwhelming than the sudden onset of jealousy? It rolls over one inexorably, like lava, boiling and smoking.” It won’t be surprising to the reader that his affairs end badly and he admits his own actions have a sort of tragic inevitability. Although he knows what the outcome will be he states with resignation that “One does what one does, and blunders bleeding out of the china shop.” He retreats even more into thoughts of the past no matter how hard he tries to resist it. Although the novel begins with him declaring himself to be like the Greek God Autolycus, he shows through his blundering actions how he feels barely human. He mentally laments to his lover: “I was no god, dear Polly; I was hardly a man.” It’s satisfying how Oliver’s deceptions turn out to fool no one as the women in his life: Polly, his wife and his sister all eventually reveal how aware they are of the shortcomings he believes he’s kept hidden.

Banville describes Polly as sitting like Dürer's engraving 'Melencolia'

It’s Oliver’s sense of being removed from reality which makes his digressions about existence so compelling and so relatable. He states that “world is resistant, it lives turned away from us, in blithe communion with itself. World won’t let us in.” His strategy to connect with other people and physical objects is to steal. His sense of relentless acquisition is a way to connect and finally dispel his feelings of exclusion. He states that “My aim in the art of thieving, as it was in the art of painting, is the absorption of the world into self.” The final long-abandoned artwork he only half finished contained an abstract image which could be the blue guitar of the title or another object entirely. In it he tried to represent the “formless tension floating in the darkness inside my skull” but ultimately he fails to do so. This makes him lose his mojo for creating art. So he resigns himself to a singular life, but finds his position as an outsider somewhat advantageous to better comprehend the grand nexus of existence. As much as he likes to present his revelations, he relishes undermining them even more. He remarks: “How dull and dulling they can be, these sudden insights. Better not to have them, perhaps, and cleave to a primordial bumpkinhood.”

It’s difficult not to feel at times Oliver’s voice becoming like that of a Beckett character as occasionally his thoughts are interrupted on the page. He’s pulled out of his mental process by reality in a way that slaps him into the present and exposes the weary triviality of his search for meaning. The question about whether you’re prepared to go along with his musings depends on how compelling you find the narrator’s voice. For much of it I was bewitched, but in one instance I was yanked out of the pleasure of his abstract meditations due to an unfortunate choice of words. There is a speculative description of the planet’s destruction where “Terrible tides… drowning small brown folk in their tens of thousands” struck me as having all the empathy for humanity that a Hollywood disaster movie would have for a third world society it might blithely destroy in a cutaway scene. Otherwise, I found his self-obsessed reflections and examinations of his state of being comforting like some of Beckett’s best prose.

We Don't Know What We're Doing by Thomas Morris

The title is certainly a statement that rings true. However hard we try to order our lives and find meaning we’re all just stumbling around ardently making plans and searching for connections, but mostly bumping into things. The stories in Thomas Morris’ debut collection feature characters that are highly relatable. They are driven more by impulse than strategic plans which makes them often feel dislocated or caught in between stages of life in a way similar to Ann Beattie’s stories in her recent book “The State We’re In.” Morris’ characters feel they should be progressing onto something else, but they don’t know what that something else is. The protagonists of each story vary widely in gender, sexuality and socio-economic status featuring people ranging from a young woman devoid of nostalgia who returns home for Christmas to a twice-widowed elderly man trying to arrange a date for the Big Cheese festival. They all live a precarious existence in the Welsh town of Caerphilly. Some story collections have recurring characters, but other than thematic connections there is little that links these stories except for the town itself and a sweet pond (where some seagulls masquerade as ducks in order to be fed). Although Morris demonstrates a wide range of narrative techniques in these stories, what connects them is the strength of voice, humorous appreciation for the buffoonery of existence and a tender awareness of how we’re driven through life with a confused sense of desperation.

