Tag: books

Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

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Patsy is a powerful novel about a Jamaican woman who leaves everything behind to go to America, at times heartbreaking and happy, and a moving look at identity and belonging. Patsy manages to get a visa to America, where she hopes to follow her childhood best friend and secret love Cicely who she hasn’t seen in years. To do so, she has to leave behind her young daughter Tru, who she cannot connect with like she feels she should. But America isn’t what she expected and Cicely’s life is different now. As Patsy grapples with years as an undocumented immigrant, trying to fight her own feelings and loneliness, Tru lives with her father’s family in Jamaica and is dealing with her own identity and with the abandonment by her mother.

This is an immersive and emotional novel that delves deep into Patsy’s mindsets and life, but also manages to weave in Tru’s story and the heartbreaking ways in which they are paralleled or separated. Patsy’s journey is often bittersweet, with her attempts to find the life she wants to lead often not working out as expected, and immigration being far from her dreams, but at the same time the novel is hopeful and asserts the importance of living your own life and being who you want to be. It provides an insight into race in America, especially as an undocumented immigrant, and into life and class in Jamaica, as well as the gender roles that can be oppressive and not fitting the individual. The combination of Patsy and Tru’s stories makes it particularly powerful, bringing a lot of the emotional moments as the novel grapples with ideas of parenting and what is actually best for the people involved, both mother and child.

Written in a way that feels immediate and vivid, Patsy is a novel that draws you in and gives a voice to questions of immigration, sexuality, and gender. It feels like a novel that will linger with you long after the last page, and hopefully will provide some of the representation that Patsy feels is so missing when she goes to America, unable to see people like her in certain places, from both Patsy and Tru’s depictions.

Bunny by Mona Awad

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Bunny cover with an image of a rabbit

Bunny is a novel about an outsider who ends up involved with a college clique, but it doesn’t go down how you’d expect. Samantha is an MFA student at a prestigious college, resentful of the rich girls who all each other ‘Bunny’ that she has to share workshops with. Her only friend is Ava, a weirdo from the local art college, who hates Samantha’s college and the people there. Out of the blue, the ‘Bunnies’ invite Samantha to their mysterious ‘Smut Salon’, and it seems like she is being let into the fold. However, things start to get sinister and surreal as Samantha is drawn deeper into their world.

From the summary, the book sounds like another college clique campus story, but it really isn’t. Samantha may seem like a classic heroine of such a novel—lonely, brooding, poor, unable to write despite it being how she will graduate—but the narrative is not. Instead, it takes a kind of twisted unreality and uses it to satirise writing (particularly the kinds of writing that the Bunnies are shown to do, variously pretentious and trying to be profound and dark) and to question what is happening to the characters. At first the style can be a bit irritating, but it settles down and feels purposeful (particularly the endless repeating of ‘Bunny’).

Bunny is a novel that some will find too bizarre, some will question what it really means, and others will enjoy the ride. There are some similarities with Heathers, but also with a blend of literary and teen horror; it is a book that defies reality, but also pokes fun at writing and trying to do what the novel itself is doing.

Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma

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Everything You Ever Wanted cover

Everything You Ever Wanted is a novel about escape, sometimes eerie and sometimes heartbreaking as it charts finding a new life on a new planet. Iris works in London creating digital content, hiding her depression and anxiety, trapping in after work drinks and strategy meetings. The Life on Nyx programme sounds both insane and enticing: 100 people moving to another planet, free from social media and employment and everything else, but with the caveat that you can’t come back. And with it, maybe Iris has found her way out.

The combination of a detailed and powerful account of difficulties in modern life with an uncanny escape narrative about the failings of a space utopia works strangely well. The point at which these parts collide—where Iris chooses to leave her old life for a new one—is emotional, working on both the literal narrative level (another planet over dealing with your issues) and a more metaphorical one. The Nyx parts were better than expected for someone who isn’t big on sci-fi, much more focused on Iris’ perspective and the realities of her choice than the practicalities of them being there.

Everything You Ever Wanted takes a story of youthful burnout and mental health issues and combines it with light sci-fi and a sharp look at social media obsession. The result is a novel in an engrossing style that draws you into the central character’s mindset, with a narrative that keeps pushing forward.

Meat Market by Juno Dawson

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Meat Market cover

Meat Market is a gripping novel about the modern fashion industry and how a whirlwind success story can expose its dark side. Jana Novak is sixteen, lives on a south London estate, and is about to start sixth form when she is scouted at Thorpe Park by a modelling agency. She’s always been mocked for her height, but now it seems it’s a good thing. Soon she is learning the ways of the fashion industry—castings, shoots, fashion week—and being catapulted into the spotlight, but the fashion industry has a dirty side beneath the veneer and Jana quickly becomes acquainted with it.

