Tag: books

One of Them: An Eton College Memoir by Musa Okwonga

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One of Them is a memoir about being a Black student at Eton in the 1990s, and also a reflection on how so much power is concentrated in people who went there. Musa Okwonga was a middle class boy from a small town in Greater London who dreamt of going to Eton, and this book charts his time there from dreams and prep school to leaving, and also looks at the impact of Eton on his own life and how it reflects wider society. Issues of race, sexuality, and privilege run through the memoir and it becomes clear that with hindsight, the distribution of power and the ‘boys club’ of Tory government aren’t surprising to someone who went to Eton.

This is a highly readable memoir broken into short chapters that provide vignettes of Musa Okwonga’s experiences, not only at Eton but also growing up in a town very unlike where most of his classmates lived but still seeming out of place there due to going to boarding school. The depiction of Eton probably won’t surprise people who’ve heard about the people who’ve come out of it, but it was surprising to see a more balanced view at times that gives the positive experiences one man had, but also the negative (and those that were more negative with hindsight). There’s a lot to think about in terms of class and race and why the people in government are set on increasing inequality, but through a personal lens with conflicted thoughts at times.

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee

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Dreamland is a novel about inequality, family, and the way society could go, set in a near-future Margate. Chance, her brother, and her mum move to Margate after being offered money to leave London, where they were living in a series of temporary accommodation. The sea is meant to be a fresh start for them, but the waters are rising, and the new politicians have found some new ways to deal with run-down areas.

Rosa Rankin-Gee takes the reality of the present and pushes a few threads towards further extremes to build the backdrop of this novel, in which local areas must fend for themselves and there’s no help from central government (with an author’s note at the end highlighting the current policies that make this vision of the future not so far fetched). What we see is a grim existence, in which Chance and others in Margate have to adapt to things like blackouts and huge waves and flooding whilst newly powerful politicians plot what to do with deprived areas. The everyday reality might seem shocking, but the wider decisions that got places there is not.

We see everything through Chance’s perspective, from her dealing with what happens to her brother and when his business partner Kole comes on the scene to her sudden connection to Franky, a girl who seems linked to the outsiders from London who try and offer help to the community. The narrative covers quite a few years, sometimes moving at a fast pace and sometimes a slower one, and you can’t help being drawn into the characters’ lives and becoming frustrated and angry at what happens. As with other ‘dystopian’ type books, there’s a point later in the novel when Chance reads about the plans the government used and it becomes clear that policies are not accidental, but part of horrific larger strategies, and this serves as a good reminder that this isn’t a near-future based on ‘chance’, but on choices.

An up-to-date (there’s references to the pandemic) near-future novel about the housing crisis, social welfare, and climate change that feels very immediate, Dreamland shows where division and individualistic thinking can get society, whilst at the same time showing a protagonist just trying to survive. There are moments of hope, a pivotal love story that hinges on class and privilege, and a sense of being able to fight, but this is also a grim vision of a future to be avoided at all costs.

The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson

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The Loop is a horror novel about a conspiracy in a small Oregon town that threatens to take over all of the residents, and a group of outcasts who have to fight to survive. Turner Falls is a little desert town with a large medical tech firm housed within it. For Lucy, it’s a place where she’s seen as an outsider: not originally from there, not white, and not one of the rich kids. When she goes to an underground cave party with her best friend Bucket, she doesn’t expect much, but she definitely doesn’t expect it to be the start of a fight for survival as teenagers start turning into murderers thanks to a strange signal.

The narrative centres around Lucy, with her the focus of the third person narration other than a few inserted podcast transcripts to get across the conspiracy side of things, and it has a classic horror-thriller plotline of a group of people coming together and then being under constant threat. Without wanting to give everything away, it follows a typical structure of a story in which people are ‘turned’ into something else, with a lot of violent deaths just as you get used to characters being there. The main horror element of the story starts quite soon into the novel, giving you chance to meet Lucy but unlike some horror books, not spending too long building up tension.