Given the relatively rural Welsh setting for these tales, it’s unsurprising that the stories primarily concern white characters for whom racial difference is something of a curiosity. A couple in one story find a connection over wishing they had a black friend. In another story a man’s sister suffering from a kind of mental break down makes friends with a Japanese woman who she practically smothers. The story ‘All the Boys’ features a group of men on a stag-do in Ireland who dress up as potatoes with the groom dragged up in Riverdance attire. Their crass exaggeration of national identity is so over the top it’s knowingly ridiculous, cringe-worthy and wholly believable – as are the persistent homophobic insinuations made about one of the friends who is overtly concerned about style and appearance when really it’s another more boisterously masculine man that is hiding his true sexuality. These representations of provincial characters show how they have a muddled attitude towards difference, but they still maintain an innate carefully-rendered humanity making them worthy of empathy rather than repulsion.

I always feel a deep sympathy with literature that deals with economic hardship so I appreciated how some of the stories dealt with characters who struggle with issues around employment. In particular, ‘Clap Hands’ features a single mother stuck in a system with frustratingly little chance of full time work and the story ‘How Sad, How Lovely” is narrated from the perspective of an unemployed man surviving on little food and fewer prospects. Morris gives a moving sense of the attendant feelings of low self esteem, defeatism and desperation that can come from being deprived of steady working lives. There is a sympathetic understanding that these are unique individuals who have been cornered out by circumstance and simply don’t fit into a system where they can thrive in the way that they should.

“this house, these rooms, this phone, these voices – you know they should mean more to you, but they don't. It's like the opposite of deja vu.” from 'Fugue'

A fascinating habit for many characters in these stories is their persistent flair for masquerade. A woman wears a Natalie Portman mask when entering into an affair with her neighbour. A young woman believes her parents to be aliens under their skin. A passing couple are dressed as a knight and maiden. There are the aforementioned gulls pretending to be ducks. It’s as if these characters in their desperation at the perceived limitations of their own lives seek to escape into other beings. In one story a character remarks that “there are times when I can't bear to be in this skin of mine, times when I get so low that the smallest demands seem impossible.” In frustration, many characters seek to shed their skin whether it’s masking themselves as someone else or plunging into situations outside their own experience. This includes having affairs, engaging in public wrestling matches with women or running off on a drunken, drug-fuelled binge during the holidays. The characters are trying to wriggle out of their own skin and claim a new identity.

The concluding story ‘Nos da’ is one of the most daring and poignant in the entire collection. It’s the only piece to break from reality to construct a place where life persists in another form after your initial life. Yet there is nothing ethereal about this space. It’s more of a workaday reality, but there is a wider and more solemn gap between experience and memory. Characters can peer in on their past by ordering edited videos or spy on loved ones from a past life in real time via paid-for video links. But, rather than being caught in the technical aspects of constructing this alternate reality, Morris cleverly slides into a fantastical realm to write meaningfully about our persistent attachment to what might have been and neglect towards available possibilities in life.

The diversity and range of voices on show in “We Don't Know What We're Doing” demonstrate how Thomas Morris is a unique and sensitive writer with a keen sense of the absurd. This exciting, funny and oftentimes dark collection of stories was a pleasure to read.

Artwash by Mel Evans

Whenever I go to an art exhibit I never think too much of the signs outside which proclaim who it was sponsored by or particularly notice the discreet (but prominent) logos of the companies included around the show. If I do ever consciously think about these things I’ve assumed two things. Firstly, a sponsor has given a large amount of money to support this exhibit so, even if they are a dodgy company, at least their money is going towards something good. Secondly, the presence of a sponsor’s branding doesn’t have any significant impact on how the art of that exhibit is perceived or interpreted. Reading Mel Evans’ book “Artwash” I’ve become conscious of the fallacy and danger of these assumptions. Drawing upon a large amount of historical research, investigations into the financial and power structures of cultural institutions, theoretical and critical theory and her own experiences working within Liberate Tate (an art collective that uses creative intervention for social change) demonstrations, Evans convincingly argues why artists and members of the public alike should challenge the insidious way petroleum conglomerates align themselves with artistic venues.

Evans focuses specifically on the group of Tate museums across the UK as an example of a cultural institution that has sanctioned a longstanding partnership with BP. She shows how it’s not a coincidence that the museum has maintained this company’s sponsorship despite criticism from the public as well as many public figures. Political influences have pressured these institutions into inviting such sponsorship and have seen prominent representatives of the organization become influential members of the museum’s board. You would assume that BP must donate a large amount of money to wield such influence, yet Evans shows that the company’s donations form only a very small percentage of the funds which allow the museum to continue. The benefits for BP far outweigh the benefits for Tate because of the social license the association creates for the company. This sponsorship is a form of “Artwash” to brush over the dramatically destructive effects oil companies have on both the natural environment and specific communities.