Dawson turns her trademark bite towards the fashion industry, creating a YA novel that doesn’t shy away from topics such as drugs, sexual assault, and eating disorders, but also looks deeper at the loneliness of the industry and of teenagers becoming famous. What makes Meat Market distinctive is both the no-nonsense approach to these topics and the details of being a teenager. Jana is trying to stay grounded, but the details make the novel itself stay grounded despite the storyline that will be far beyond most readers’ experiences. Jana’s friendships twist and change in a realistic way, but also show that despite the often horrible and seemingly competitive nature of the fashion world, she does make some real connections with people in it that allow the narrative to reach its climax.

As she did in Clean, Dawson shows the young adult novels can (and should) tackle some intense themes, not hiding behind dystopia or alternate universes but make the world feel realistic and yet something most readers won’t experience. For some the subject matter might be a bit too much, but for others it will show the world beyond the Instagram photos.

Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy

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Water Shall Refuse Them cover

Water Shall Refuse Them is an retro coming-of-age novel with a horror edge, set in a heatwave in 1970s rural Wales. Sixteen-year-old Nif, her little brother Lorry, and her parents are spending the summer in a cottage in Wales following the death of her sister. Instead of healing, the sweltering atmosphere and isolation only exacerbates their problems: her mother’s grief, her father’s frustration, Nif’s own belief in strange rituals that might bring her answers. Nif meets a strange teenage boy, Mally, who has his own secrets, but neither he nor his mother Janet seem to be quite what the family need and the locals seem to hate them.

The sense of atmosphere in the novel is impressive and unnerving, a kind of haze where heat and grief and twisted rituals float like logic. The combination of mundane and folk horror elements with retro coming-of-age give the story a real charge, and it feels like a very British twist on a style that may seem more American, from authors like Shirley Jackson. Grief and adolescence are made strange, whilst the logic of superstition and the power of belief are almost tangible. The senses are crucial too, with sound and scent prevalent and there being a feeling of the heatwave hanging over the entire story.

This is a debut novel that allows for ambiguity and doesn’t tell the reader everything, building up atmosphere and a really eerie sense of what might happen. In her wild and unsettled protagonist, Lucie McKnight Hardy creates a character both sympathetic and menacing, and in some ways the whole novel feels like following a trail littered with bad omens, much like the dead animals littered throughout the book. The writing and atmosphere is what really makes it memorable, as well as the unnerving line between superstitious horror and twisted human nature and emotion.

Fabulous by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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Fabulous cover

Fabulous is a collection of short stories that retell famous myths in modern Britain, twisting ancient tales into relatable modern snippets. Orpheus, Psyche, Tristan and Isolde, the Pied Piper, and Mary Magdalen are just some of the figures given fresh new versions of their stories, mixing criminal gangs, immigration, estate agents, pest control, love and more.

The stories are knowing and witty, using observations and comments on modern society to try and make these very famous tales fresh. As expected, they vary in how they engage with the source tale, but the original myth is always central to the narrative and characters. Stand out highlights include the story of Diana and Actaeon with estate agents, Pasiphae and the minotaur with seaside gangsters, and adding further complications and some pink pills to the story of Tristan and Isolde. The two Biblical ones—Joseph and Mary Magdalen—are interesting, but may be more appreciated by someone who doesn’t have more knowledge of Greek myth and Arthurian legend than Biblical material.

It is the kind of book that is perfect for picking up and reading single stories, dipping in or choosing the figures that most interest you. The modern retellings are clever and fun, and the end has a quick guide to the original tales for anyone who didn’t know (or Google) them previously. There’s a delight in how famous the original stories are and how ordinary the characters in these versions can be. 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous cover

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a raw and lyrical novel, written as a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. It unfolds, non-chronologically, the story not only of a man in his twenties looking back at growing up, but of his mother and grandmother, of a family who came to America from Vietnam, and of trauma travelling across time and generations. The narrator tells, through the letter form, parts of his life that his mother didn’t know about, particularly his relationship with Trevor which was marred with addiction and the realities of life.

Vuong’s move to prose in this, his first novel, bears deep traces of his poetry, with the same powerful use of imagery and words that leave an imprint on the reader. The style helps the structure—which moves across time and brings flashbacks into accounts of particular scenes—to flow, and recurring images leave a memorable impression. Powerful and raw topics—race, class, sexuality, violence, opioid addition, death—are explored in a way that is both immediate and poetic.

This is a novel about unfolding your story and getting the chance to tell it as it is. Fans of Vuong’s poetry will enjoy the lyrical prose and the way he weaves a kind of narrative out of the letter format, and just the title hints at the poetic nature of the novel. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a powerful book people will be talking about, and rightly so.

A Lukewarm Defence of Yet Another TV Adaptation

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If you follow my Twitter, you’ll probably know that I just read Les Misérables (in Donougher’s nicely approachable translation). You may have also picked up that I used to hate Les Mis despite never having consumed any media relating to it. And the only reason I went from irrational hatred to picking up what cannot be described as a ‘quick read’ is the recent BBC TV adaption of the book.