Though the main narrative is quite predictable (the blurb compares it to Stranger Things and The X-Files, though for me it was closest to the Sims 4 game ‘Strangerville’), there were a lot of details that I particularly liked, including how the book dealt with Lucy’s trauma both from her childhood and from the events currently unfolding. There was also a focus on class, both in terms of how it was people who were more privileged who were actually turned by “the loop” (as their families had jobs at the big tech/science company who was working on the project) and in terms of how it affects the lives of the residents of Turner Falls and how it gets ingrained in people and how they see themselves.

The Loop is both a readable horror story about a town impacted by an experimental science project and also a look at trauma and survival instincts. It’s quite brutal at times so isn’t for the faint-hearted and though the blurb mentions Stranger Things, it doesn’t have its fun cheesiness, but rather a more bleak tone and more of an apocalypse vibe. 

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

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Of Women and Salt is a novel about choices, immigration, and motherhood that moves from 19th century Cuba to 21st century Miami. In 1866 in Cuba, Maria Isabel is the only woman working at the cigar factory, but war is coming. And in Miami in 2016, Carmen, a first generation Cuban immigrant, is trying to get her daughter Jeannette to stay sober, whilst Jeanette wants to go to Cuba to understand the past her mother doesn’t talk about. And a few years previous, a chance act by Jeanette affects the life of Ana, a young girl who lives across the street with her mother who is about to be deported back to El Salvador.

Told in episodes that move between points of view, time, and place, this is a rich novel that looks at different immigrant circumstances (particularly at the experience of Cubans coming to America and then people from Central American countries like Mexico and El Salvador) and how choices impact people’s lives. It is woven together well, with Carmen and Jeanette’s strained relationship taking an important place in the novel, especially around the reasons behind each of their perspectives and what they’ve faced and the difficulty they have in telling the truth to each other. Through Jeanette, the novel looks at drug addiction and the opioid crisis in Florida, and also at how she longs for Cuba though she’s never been, and doesn’t find it quite what she expects.

The other narratives in the novel bring in other elements, from a contemporary tale of detention centres and the difficulties of making it to the US and staying there to moments from 1866 and 1959 in Cuba which show political moments through the eyes of individual women who have to fight to survive on a more personal scale. The different stories are brought together cleverly to give an overall picture of women battling for themselves and their families and how their individual struggles reflect wider political and social events.

Of Women and Salt is a vivid and powerful novel that grips you as it shows you major moments in its protagonists’ lives. The focus on these individuals and their place in the wider world made it easier for me to keep up with than some other multi-generational novels and I found myself reading it more quickly than I expected.

A Lonely Man by Chris Power

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A Lonely Man is a novel about a writer in Berlin who becomes drawn into the life of a stranger he meets in a bookshop, who may or may not be being chased by Russians. Robert lives in Berlin with his wife and two daughters, where he spends his time trying and failing to write a follow up to his debut book of short stories. At an event in a bookshop, he meets Patrick, who seems drunk and unpredictable, but after he helps Patrick out, they meet for drinks and Robert discovers that Patrick is a ghostwriter for a recently-dead Russian oligarch. Robert doesn’t believe Patrick is really in danger, but maybe his story could give Robert so much needed content for a novel.

The atmosphere of this novel really drew me in, with a vividly described Berlin and a real sense of this British man who still sees the novelty of living there (he does know much German, much less than his Swedish wife). At first, it was hard not to be like ‘oh great, another novel about a writer struggling to write another book’, and I think this feeling would’ve been worse if I knew that Chris Power is also known for writing a book of short stories, but after a while I got more engaged with the narrative, especially the way it stays mundane whilst also having underlying threat. 

The narrative is broken up by sections that Robert has supposedly written as he turns Patrick’s story into fiction, which both unfold the story (unreliably of course) and bring up questions about what is the truth and what writers can write about. It was quite apparent this was what the novel was going to engage with seeing as quite early on it becomes clear that Robert’s short stories were mostly just anecdotes from other people he fictionalised. This did make the ‘novel about a struggling writer’ stereotype a little more palatable, as it brought up some questions about what people write about and even by implication if writers should write so many books that just fictionalise people they know (and, indeed, themselves).