Watch Mel Evans discuss Artwash and her art activism.

When a company’s name and symbol are imprinted on a cultural institution or specific exhibits its presence is not benign. Evans argues how “Logos are architectural features, and are also powerful symbolic objects.” The association created between these logos and the artistic institution form both a conscious and subliminal impact upon viewers whose overall impression of the company becomes more positive. In some cases, it can also directly undermine the conscious intentions of the exhibits. More than the effect sponsorship directly has upon a viewer’s experience, Evans shows how “In each arena of curating and learning, it is evident that BP sponsorship has caused problems for Tate: from cognitive dissonance for audiences, to undermining the choices of curators, conflicting with learning programmes, and emerging unexpectedly as a bone of contention between artists and the gallery at events and in commissions.” An oil company’s sponsorship of cultural institutions undermines the creative expression and value of the art which is meant to reflect who we are as a fully cognizant and socially responsible society. 

The book begins with an account of a summer party held at the Tate in 2010 where the author and other members of Liberate Tate created a demonstration which meaningfully disrupted the party. It was a particularly potent expression as the party was held in part to mark twenty years of BP sponsorship. The party was occurring at the same time that the horrendous effects of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico were spiralling out of control. For one of the nation’s greatest cultural institutions to be celebrating a company that was creating such a monumentally negative impact upon the globe was the height of irony. Mel Evans’ book is a rallying cry for both artists and citizens to accept a more socially responsible role in how we consume and interpret the arts. We don’t all need to walk into museums and spill bags of oil to make a statement; we can make a change by being conscious of the impact sponsorship has on the arts and letting cultural institutions know what we think about the companies they choose to align themselves with. This book shows why it’s important we be more aware of the meaning of such corporate associations with the arts.

Landfalls by Naomi Williams

It’s difficult not to romanticize the period of history in the 18th century when countries sent ships out in an attempt to fully explore (and colonize) every mass of land around the globe. Conceptually, first world nations believe this was all about investigating new frontiers as if the world was covered in virgin soil to claim and conquer. These missions created many significant moments of connection between disparate civilizations which had long-lasting impact as we shifted towards a sense of globalization with all its positive and negative consequences. There was so much peril to these journeys and a sense of the unknown tied into them. Debut novelist Naomi Williams has an interesting tactic for approaching a specific expedition from history. Rather than focusing on the many months spent at sea, she concentrates only on the occasions when an expedition reached land and the interactions between sailors and the native inhabitants. Focusing on a broad spectrum of characters and using a variety of narrative techniques, Williams creates a riveting story that embraces the drama of global exploration while sympathetically highlighting the cultural clashes which occurred.

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse

In 1785 two French ships set sail for a world-wide voyage to follow in the path of the famous captain James Cook. They aimed to further map little-explored areas of the globe, make scientific collections, establish trade routes and create political allies. Jean François Lapérouse led this mission which touched down in such far-reaching areas as South America, Alaska, California, Macau, Manila, Russia, Samoa and Australia before coming upon the Solomon Islands where both ships disappeared. The novel “Landfalls” brings this four year journey to life as the sailors touch these specific landing sites of the expedition. Sometimes the chapters focus on the perspective of engineers, naturalists or priests from the ship. Other times the reader sees events through the perspective of the inhabitants who meet them such as members of a Spanish colony or the native people of South Sea Islands. This gives the reader a multi-layers perspective where both the explorers and the explored appear at times as foreign entities that conflict with or adapt to each other’s different customs.

