Tag: book review

Himself by Jess Kidd

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The uncanny in an Irish village: Himself by Jess Kidd

Himself is a captivating novel, a magical realist mystery set in the 1970s in an Irish village that centres around the people in the community and secrets hidden in the past. Mahony returns to the village of Mulderrig to try and uncover the truth about the teenage mother he never knew, neither the living nor the dead seem to be much use in telling him what happened. As hostile locals oppose him and strange natural forces and eccentric inhabitants prove unlikely allies, he slowly discovers the secrets of the past and violence in the present.

Kidd creates a vivid world in which the uncanny blurs with the real, where the dead might be seen but they aren’t always useful, and belief and superstition might just have something useful to say. This element makes Himself much more than a mystery novel or one about returning to a small village to uncover the secrets of the past: it is also a tale of haunting, both by people and places, and about forces at work that are larger than individuals. Mahony is a typical mysterious good-looking stranger, one from Dublin who knows about the contemporary music and fashions that haven’t made it to Mulderrig, but his ability to see the dead gives him an interesting angle. The argumentative and outrageous aging actress Mrs Cauley is the most memorable character and Mahony’s unlikely ally, but the novel has a large sweep of characters as it depicts the interconnectedness of village life.

The combination of mystery, the supernatural, and a very human past of scandal and violence make Himself a gripping and atmospheric novel, enjoyable for fans of magical realism, literary mysteries, and Iain Banks in particular.

Little Nothing

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Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

Little Nothing is a story about transformation, about a girl who is a miracle, a dwarf, and a beauty, who grows up to be many other things. A cross between The Tin Drum and a fairy tale, Silver’s novel skirts the line between reality and allegory, leaving a trail of myth in its wake. The events and characters in the book fit together like a puzzle, using the fixed narrative conventions and easy coincidence of fairy tale and legend to create a story that flows from one section to the next.

The improbability and unreality of some of the events in the book may not appeal to everyone, particularly in conjunction with the more realistic elements and depiction of harsh imprisonment. However, Little Nothing is a treat for anyone who likes retellings of and new fairy tales and myths. Though lacking in the linguistic playfulness of transformation found in authors like Jeanette Winterson in favour of a more straightforward style, the novel blends the telling and enacting of stories to create a work in which fairy tales are both invented tales and reality.

Nasty Women

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Nasty Women: A Collection of Essays and Accounts On What It Is To Be a Woman in the 21st Century by 404 Ink

Nasty Women is a powerful collection of essays about being a woman in 2017 and how this intersects with a variety of other elements of identity and issues – race, class, sexuality, disability, trauma – to create a diverse and changing image of being a woman. It is about sharing experience and shows the importance of having a voice in the 21st century, at a time of political uncertainty and prejudice.

This varied collection is the kind of intersectional work that there needs to be today, with moving, sad, and often funny accounts and essays about life as a woman in some way, but with an awareness that ‘woman’ isn’t a simple term and that gender and identity is more complicated than that. The book also makes a good introduction to a range of writers in order to find out more about their work and the issues they discuss. Short and engaging essays make it a fantastic read and a call to arms to keep sharing how ideas of being a woman in some way are interconnected with a lot of other concepts and issues in the modern day.

The Transition by Luke Kennard

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Modern day housing crisis dystopia: The Transition by Luke Kennard

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The Transition is a satirical and probing novel about modern day crises of housing, jobs, and life, and how an escape from your failings might be merely a path to further troubles. Karl and Genevieve are thirty somethings trapped under crippling debt and when the opportunity to go on a new scheme – The Transition – which involves living with an older couple and surrendering elements of freedom in order to learn how to live successfully, they opt in quickly. But what appeared like a quick fix to their issues doesn’t turn out as ideal as the blurb made it out to be.