Though I did enjoy reading A Lonely Man for the Berlin setting and the low level tension, it didn’t do enough to subvert or play with the kind of novel it is, especially with a writer protagonist. There was a momentary flirting with having an affair which I didn’t see why the novel needed, especially as most of the other narrative elements felt controlled and very much like they’d all been purposefully chosen for symmetry and comparison throughout the novel as a point about how writers turn stories into something better for fiction. Overall, I appreciated the execution (the sections of Robert’s writing about Patrick were a bit dull, but necessary for the concept) and the atmosphere as a low key literary thriller and it had quite a noir feeling that I think people will enjoy.

Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley

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Hot Stew is a novel about Soho, gentrification, sex work, and disparities, as Mozley follows up her debut novel Elmet with something similar in some ways and very different in others. It follows a range of characters who are all slightly interconnected, from the women who work in a brothel that takes up part of an old townhouse that the owner wants to tear down to a privileged young man who needs to reevaluate his love life (and whose father is the townhouse owner’s lawyer). As a woman goes missing and others start to fight to keep Soho as it was, it seems the area itself is ready to put up a fight.

People who read Elmet might find this one a little different, not only from the central London setting rather than the Yorkshire countryside, but also the range of points of view in the narrative and the writing style. I found Hot Stew easier to get into reading than Elmet, as it felt like it was trying less to be ‘literary’ and moved quite quickly between different characters. It was clever how the overall story came together through the different characters, though after finishing the novel I’m still not quite sure what some of the plot lines are meant to bring to the overall atmosphere and messages of the novel, which focuses on sex, power, and gentrification. And finally on the ‘comparing it with her debut’ train, this book and Elmet both have a very black and white morality that paints good versus bad at least in terms of the main conflict.

The latter point I don’t necessarily mind, as the novel was about how the old Soho was being lost due to gentrification, and there was a clear message against the wholesale conversion of somewhere with history into something new and expensive. Mozley also covers in passing a range of other issues, mostly with some eventual connection to sex work (there’s a very blatant Game of Thrones rip off that tries to say something about the approach the show took towards sex work and sex scenes), and there’s some interesting things going on (one of my favourite elements was the relationship between Precious and Tabitha, who both live in the brothel and are more supportive of each other than anyone else in the book), if occasionally they don’t seem to go anywhere.

Hot Stew has a great atmosphere and again Mozley writes a location with a real sense of place (and a kind of anticapitalist sense of place at that). I found it readable and the characters engaging, though I didn’t quite feel it all came together for me.

Bright Burning Things by Lisa Harding

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Bright Burning Things is a novel about addiction and recovery, as a single mother tries to create the life she wants for her son. Sonya was once a stage actress in London, loving the thrill of the stage, but now she’s back in Ireland, a single mum to Tommy. Her, Tommy, and Herbie, their rescue dog, form a close knit trio, but Sonya can only keep it up by drinking bottles of wine each night, and things are starting to slip from her as she burns the fish fingers and feels like she loves Tommy too much to bear. When her neighbour seems to be spying on her and her estranged father turns up with an ultimatum, Sonya has to try and work out how she can keep Tommy.

This is a powerful look at alcoholism and its impact, especially on a small family without a lot of outside support. Written from Sonya’s perspective, the narrative doesn’t shy away from difficult emotions, and particularly the time Sonya spends in rehab is very raw, with her not sure what has happened to Tommy. There’s still a lot of unanswered questions by the end, especially around Sonya’s family and past as her father doesn’t want to tell her what really happened and she doesn’t find out exactly what Tommy experienced, which people might find frustrating but gives it a sense of reality. Given the type of story, you do almost want to know what would happen after the narrative itself ends, as you become quite invested in Sonya’ recovery.

It is probably important to go into this book knowing it is about alcoholism, as addiction is a topic that might be difficult for some people to read about, but it is an intimate look at someone trying to recover and to look after their son, even in somewhat unconventional ways. The book also exposes the ways in which people don’t get enough support when they’re struggling and how it can be assumed that people have family members or close friends who can provide that support. Bright Burning Things is a gripping and readable book that deals with important topics.

The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet by Roisin Kiberd

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The Disconnect is, as its subtitle suggests, a ‘personal journey through the internet’, or a collection of interconnected personal essays about technology and culture. From personal experiences of using and working in social media (most notably as the social media presence for a cheese brand) to a list of vaporwave tracks, and from depression and insomnia to Mark Zuckerberg’s bland outfits, Kiberd takes us on a funny and sad journey about living on the internet.

