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The holiday book conundrum

June 30, 2018 fiendfullyreading

There’s no good way to start a post about going on holiday without sounding like you’re showing off, or so I’ve decided in the past five minutes. Regardless, I am going on holiday in a week, and I have a big decision to make. One that may change my entire life (with a little imagination). Which book should I take with me?

Plenty of books are marketed as ‘holiday reads’. The phrase conjures for me an image of thick paperbacks you might take on the beach, in whichever genre you may like best. Lots of thrillers seem to be touted as travel companions, presumably in case your holiday is so rubbish you need escapism. Articles suggest recent popular books that you might want to catch up on now that you’ve got some time away from the daily grind. A quick Google brought up Waterstones’ page of ‘holiday reads’, which seem to have the defining feature of being books that exist (actually, they’re paperback books that exist, for easier packing I assume).

None of this helps my decision. I’m only going for a few days and only taking a backpack so the book must be singular. There’s not likely to be much reading time, but I still want to take a book. My previous two cheap European city break holidays don’t offer much inspiration. When I went to Rome as an undergrad I took the major works of Byron so I could continue reading Don Juan (and did sit on the top bunk in a shared room in a comic book themed hostel reading it). I don’t remember which book I took to Berlin (a hunt through our holiday photos and a bit of squinting reveals it was Steppenwolf), but I know I bought a Reclam copy of A Clockwork Orange with endearing German footnotes. I could read something related to my location, but I’ve already read a few Czech books in translation thanks to having a Czech friend and I’ve been reading Kafka as some kind of pre-holiday homework.

With this in mind, here are my thoughts on what may make the best holiday reads:

A book that doubles up as something else – With baggage restrictions and limited space, you need a Swiss army knife of a book. Either something thin that could also be a fan, or something hefty that could be a doorstop or a weapon.
A book featuring characters visiting exciting locations that aren’t the one you’re in – Then you get two holidays: the one you’re on and the one you’re getting vicariously through a novel.
A book listing the best holiday reads – Would take the decision away, meaning you can just flick through pages looking at what you could be reading.

Hold by Michael Donkor

June 26, 2018 fiendfullyreading

Hold is a moving, funny, and sad novel about friendship, shame, forgiveness, and growing up, that is set between Ghana and London. The protagonist is Belinda, a housegirl who moved from her village to Kumasi when the chance came. She works alongside Mary, a spirited eleven-year-old who became the sister Belinda never had, until Belinda is summoned to London to try and bring Amma out of her shell. Amma is a straight-A student who lives in south London with her Ghanian parents, but recently she has started to seem different to them, moody and uncommunicative. They hope that Belinda will be a good example on Amma, but Amma doesn’t want to be friends at first. And when they do start to get along, their own secrets might pull them apart again.

Belinda’s perspective is distinctive and holds the novel together as she discovers new ways to think and thinks back on the past. Donkor combines this with smaller parts from Amma’s perspective, which shows the differences in their lives and points of view and also how their friendship grows slowly. The way Donkor writes their friendship—how it is forced upon them, but also becomes more natural, something of a give and take—is crucial to the novel, which is full of different comparisons.

This is a multi-faceted novel with engaging and memorable characters, and vivid locations including a recognisably local south London centred around Brixton, Herne Hill, and Streatham. It is a story about growing up and coming of age across different cultures and positions in society, but also in relation to shame, sexuality, and grief. Hold is an exciting debut that combines gripping characters with vivid description to create a coming-of-age story with fresh perspectives.

We Shall Fight Until We Win (pub. by 404 Ink and BHP Comics)

June 22, 2018 fiendfullyreading

We Shall Fight Until We Win is a graphic anthology showcasing the lives of political women for the centenary of the first wave of women in the UK gaining the right to vote. Female writers and artists have come together to create short comics only a few pages long that tell the stories of women both well-known and lesser-known who have been engaged in politics in the UK and beyond.