Whilst comparisons to TV series Black Mirror are inevitable due to the near-future, technological narrative and highlighting of issues in modern society, Kennard’s novel is lighter and less focused on the technological elements. Instead, The Transition provokes thoughts on streamlining society, surrendering control to those – in this case an older generation – who know better, and how the housing crisis and overeducation issues could result in drastic measures. Karl is a blundering main character who is occasionally frustrating, but this really sets him up as one of the ideal candidates for The Transition, someone who does vaguely unethical online copywriting and essay writing and aspires no further, caught in a web of debt. His point of view allows Kennard to lead the reader through the experience of The Transition and weave a dystopian tale with a fairly ambiguous ending that leaves room for thought.

The novel was more enjoyable than expected, with a good balance of social issues and dystopian plot line. Its satirical bent makes it a lighter near future dystopian option, though it still highlights a lot of issues, from the inadequacy of the minimum wage against rising rent cost to the lack of relevant jobs for well-educated graduates. The Transition is a gripping novel that is perfect for fans of dystopian looking for something more recent or fans of Black Mirror who want similar reading material.

Man Alive

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Man Alive by Thomas Page McBee

Man Alive is a powerful memoir about the past and the future, capturing McBee’s attempts to move beyond the violence done to him in the past and work out how it affects who he is as he goes through transitioning. It is about being alive and seeing that life in the face of terrible things. The book is an exploration of masculinity, but also how to navigate a masculinity tinged by trauma and negative experience and still emerge with a sense of the man that it would be good to be.

Though the subject is serious and reflective, the style of the book is uplifting and well-written, keeping a kind of positive force pushing forward through the narrative. McBee plays around with the word ‘man’, punning on pop culture references and displaying how disparate and changing the term can be. Man Alive is an important book, the kind of memoir that should be published to celebrate life and provide a variety of models and inspiration for others who may or may not have similar circumstances.

Don’t Feed The Trolls by Erica Kudisch

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Battling the trolls under the (online) bridge: Don’t Feed The Trolls by Erica Kudisch

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Don’t Feed The Trolls is an enjoyable and incredibly relevant novel about online harassment, friendship, and discovering yourself even when times are hard. The narrative centres around anonymous male trolls going after a player on an online multiplayer game and how this affects the lives of various people. Alongside this, the main character realising some stuff about their gender and presentation during the fallout from this online abuse. The highs and lows of modern technology and the problems when online free speech turns into harassment are dealt with, but the novel also focuses on the ways in which friends can help out and people can find their strength.

Kudisch’s style is easy to get into and the novel was not difficult to engage with for a non-gamer. The characters, particularly the main character Daphnis, are vividly painted and form a crucial core to the book, making it easy to be frustrated and angry at the effect that the trolls can have upon them. Many elements of fan culture run throughout the novel, including gaming, conventions, and musical references, and these give it a modern and relevant feel not only in the subject matter, but in the world it depicts.

Don’t Feed The Trolls is ultimately an uplifting novel about how the internet trolls can be beaten and how there’s always space to explore yourself and your identity in order to feel more comfortable as yourself. It is exactly the kind of novel that is perhaps needed these days, engaging with current issues but also a light and fun read.

A Line Made By Walking by Sara Baume

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Escape to the country: A Line Made By Walking by Sara Baume

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A Line Made By Walking is about Frankie, a twenty five year old artist who moves from Dublin into her grandmother’s old bungalow in the countryside near her parents’ house, and what she does in this retreat from the world. Written in a relatable, immediate style, Baume’s novel is about loss, of self, of how you thought the world was, and of the grandmother whose home she stays in and the dead animals that she finds and photographs. It is about being in your twenties and feeling lost.

Frankie’s photographing of dead animals and her attempts to test her art knowledge through finding works that fit the theme of whatever she is thinking about strike a chord for anyone whose creativity or knowledge seem to be unable to find an outlet or are languishing away whilst their owner is unsure of life. The book is full of knowledge, about artwork, nature, and other things, and how knowing things cannot help against difficulties of life, loneliness, and depression. Details in the book, from Frankie’s description of getting caught obsessively smelling her old carpet to a reference to The Land Before Time to describe a leaf, help to make it a vivid and moving account of a relatable subject, feeling lost and alone in the world.

