Tag: books

Promising Young Women by Caroline O’Donoghue

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Quick book picks for May

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Only a few for this month, but a good bunch of fiction featuring some historical, some globe-spanning, and some very focused on the personal.

  • Less by Andrew Sean Greer – A bittersweet comic novel about a struggling writer who takes up invitations to strange events around the world in order to avoid his ex-boyfriend’s wedding.
  • House of Gold by Natasha Solomons – Europe poised on the cusp of World War One is the setting for this historical novel, about the Goldbaum family and how rebellious Greta attempts to reclaim her own life. Mixes the personal with the large scale history surprisingly well.
  • We Are Young by Cat Clarke – Another tense YA novel from Cat Clarke, this one focuses on how a car accident can bring various issues in a community to the forefront, from the perspective of the girl whose new stepbrother is the sole survivor.
  • The Pharmacist’s Wife by Rebecca Tait – A dark historical novel set in Victorian Edinburgh, where  Rebecca Palmer’s pharmacist husband tries to control her using heroin and manipulation.
  • Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey – This novel tells the story of a girl who goes missing and then is found a few days later, unwilling to discuss what happened. Told from the perspective of her mother, it looks at depression and how a biased viewpoint can lead to assumptions.

No Holds Bard

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Instead of a review, this is a shameless plug for the anthology I have a story in that is out today. No Holds Bard is a collection of twelve Shakespeare-related stories featuring LGBTQ characters.

Here’s the summary for my story: Young actor Niamh Valentine is cast as Poins in an all-female production of Henry IV. The infamous Jessica Condell is playing Hal. Soon Niamh is balancing Hal and Poins’ relationship with hers and Jessica’s whilst preparing for opening night.

More information and links on the No Holds Bard page on Manifold Press (Amazon UK link / Amazon US link)

The Pharmacist’s Wife by Vanessa Tait

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The Pharmacist’s Wife is an atmospheric piece of historical fiction about female empowerment, manipulation, and addiction, set in Victorian Edinburgh. Rebecca Palmer’s husband Alexander opens a pharmacy and dreams of dreams of success with his new chemical invention: heroin. At the same time, he claims that it is the perfect cure for Rebecca’s hysteria, but the drug reminds her of her lost first love and draws her into a friendship that will reveal all her husband’s sexual secrets. Soon, she is fighting to escape Alexander and his obsession, but her position as his wife doesn’t make things easy for her.

The novel is a gripping read, with a dark Victorian vibe that emphasises both the dangers of addiction and abusive men and the difficult position for women in various situations. Tait focuses on creating the right atmosphere rather than on overloading on historical or scientific material, as could happen in drier historical fiction. The narrative is interesting, particularly the abusive ways in which Rebecca and other women are manipulated by men for science and for gain, plying them with drugs to make them docile and easy to manage. Sometimes the time jumps in the narrative are a little disjointed, but overall it is a good read.

The Pharmacist’s Wife is a historical novel that looks at problems that are not gone today, including the disempowerment of women, drug addiction, and abuse, as well as touching on other areas like the treatment of sex workers. It is one for fans of dark Victorian fiction, particularly those who’d enjoy the genre with a very slight dash of Trainspotting.

Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey

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Whistle In The Dark is a gripping novel about family, depression, and how imagining a mystery can be so far from the truth. When Jen’s fifteen-year-old daughter goes missing in the Peak District, there’s a hunt to find her. But Lana is found after four days, claiming that she can’t remember anything and she’s fine. They go back to London, but things don’t feel right to Jen. She believes that whatever happened in those four days holds the key to what is going on with Lana and is desperate to find out the truth about her teenage daughter and why she’s now afraid of the dark.

The premise of the book is quite simple: it follows from a mother’s perspective the story of her daughter’s depression, of an attempt to help via an artistic retreat holiday, and how that turned into a horrible four days and a troubling aftermath. It starts as Lana is found, jumping backwards in time in between showing what happens once they are back in London. As it is from Jen’s perspective, the visions of the characters are very specific: her husband is often positioned as useless or unhelpful, her worries about Lana take over all over thoughts, and she finds it difficult to balance this with her job and dealing with her elder daughter Meg’s sudden announcement. This gives a suspense to the narrative as the reader must untangle what is Jen’s paranoia and what might be the truth. At the same time, her mindset also shows the times she isn’t able to help Lana, not listening at the right time or jumping to conclusions.

Healey really gets into the mind of Jen, showing how both mother and daughter cannot deal with Lana’s depression and with their relationship. The other characters feel like background to these two, in a way which actually suits Jen’s singleminded focus and inability to detach herself from the situation to see it in other ways. This is a moving novel that portrays the complexity of teenage depression and how a family might attempt to deal with it, as well as looking at how social media can impact on traumatic events and self-worth.

We Are Young by Cat Clarke

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We Are Young is another powerful novel by Cat Clarke that combines suspense, serious issues, and real, flawed characters. Seventeen year old Evan’s mother gets married to breakfast DJ Tim on the same night that her new stepbrother Lewis is involved in a terrible car accident. As the only survivor, Lewis is scapegoated by the local media, but Evan and her journalist father Harry think there’s more than meets the eye. Their investigating turns up a complex story of disturbing truths, mental health problems, and complicated relationships that not everyone wants to face head on.

Clarke writes a rich narrative that gives a lot of detail to characters and their lives, particularly Evan and Lewis, which makes them feel realistic and immerses the reader in the novel’s world. As well as the tragedy and the problems with her new stepfamily, Evan deals with her relationship with her somewhat estranged dad, her complicated band-made-up-of-exes situation, looking after her little brother, and some teenage secrets she’d rather keep from her mum. Glimpses into the lives of supporting characters suggest similar ranges of things going on in their lives. This combined with the narrative that looks into solving the mystery of a tragedy makes the book feel multi-faceted: a young adult novel that combines the suspense of plot with richness of character and regular teenage concerns.

We Are Young is not a light book: it features death, a car accident, mental health problems, and suicide, along with abusive relationships and the pressures on modern teenagers. However, it is also a book full of finding support and working on the relationships that matter. Once again, Cat Clarke creates a vivid tapestry of older teenage characters who behave like teenagers do—not shying away from either the major issues in the narrative or others like drink, drugs, and sexuality—and uses a tense plot to keep the reader turning the page.

House of Gold by Natasha Solomons

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House of Gold is a compelling novel about a rich banking family who are pushed to breaking point by the First World War. Greta Goldbaum is part of the Austrian branch of the Goldbaum family, who have banking outposts in the major countries of Europe. She has no choice in her marriage to Albert, her cousin from the English section of the family, despite being defiant and always looking for trouble. She finds herself moving to England, but just as she can grasp herself a little happiness through her loneliness, the war begins and threatens everything.

The novel focuses on both the personal and the larger scale: on Greta’s attempts to reclaim her own life and on the situation for a wealthy Jewish family across Europe on the eve of the First World War. It is this combination that makes the book particularly gripping, as it has a human centre through Greta and also a sense of a wider impact of war, especially in a family that has members of both sides of the conflict. She is a fantastic character and her narrative shows how a woman tied by society, family, and expectation can still fight and still not always understand other women’s struggles.

House of Gold was far more of a riveting read than expected: it has varied and interested characters and a sense of real human emotion, all whilst highlighting different kinds of privilege and prejudice. Even if the war setting isn’t necessarily appealing, it is worth giving this novel a chance.