There are several particularly dramatic events which are brought fully to life such as a celebratory display for the Spanish in Chile, a tragedy that occurs in heavy currents on the coast of Alaska and the religious subjugation of the “neophytes” by Catholics in the Americas where severe punishment was inflicted upon the impious. Interestingly, the incident in Alaska is shown through both the perspective of a girl on shore who witnesses it and the crew suffering from the consequences afterwards. This gives a rounded perspective where you can see the naivety and misunderstanding on both sides. Another dynamically rounded point of view occurs when a series of letters by different people describe the plight of the kept wife of a particularly tyrannical and nasty official. The author gives careful focus at several points to the limitations imposed upon women at the time: “Names belong to men, while women belong to names.” However, she also takes time with the special bonds that can be formed between men on extended journeys. One of the most sustained and gripping accounts is concerning Barthelemy de Lesseps, a French translator who accompanied the sea voyage for two years before disembarking in Kamchatka. In order to return dispatches from the ships, he had to make a long and dangerous journey across northern Asia to get to St. Petersburg. This account is filled with sled dogs, perilous arctic conditions and a unique kinship Lesseps forms making it a particularly vivid chapter.

Watch Naomi Williams talk about her inspiration for Landfalls.

Many of the central characters involved have amusing quirks and the author has a talent for playfully poking at their sometimes inflated sense of self importance or pretentions. These particularly come out when the hierarchical relationships between characters become clear. Some people must be tolerated over long periods of time within the confined space of the sailing vessels. At one point it’s amusingly remarked that “Who among us does not have the odd friend whose virtues we admire, but whom we do not wish to impose on others?” There is antagonism between some and tenderness between others. Some display a grudging tolerance and other crew members come into violent conflict with each other. It can be moving to see how relationships change over the course of many years and the impact caused when some explorers are lost. However, because the novel spans a long period of time and involves such an extensive cast, I did find it confusing at some points trying to keep track of everyone involved. Although there is a map of the expedition at the beginning of the novel it would have helped to also have a list of the characters with brief descriptions of each to refer back to. As a helpful note, many of the central cast in this novel are based on historically significant people who you can easily look up on Wikipedia for a quick reference to remind you who is who. Nevertheless, many personalities brought to life by the author stick out in my mind for their distinct character. It’s particularly moving how Williams ends the book and approaches the mystery of what happened to these two fated ships from history.

“Landfalls” is an original and engaging read that has a dynamic approach to history while stirring a sense of adventure.

Film Review: Chevalier

This year’s London Film Festival finished yesterday. I usually try to see several films in the festival and this year I saw eight. Almost every film was really good. Some highlights were ‘Tangerine’ which is a hilariously wild journey across Los Angeles driven by a jealous transsexual prostitute and her aspiring singer friend, ‘Son of Saul’ which is a dramatic and devastating account of a Hungarian-Jewish Sonderkommando prisoner in Auschwitz who is charged with burning the dead, and ‘Office’ which is a 3D Hong Kong musical about office politics and corporate overspending that includes the most stunningly beautiful film set. I also saw director Todd Haynes, screenwriter Phyllis Nagy and actresses Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett interviewed at BAFTA for the film ‘Carol.’ Everyone should go see this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Price of Salt” because it is one of the most beautiful and romantic films I’ve ever seen. The only disappointing film I saw was Terence Davies’ ‘Sunset Song’ which felt so artificial and tedious. However, one of my top highlights was a Greek film called ‘Chevalier.’

This film was directed and written by female filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, but is all about six men who spend approximately a week having a holiday on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. After the screening Tsangari told the audience she was initially inspired to make a film that involved men peeling each other’s skin off, but because this was too expensive she filmed the men as divers who at the beginning of the film emerge out of the water and peel each other’s wetsuits off. This brilliantly sets the tone of the movie as it is about the intense intimacy and competition between these male friends. Out of boredom and a friendly sense of rivalry, the men form a game to determine which of them is judged the best. The prize for the man who wins is to wear a victory Chevalier ring. However, their competitions are far from your standard games. Each man is judged on things such as how he sleeps, his heath based on blood tests, how fast he cleans, the size of his erection, how quickly he can build a flat-packed shelving unit or how well he lip syncs to a pop song. In the midst of these activities every man carries a notebook where he assiduously records the points being assigned to each man after performing some ridiculous activity.