Being only a few years younger than Kiberd, this very much felt like a book aimed at people like me, who grew up using things like MSN Messenger. The style is one often found in the best online essays, combining disparate references and self-deprecating humour with deep looks at specific things (one of the essays is a very in-depth look at the energy drink Monster) and weird stories of existing in the modern world. I was hooked quite early on with references to Mad Men and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism and the first section of the book was my favourite, with essays going through a dual personal and big scale history of the internet and looking at the figure of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s ethos (though I enjoyed the whole book).

I’m not sure what it says about me that the most insightful part of the book for me was the chapter about vaporwave, a genre of music I spend a lot of time thinking ‘I should find out what that actually is’ and never doing so (now I know!). The Disconnect does sit alongside a lot of the other tech-related reading I’ve done, both in terms of the personal side of books about social media and big tech companies and in terms of internet history and the impact on our lives (I feel it’s a particularly good companion to Gretchen McCulloch’s Because Internet, which looks at internet language and also the ‘phases’ of people on the internet).

Anyone who is fairly well-versed in internet culture and also likes questioning and reflecting on what these technologies are actually doing to our lives is likely to enjoy The Disconnect. It’s tech writing infused with the personal side of the internet, and if that sounds like a selling point to you, you should read it. Anyway, I’m off to listen to Floral Shoppe.

Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka

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Bullet Train is a thriller with a dark comedy edge, about a train full of killers battling to make it to the end of the line. On the train from Tokyo to Morioka is Kimura, a man hunting revenge on a sadistic schoolboy, Satoshi, who threw his son off a roof and is also on the train. Unbeknownst to them, also on the train are killer duo Tangerine and Lemon, tasked with delivering a suitcase and a kidnapped son back to a famed gangster, and unlucky assassin Nanao, who is on a job to steal the suitcase. What unfolds as the train travels between the stations is a complicated web of double crossing, confusion, and violence.

This is a book with the vibe of darkly comic action film, especially with elements like the unluckiness of Nanao and constant assumption that Satoshi, aka The Prince, is an innocent schoolboy (he has the vibe of Five from Umbrella Academy), which makes it an enjoyable thriller about immoral people battling to survive. The narrative cuts between the main characters, sometimes jumping minutes back in time to give multiple perspectives, and this also gives it a cinematic feel. Despite being a long book, it is fast-paced with twists and tension leaving you wonder what could happen next and not sure who you should root for.

A ‘locked train’ thriller about killers fighting for their lives and a suitcase, Bullet Train is gripping book for fans of thrillers that don’t quite take themselves too seriously and the kinds of films where gangsters and shady types find themselves all accidentally up against each other. It’s not something I’d usually pick out to read, but I’m glad I did (on a whim because I’ve read some Japanese novels recently).

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin

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Gay Bar: Why We Went Out is a fusion of memoir and cultural history as Jeremy Atherton Lin charts the gay bars he’s visited, their importance in his life, and the wider history of gay bars as spaces in cities like London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Split into sections that broadly cover different locations that he’s lived or gone out in, the book looks back both through a personal lens and a historical one, thinking not only about gay bars as a place, but also about the cultural around them and how ‘gay culture’ has evolved.

Starting this book, I expected more of a history of gay bars, but the subtitle is important: it’s more about that personal ‘why’ and how places impact a person. Jeremy Atherton Lin weaves his life throughout, notably a romance that starts on a night in Soho and reflects on being a mixed-race man in gay spaces. The memoir element is enjoyable, giving a sense of being out with him in these places and bringing together a topic that otherwise might seem disparate (so the focus is on the gay bars that he’s been to, not all the ‘best’ examples, whatever that could be). There’s something great about people’s personal experiences with LGBTQ spaces, like you or a friend are describing how places have been important to you, or you’ve met someone in a bar explaining the history to you.

It’s a weird time to be reading a book like this, when people haven’t been able to go out in a long time mostly, and that adds to the yearning sense of losing history as many gay bars close. There’s a good underlying criticality and reflection about some of the issues around gay bars, from race to what rules spaces impose, but ultimately it is about one person (well, at many points, two) and their experiences in gay bars, and that gives it a lot of heart.