Comparisons to Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City feel inevitable, with art and loneliness deeply intertwined in both, but in Baume’s novel art does not seem to offer the same comparison or comfort that loneliness is not new, but rather a frame of reference for Frankie to try and cling to and use to create order. A Line Made By Walking is full of quotable lines about being in your twenties, being sad, and finding the world an overwhelming place, and it is a book to be savoured whether you are experiencing that right now or have done so in the past.

Radio Sunrise

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Radio Sunrise by Anietie Isong

Radio Sunrise is a satirical novel about radio broadcasting and underhand corruption in Nigeria which gives a humourous insight into the problems of being a journalist for a state-funded station. Ifiok works for Radio Sunrise and things start going wrong when his radio drama has its funding cut and his girlfriend leaves him after he cheats on her, but when he is sent back to his home town to make a documentary on a government-funded project he discovers there’s plenty more to go wrong yet.

Isong’s novel focuses on hypocrisy and corruption on both a large and a small scale, but it is the smaller scale moments that really capture the satire particularly well, with journalists only writing news stories if they are paid enough in their brown envelopes. The narrator Ifiok is a naive idealist much of the time which makes him an ideal satiric character, shocked by other’s adulterous relationships and unable to stand up to the system even when he wants to expose its flaws. Isong depicts a complex mix of problems across Nigeria, but all with a light satiric touch that makes for a fun and engaging novel.

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

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Loneliness and art in NYC: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

The Lonely City is a fluid book, part memoir on loneliness in New York, part history of art and certain artists in the later 20th century, and part exposition on how being alone and being different has affected different kinds of art. The witty subtitle, ‘adventures in the art of being alone,’ summarises the reading experience: it is an adventure, not always a happy one, through art and loneliness and the sometimes harsh environment of the city.

The title initially drew me to the book, which I didn’t realise was about art and the lives of artists in New York as well as about loneliness in a big city. As someone who knows extremely little about art, I found it easily engaging and a fascinating look at artists of varying levels of general fame. Chapters focus around elements of her own time in New York and a specific artist and their work and history, but later chapters bring together aspects of previous ones to form the larger picture. From Warhol to various artists working in photography, music, and other media, the way in which Laing draws lines between art, loneliness and New York, particularly in relation to the AIDS crisis and LGBT communities, is deeply interesting and moving. Gender and sexuality play an important part throughout the book, which I did not expect from the blurb but was pleasantly surprised to find.

The kinds of loneliness on display in art and in life, being physically isolated and emotionally alone and socially outcast to name a few, are discussed to show that the concept of ‘the lonely city’ is not a simple one. Ultimately, Laing focuses on positivity that can come from looking at loneliness as well as on great pieces of art in different forms. The way in which The Lonely City blends ideas of loneliness, self, and art, not rigidly in one genre or focus, makes it a versatile and engaging read for anyone interested in social issues, art, LGBT history, or how cities can shape the people and work within them.

The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney

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The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney

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The Blood Miracles is a fast paced novel, a gangster film with heart, and a story of one guy’s messy involvement with a new route for getting drugs into Cork. Ryan Cusack is half-Irish and half-Italian, but caught between far more things and people than that: his own issues chase him, his girlfriend’s not happy, and his allies are not always so allied.

The plot follows a fairly expected chase around deals, betrayal, and the mix between business and pleasure, but with Ryan holding the narrative together as he attempts to deal with everything at once. He is a gripping character, one who is barely holding together family problems and mental health issues, and who is trying to be clever but also facing mounting danger as allegiances and threats come to a head. His musical ability and inability to make something of it show how it is not always talent that can be a miraculous escape, but instead luck and circumstance. The supporting characters are the kind to be expected from a book about deals and drugs, from the paranoid user boss to the rival with a connection to the hero, but McInerney paints them well, forming a vivid picture of the Cork world that Ryan lives in.

Though The Blood Miracles may sound from its description like another kind of Trainspotting or a Guy Ritchie film, in reality it is a modern take on the genre, with references to cloud storage and Orange is the New Black serving as reminders that McInerney is perhaps the future of the gangster story, bringing cleverness and charm to her work.

(Catch it out on 20th April 2017 – I read a proof thanks to John Murray and Netgalley)