Photo by Despina Spyrou

The series of competitions these men engage with hilariously send up masculinity and the male ego. There is a warm-hearted camaraderie where the men will occasionally console each other when they fail at activities while simultaneously judging them. At the same time it tells a compelling story where the relationships between the men are gradually revealed over the course of the film. Meanwhile, there are periodic announcements made in the yacht informing the men of the day’s weather or what they will be having for desert that evening. This creates the effect where the boat itself seems to be regulating and judging them in addition to the crew who make bets about which man will win. This film is such a compelling way of gently making fun of the construct of masculinity that reminds me of Andrew McMillan’s recent poetry collection “Physical” and Joyce Carol Oates’ novel “What I Lived For.” ‘Chevalier’ is also a highly enjoyable and thoughtful film to watch. It was awarded the Best Film Award at this year's BFI London Film Festival.

Deep Lane by Mark Doty

When reading the poems in “Deep Lane” I like to imagine that I’m lying on a patch of grass listening to the poet speaking about his life, relationships and thoughts about existence. Because that’s what the experience of reading this collection feels like. It’s intimate, immediate and suffused with a sense of being immersed in the natural world. But this isn’t a cosy idyllic space; there are worms and thorns and inclement weather warnings. It’s also not so serious. He comically stumbles into a grave. He locks himself out of his house – twice! These experiences are drawn in to suggest meaning, but are acknowledged at the same time to be meaningless. The title poem spreads itself throughout the book taking several different forms as Doty describes the process of gardening and the environment surrounding his home. It has the effect of creating a personal landscape which the reader can recline in to hear Doty’s beautifully articulated meditations and penetrating observations about the way our lives are guided by unruly desires.

The poet conjures a number of disarmingly haunting images throughout the book. For instance, in one poem it’s described how a boy runs in a figure eight pattern between gravestones. More than a comment upon the connection between new life and death, it felt to me that this was a strong symbolic representation of the way in which our consciousness can remain in a childish or naïve state throughout our lives. Although we can’t help being highly aware of our own mortality as we continue to age and experience loss, a sense of active innocence persists weaving us around death as a way of carrying on despite the inevitable. In another poem he describes a church as a “breathing cloud of stone” which creates an image that perfectly fits with the emotion of a specific significant moment when he commits to his relationship with another man. It’s similar to prayers which feel so substantial that it’s like they are physically real but are only, after all, just words.

“the skull-buzz drone singing cranial nerves”

For Doty nourishment in life is inextricably mixed with the toxic. In one poem he envisions himself as an extinct beast with “Mother’s milk in my belly and a little of her shit, too.” There is a sense of being stunted by what is meant to make us grow, but this fouled sustenance is a part of the ecstasy of living. As he remarks in the poem ‘Apparition’ “with intoxication, I am unregenerate.” And these notions are given a more emotionally weighty form in the poem ‘Crystal’ about intravenous drug use which describes altered consciousness and groping for an articulation of meaning beyond language. Here the injection of impurities is a necessarily dangerous path to a more profound sense of knowing and developing.

Doty is playfully conversant with both language and his influences. He remarks in an aside when describing a suicidal boy’s legs “(I want to spell long with two n’s, as Milton spelled dim with a double m to intensify the gloom of hell).” Elsewhere he likens an emotional connection with another to “The way that nothing in Vermeer has an edge.” Another poem is a more direct dialogue with Jackson Pollock’s artistic method and pondering its meaning in relation to the active change of the city around him. These references effortlessly draw in the ideas of predecessors while arguing, building upon and expanding them.

Rather than letting ideas float out too far into detached realms Doty draws them back into solid experience and the world around him. He shows an endearing pleasure in nature and animals noticing “goat yoga” or faded hydrangeas that are like “the very silks of Versailles.” Moving through this landscape he articulates how we are beings driven by desire, but that we are “taught by craving.” Although we are hampered by nostalgia for what is past, experience can never be fully recreated and so we “want all the harder.” But, in one of the most profound poems in this collection ‘Hungry Ghost,’ Doty poses a fascinating counter argument to the Buddhist notion of extinguishing desire to extinguish suffering. If desire persists beyond the mortal then there is a kind immortality but also a form of existential horror “to be ravenous, and lack a mouth.”