Whenever there’s a new TV adaptation of a classic book, there tends to be fuss around how faithful it is, the casting, the directorial choices, and whether we really need more TV adaptations of classic books. There are plenty of other stories to be told, after all. Making more adaptations often seems to just give English teachers more options when they need to show the class a screen version of the text as a treat/bribe/[insert better reason here] (watching the 1970s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore film at A Level was more of a punishment, to be honest). Fresh adaptations of newer books give more stories a chance and possibly lessen period drama fatigue.

Regardless of this, I seem to be defending to some extent making more of these adaptations of old books. There’s plenty of good reasons to defend them—a chance to update interpretations of the text on screen, lots of old ones are quite bad, can finally make that very faithful or incredibly not faithful version that was needed—but I’m going to go with my personal one: bringing new audiences to books and ideas.

I hated Les Mis because I was on the internet around the time that the film of the musical of the book (must be said like that for full adaptation value) came out. Those who weren’t on the internet around this time may not be aware of quite how many people were obsessive about Les Mis. There was endless debate, screenshots, jokes, calling it ‘The Brick’ like everyone knew exactly what you meant, being obsessed with characters who turn up a long way in and then die not a huge number of pages later, and the songs. Oh, the songs. I hadn’t even heard the songs, but I felt like I had.

So I hated it. I don’t like musicals so that felt like justification, but really it was the fact so many people wouldn’t shut up about it. I lived my life for a number of years happy in my dislike of it. I had no interest in the news there was a TV adaptation. In fact, one of the main reasons I was willing to try watching it was because I spend a lot of time around people who study the eighteenth and early nineteenth century who were also going to give it a go, and they said the first episode was good. So I watched it. And it was.

Now, I don’t care if you think it was a good adaptation or a good piece of drama or what the hell was that font. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that I enjoyed it, hooked on the story and Javert’s endless “Jean Valjean!” and the fact there was less dialogue than there was David Oyelowo and Dominic West glaring and doing a lot of silent acting at each other. And because I enjoyed it, I gave up my irrational dislike and a few months later, actually read the book.

I conclude my lukewarm defence of all these damn classic book screen adaptations by saying maybe it doesn’t matter if people read these books or get into them, but at least the adaptations are ways people can get into these stories which are often referenced in other places and are also ripe for reworking and retelling in updated and interesting ways. Though that is venturing worryingly far into saying adaptations are good for creating the kind of annoying fandom that made me hate Les Mis in the first place.

The Other Half of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen

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The Other Half of Augusta Hope cover with dragonflies

The Other Half of Augusta Hope is a novel about fitting in, loss, and the people you really have connections with. Augusta loves words and the dictionary. She chooses her favourite country—Burundi—based on its sound and learns all about it. And she’s different to her twin sister Julia. They grow up and when tragedy comes, Augusta realises that she really can’t stay in her hometown with her parents. Alongside this narrative is the story is Parfait, a boy in Burundi who wants to go to Spain, and becomes a man in Spain dealing with what has happened to his siblings.

This is a character-focused novel that has a lot of emotional power. The split narrative that moves between Augusta and Parfait works well to show their parallels and connections, and the narrative in general is well-crafted to foreshadow events. From reading the blurb, the novel sounded less multi-faceted than it actually is, and it was a pleasant surprise to have Parfait’s story as well. It sounded like it could just be a quirky novel similar to others with unusual character names in the title, but actually it covers topics like migrants in Europe and suicide as well as having main characters who don’t fit in.

It is the kind of powerful novel that a lot of people will find resonates with them after they’ve finished it, but which has a hopeful ending to match Augusta’s name.

Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane

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Rules for Visiting cover

Rules for Visiting is a novel about friendship, a meditative novel and focused on travel and home. May’s life is a series of routines: she lives with her elderly father, doesn’t see her brother, and doesn’t really talk to her neighbours. Though she enjoys her gardening career at the local university, she feels she needs something more, and some paid leave sparks off a chance to revisit some old friendships. As May visits her friends one by one, she reflects on their lives and her own, comparing classic literature and modern communication as she searches for what friendship is.

This is a calming sort of read, light and quirky but with some real meaning sown throughout. It has a precise and distinctive style, reflecting May’s thought processes, but leaving gaps for the reader to notice her loneliness and what she isn’t saying. The plant and book references are another distinctive feature, again very much linked to May’s character but also about how we use different points of reference to track our lives and our friendships.

Rules for Visiting is a quietly quirky book that looks at human connections and dealing with the past and the present. Maybe fittingly, it would make a good book to keep in a spare room or give to a visiting friend: a quick, understated yet moving novel that makes you think about friendship across time.