The stories told in the book are wide-ranging, diverse, and often fascinating. This is an anthology that doesn’t shy away from the difficult topics, highlighting where the subjects of these comics have held questionable ideals. Many people may see the inclusion of Margaret Thatcher and question her place in the anthology, but actually the piece in question is about the fact she did not fight for women. Telling women’s political stories must include the less savoury elements as well. Alongside this, there is a focus on lesser-known figures and those often reduced to tiny notes in the margin of history (excellently covered in one comic) or silenced altogether.

It isn’t difficult to see that We Shall Fight Until We Win is an important anthology that engages with women involved in politics and activism in the UK. The short comics are moving and readable, making them an ideal way to engage people not interested or able to read a huge book about female political history, and the artwork is quirky and memorable. Once you read it, you’ll be thinking of more and more people in your life that need to read it as well.

A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better by Benjamin Wood

June 3, 2018 fiendfullyreading1 Comment

A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better is an unnerving and raw novel about the aftereffects of violence and trauma. One morning in 1995, Daniel and his estranged father Francis set off on a road trip that is meant to help fix their relationship. Daniel’s mother doesn’t think it will, thinking that Francis will slide into his usual unpredictable ways. The further Daniel and his father drive, the more this turns out to be a trip unlike any other, and soon his father’s desperation and violence will be fully unleashed, and Daniel will bear the scars of these few days for the rest of his life.

It is hard to know what to expect from this novel when you start, but it quickly sets up the looking back on trauma and a tense situation that the narrator has obsessed over ever since. The story is not simple: Daniel tells it as remembered, but also with lies and bias and an intertwined audiobook that was engrained into the events. This makes the style intense and often visceral, but also musing on the impact of memory and how things are viewed by different people. The novel feels distinctive and unusual, menacing and focused on the description of the everyday English landscapes forever tied to violence for Daniel.

Wood’s novel is worth reading even if the sound of it doesn’t immediately grab your attention: it is more than its summary, an unnerving read that uses unreliability to depict childhood trauma and a lingering menace to build suspense for what must inevitably come.

Run, Riot by Nikesh Shukla

May 28, 2018 fiendfullyreading1 Comment

Run, Riot is a fast-paced and tense YA novel about community, gentrification, and fighting to expose the system. Taran and her twin brother Hari live in Firestone House, a tower block near the centre of the city. It wasn’t where they would’ve chosen to live, but they have friends there and a life. When Hari gets caught up in police violence, the twins and their friends Jamal and Anna find themselves on the run in their own home, in a race to uncover what is really happening to Firestone House and how far the corruption really goes.

The novel is structured predominantly around one night with some flashbacks, which gives it an electrifying atmosphere as the reader is drawn into the world of Firestone House and the frantic anger and fear of the main characters. Shukla has created a gripping bunch of characters, particularly Taran who is chasing her dream of being an MC whilst her brother dreams of leaving the area for the potential jobs of London.

Run, Riot is for fans of books like The Hate U Give who would like a novel set in England, exposing racism, gentrification, and police brutality closer to home for British readers. It is also for anyone who is looking for a carefully-paced YA novel with characters who feel alive and varied, whilst also angry and learning how to effectively fight for themselves and their community.

Promising Young Women by Caroline O’Donoghue

May 24, 2018 fiendfullyreading

Promising Young Women is a witty and timely novel about a twentysomething woman living in London who is driven to doubting her sanity when she ends up involved with an older man at work, feeling like she’s turned into one of the people who submit problems to her anonymous blog. Jane works in advertising and an office party after a pitch starts off something with an older married man, but soon a promotion puts him as her mentor. Power and sex become blurred and Jane at first thinks everything is going well, but soon her friendships, her health, and her career seem to be tumbling down around her.

This novel is like Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends for the London office scene, where young women are forced to battle one another and older white men hold all the power. At first, it is readable for the millenial trash vibe that it exposes, but as the narrative moves forward, it spirals into something darker. Consent, online presence and abuse, and mental health come to the forefront as part of the difficult battleground that young women face. What is notable about this novel, which doesn’t depict a particularly fresh story, is that along with Jane, the main character, there is a whole host of varied female characters, flawed and fighting in an environment where men are holding much of the power.

Promising Young Women is a clever look at the male-dominated office culture world in London. It is also a biting look at mental health in young women and the difficulties of being listened to, taken seriously, and kept safe as a woman. Read it over an overpriced hipster cocktail in a pretentious bar and think about everything that is wrong with the world.

Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton

May 19, 2018 fiendfullyreading1 Comment

Social Creature is an outrageous, biting novel that takes elements of Bret Easton Ellis and The Secret History and other detailed literary thriller-type books and gives them a modern twist. Louise lives in New York City in a shabby apartment in a sketchy location, working multiple jobs and barely even claiming to be a writer any more. In a twist of fate, she meets Lavinia: rich, fun, breathtaking, with a beautiful home and a social life to die for. Somehow, Lavinia pulls Louise into her world, sharing her clothes and paying for their Ubers as they party their way through the wannabe literati of NYC. However, this charmed life surely cannot last forever, and Louise might have to take drastic action if she wants to keep living like her new best friend.

Burton’s writing is fast and precise, using detail in a variety of ways to be both satiric and further the narrative. Instead of business cards and restaurant reservations, this is social media likes and ridiculous tea flavours. Online opinion writing is the big thing, selfies capture moments that barely even happen, and as long as someone keeps up an internet presence, no one will worry. This is an excessive world, parodic at times, but also the life that Louise wants is clearly one that could be real, if someone believed every article and photo they saw online and thought they too could have that.

The narrative is clever in its simplicity: not full of twists and turns, but a situation that continues beyond belief. Small moment of a fourth-wall breaking narrative voice may seem incongruous, but they give fleeting hints that they and the reader know the genre, the inevitability of this story. As with other similar books, it isn’t really a thriller, but also it has the pace of one in many ways, as well as the darkness. It addresses the homoerotic tension usually present in these kind of stories, as well as seeming to explore how a female friendship at the heart of the narrative might be different to tales of all-consuming male friendships.

Social Creature isn’t doing something new, but twisting a kind of book usually written or set in the nineties into a kind of millenial hell. There’s pretentious literary quotes and classical scholars, the desperation of trying to become part of a rich world you can’t afford to be in, an all-consuming new friend with an overpowering personality, but there’s also Instagram, secret hipster speakeasy bars, and opinion websites called Misandry!.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

May 16, 2018 fiendfullyreading1 Comment

Less is a comic, bittersweet novel about a failing writer who travels the world to avoid his ex-boyfriend’s wedding. Arthur Less doesn’t want to go to Freddy Pelu’s wedding, nor does he want to decline and sit at home. So instead, he takes up some chance invitations to travel: teaching in Berlin, an award ceremony in Italy, a not-quite-writers’ retreat in India. He turns fifty and fails to avoid looking back on his past, all the while having minor travel mishaps and wondering if he still has a love story to come.

This is a touching novel about someone who doesn’t quite realise how their life appears to others. Arthur’s journey pokes fun at Americans travelling and at the things writers who aren’t quite the writers they want to be end up doing. At the same time, the novel is a kind of bittersweet love story, about someone who can see his two main relationships in the past and can’t quite escape them. The style is distinctive and Greer uses a not-quite-present narrator to frame Less’ life, a detail which makes sense by the end.

Less is a witty and charming novel that feels like a twentieth-century book updated slightly for the twenty-first. Arthur Less is the kind of slightly sad comic protagonist that you hope things will end up well for.

How The Light Gets In by Clare Fisher

May 12, 2018 fiendfullyreading

How The Light Gets In is a collection of very short stories and prose pieces that explore modern life and details both light and dark. They examine the impact of smartphones on daily life, create playful extended metaphors, and tell the stories of distinctive characters in very short spaces. Many of the pieces have a very distinct sense of place: London, Leeds, and elsewhere, being in transit and being at home.

The writing style may be familiar to anyone who read Fisher’s debut novel, All The Good Things, and this collection has other similarities to that novel as well, particularly a sense of accurate detail about everyday life in Britain and characters dealing with tough situations. The modernity of these fleeting looks into characters and moments is enjoyable and the collection shows how very short writing can be perfect in the modern world. It is a book that can be read in the kind of scenarios the characters are shown to be—on transport, during a lunchbreak, whilst unable to concentrate, etc—because it is made up of powerful stories in a quick format.