“Deep Lane” is an extremely thoughtful collection by a poet who can burrow into the personal and particular to discover revelations that feel universal.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

There’s a well-known aphorism that you should “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” This statement has been phrased a number of different ways, but essentially the meaning is that we all have problems and internal pain which isn’t necessarily evident at a glance. It’s helpful to be reminded of this when dealing with strangers, but reading “A Little Life” has made me more aware of the fact of how much this applies to our relationships with loved ones as well. As I get older I become increasingly conscious that friendships I’ve valued for years include gaps of silence. It’s one of the sombre facts of life that our family, friends and partners possess pain and have problems which sometimes aren’t disclosed no matter how close to them we feel. When I talk to these people I’m sometimes aware there are parts of their lives which are being withheld, that our conversations can skirt around certain subjects and that there are things I hold back as well. Large and small life issues, emotions and memories can be carefully avoided as if there were an unspoken agreement not to discuss them. The longer we know people, the harder it is to talk about these things. This doesn’t happen due to a lack of care or love; it’s a simple hard fact about how we all relate to one another. When the dam of fear finally bursts and there is disclosure, our relationships are often made all the stronger. Jude, the central character of “A Little Life,” is someone who lives with truly horrific mental and physical damage which most of the people he knows aren’t aware of. But really, Jude is me; Jude is everyone. He’s just a highly-dramatized extreme example. This long, emotionally-brutal, magnificent novel is a touchstone to those parts of ourselves that we hide from others – especially the ones we love.

Yanagihara’s intelligent, yet free-form style of writing possesses that rare, indefinable quality which draws you into the emotional reality of her characters and keeps you engaged with them for many hundreds of pages. It’s the same feeling I have reading Joyce Carol Oates or Donna Tartt. It’s what makes readers feel so strongly connected to the story and lives of the characters as if they are people we know ourselves. A large portion of the beginning of this novel is devoted to describing the friendship between Jude and three other men which began when they met in their first year at college and continues throughout their lives. It’s so rare for a novel to properly give scope to the scale which friendship can take over a lifetime and pay tribute to the importance it has on how we define ourselves. The book I was most reminded of when reading this was my favourite novel, Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves,” whose poetic style differs so radically from Yanagihara’s more straight-forward approach, but describes the way friends can create their own reality by forming an enclosed circle of companionship. The space which friends Jude, Willem, JB and Malcolm inhabit in this novel is in a sense timeless and outside of history. Although they primarily live in New York City, we’re given no clear markers of events that cement them within any particular space or timeframe. The novel is locked into the internal reality of the protagonists. So it is as if the narrative is driven by the centrifugal force of personality where the outside world does not exist unless it is being observed through the consciousness of its central characters. In other words, if societal events occur which don’t pertain to the characters’ experience or affect their relationship to each other then they don’t exist.

This frees the reader to only focus on the personal importance (rather than the social importance) of the many issues raised in this novel. Early on it’s casually remarked in conversation between the four friends that some are black and some are white. This is quickly corrected by another friend who asserts that they each possess different gradations of skin colour and they can’t be so easily categorized. As soon as the issue of race is raised, it is dismissed because how the characters are racially defined by society does not matter to their social circle. (As the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says “Race is not biology, race is sociology”) At the same time, there are two peripheral friends who are both called Henry Young, but are different races. To distinguish them, the circle of friends jocularly refers to them as Black Henry Young and Asian Henry Young. Where this identification of race to define who the character is would come across as offensive in some novels, it is merely playful in “A Little Life” because it doesn’t affect how these friends view or relate to one another.

Similarly, sexuality is addressed in the novel only when it refers to the individual characters’ behaviour rather than how they are socially defined. Some of the characters remain ambiguous about what their sexuality is throughout their lives. When it comes up for one character it’s remarked that “he had had sex with men before, everyone he knew had.” So, no big deal. The only time it becomes an issue is when one character who has become a very successful actor stops hiding his relationship with another man. He refuses to officially “come out” or define himself as gay because such a definition is irrelevant to how he and his friends view him. The more interesting and emotionally-compelling thing about sex which Yanagihara wisely focuses on is how victims of sex abuse deal with intimacy later in life. For Jude, intimacy is agonisingly difficult. In some tragic way, it’s easier with an abusive partner than with a loving one. Again, although his life experience is extreme, I felt the way in which intimacy is discussed in the narrative when Jude enters a long-term relationship is relatable because we all to varying degrees have our own sexual insecurities and hang-ups. Sex becomes a kind of performance for Jude and many people feel they must perform a certain way during sex in accordance with their partner’s expectations and ideas of how sex should be. It’s stated that “within every relationship was something unfulfilled and disappointing, something that had to be sought elsewhere.” Love is making compromises and adjusting expectations to meet a partner’s needs, but it is also letting go of ideas of perfection or that sex should take only certain forms. I think there is something beautifully liberating about the way Yanagihara writes about sex and sexuality.

Reading this book was a rare challenge because it came to me personally with so much chatter surrounding it. I can’t think of another book where so many people I know have remarked that reading it was a life-changing experience. Similarly, opinions of “A Little Life” have been so diverse where some people love it and it’s driven others to feel angry and betrayed by certain elements of the storyline. I’ve been eager to read it but haven’t been able to until now because I’ve been so busy reading the many submissions for the Green Carnation Prize, but I plunged into it ready to experience it fully for myself. It’s a mesmerizing experience. I felt devastated by certain sections, but I was also staggered by the depths of suffering to which Yanagihara takes her characters. Whereas many novels wouldn’t get away with such extremes, I felt this novel does because of the sheer length of the book. The amount of time the reader is forced to spend with these characters makes her/him experience the terrible revelations about Jude’s abusive past as if he were a personal friend. This is why “A Little Life” feels so real and why it leaves many readers emotionally transformed. It’s certainly made me think about my past and my relationships with other people differently.

Stammered Songbook by Erwin Mortier (translated by Paul Vincent)

Last year I read Emma Healey's moving novel “Elizabeth is Missing” which is daringly written from the perspective of a woman with dementia. She captured the inner life of someone lost to herself. It's a tremendous challenge to write meaningfully about the indignities that dementia entails and make sense of the senseless. When a rational, lively person loses the facility to interact with the world accompanied by all their memories and sense of self in tow they are left only with the functions of the body and fleeting reactions to stimuli. Erwin Mortier's memoir “Stammered Songbook” is a highly personal account of the loss of his mother to dementia, but more than that it's a poetic examination of family, what loving relationships mean and the human condition. In a series of highly compressed short sections, Mortier conveys the daily experience of caring for his mother and sifting through memories of his past.

Mortier describes working with his father and other family members to care for his mother as her symptoms get progressively worse. Much of the time there is a sense of being suspended in an amorphous state: “We live in and outside of time.” Mortier’s mother is there in body, but the essence of what made her a mother, wife and friend has left with all her memories and sense of self. There are the daily tasks of care for her wellbeing which require more and more from the family. Eventually they become incapable of the fulfilling the necessary actions required to properly feed her and prevent her from hurting herself. When it becomes necessary to restrain her, the author hauntingly questions “When does care become another word for torture?” There is a solemn sense of inevitability and acknowledgement that her condition can only get worse. Yet, Mortier travels through this territory with courage savouring the remaining time he has with his mother and reflecting tenderly on family life. He powerfully describes the way that those who have left us still remain in our thoughts: “The dead have a busy time no longer being there.” There are many moments of sorrow in this account of his mother’s disease, but also some blissful light-hearted moments of relief. Passages effortlessly move from blunt facts about the reality of living with someone with dementia to memories to ruminations about life – all infused with a poetic sense that allows the specifics of his experiences to extend into a more universal, beautifully-unifying meaning.

One of the passages I found most powerful in the book was this long meditation on the meaning of love and the way in which we connect to one another: “love is attention. That they are two words for the same thing. That it isn't necessary to try to clear up every typo and obscure passage that we come across when we read the other person attentively – that a human being is difficult poetry, which you must be able to listen to without always demanding clarification, and that the best thing that can happen to us is the absolution that a loved one grants us for the unjustifiable fact that we exist and drag along with us a self that has been marked and shaped by so many others.” This so elegantly summarizes the way in which love is a form of caring without judgement. I find it a very inspirational perspective to have when considering what it really means to love someone throughout the long hard line of a lifetime no matter how much they change or become lost to us.

“Stammered Songbook” is a profound, utterly-unique book.

The Green Carnation Prize 2015 Longlist

For the past few months I’ve been reading at a greater pace than usual because I’m one of the judges for this year’s Green Carnation Prize. Last weekend the judges and I met to discuss the HUGE amount of submissions we’ve read, debate amongst each other and decide on a glorious long list of a dozen exciting books. There were a lot of great entries in the mix. Some choices were easy. Others required more discussion. But, I can honestly say that the books listed below are all excellent. They range from poetry to fiction to memoir to nonfiction. From the contemporary to the historical. From the fantastic to stark depictions of reality.

Being a judge on this prize has been a great challenge. I’ve enjoyed reading so many books and authors which I wouldn’t have found otherwise. We’re now in the process of rereading and then I’ll meet with my wonderful group of fellow judges again to decide our short list. In the mean time, have a look through this diverse list. Several books I’ve reviewed and you can read my thoughts about them by clicking on the titles below.

Click here to read more about the judges
Click here to read about the prize & buy the books on Foyles' site

Blood Relatives by Steven Alcock (4th Estate)
Deep Lane by Mark Doty (Jonathan Cape)
Sophie & The Sibyl by Patricia Duncker (Bloomsbury)
Artwash by Mel Evans (Pluto Books)
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale (Hodder Books)
Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari (Bloomsbury)
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (One World)
The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan (Harvill Secker)
Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea (Scribe)
Stammered Songbook by Erwin Mortier (Pushkin Press)
Don’t Let Him Know by Sandip Roy (Bloomsbury)
The Curator by Jacques Strauss (Jonathan Cape)

Have you read any of the books from this list? Are there any you are now interested in reading? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald

Like many people I was shocked by the revelations about the activities and documents of the US National Security Agency that Edward Snowden leaked in 2013. The scale of online and computer surveillance being conducted by this government-approved/funded agency in cooperation with telecommunication companies and other countries’ governments is staggering. The journalist that Snowden worked with to break this story, Glenn Greenwald, has written his account of the dramatic release of this information. “No Place to Hide” recounts their meeting, the intense period of launching this momentous news story from a hotel in Hong Kong and some of the key events which occurred after the story broke. Greenwald goes on to reproduce and explain some of the key documents which helpfully outlines why these top secret communications, memos and manuals revealed are so significant. He convincingly explains why online privacy is so important in our society and the important role that journalism should play in keeping governments in check. These points should be obvious, but as Greenwald astutely observes their meaning has been obfuscated by the ways in which governments and the mainstream media work jointly to push their own agenda.

Although I’m obviously freaked out by the idea of my personal communications being observed or collected by a government agency, I have to admit part of me has always felt about this story ‘Well, I don’t have anything to hide… or, at least, nothing that would be of interest to the secret service or the general public.” Greenwald does a fantastic job of addressing this exact reaction. He intelligently breaks down exactly why “Everyone, even those who do not engage in dissenting advocacy or political activism, suffers when that freedom is stifled by the fear of being watched.” It’s also easy to make the argument that if it’s for the greater good and if it helps to isolate participants in illegal or terrorist activities shouldn’t we accept general surveillance of the internet? Firstly, the trouble is that much of the surveillance activities aren’t actually about combating terrorists. They are more often about gaining economic and political advantages for the government using them. Secondly, it’s a grave folly to leave ourselves so exposed because you never know how the information may be used against you. Greenwald also observes that “Forgoing privacy in a quest for absolute safety is as harmful to a healthy psyche and life of an individual as it is to a healthy political culture.”

Glenn Greenwald's TED talk

I was shocked and horrified by many of the facts which Greenwald recounts in “No Place to Hide.” It’s given me a much more clear-sighted understanding and guarded attitude towards the media I consume as well as both the Obama administration and the British government I currently live under. The revelations contained in this book aren’t limited to the US, but show the horrendous way the British secret service ransacked and destroyed information given to the Guardian by Snowden and the intimidating tactics used to hold Greenwald’s partner in custody without cause during his layover in London.

The internet has become such an integral part of our lives; the revelations contained in Snowden’s files have made a significant impact in making everyone think harder about how we want this virtual landscape to be governed or policed. As well as being a highly informative account of what is probably the most significant leak of top secret US agency files in history, this book is a powerful reminder that we must always be vigilant of the government we live under no matter how easy it is to be complacent.