Tag: books

Mayhem & Death by Helen McClory

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Unceasing atmosphere: Mayhem & Death by Helen McClory

Mayhem & Death is a collection filled with sea, mystery, birds, darkness, and hints of light. It is made up of short pieces—many only a couple of pages long—and also a fantastic closing novella, Powdered Milk, which is atmospheric and very fitting to close the collection. Other highlights amongst the lyrical writing include: ‘The Inciting Incident’, which feels like a lens to view telling stories and what you do and don’t say; ‘Folk Noir’, which gives snippets of a countryside noir that makes you want more; ‘A Voice Spoke To Me At Night’, which features a mystery voice and has a strangely relatable narrator; and ‘Take Care, I Love You’, which is a hauntingly good poem about loneliness.

McClory’s collection makes me want to use the term “damp gothic”: it is suffused with an eerie sense of water and nature, whilst also being very much about people and the modern day. A lot of the stories have a kind of looming mystery, even (or indeed especially) the very short ones, many of which make you want to immediately go back and read them again, to take in the phrases and the atmosphere. There is a lot of strangeness and hints of unpredictable, but also somehow these pieces of writing feel very fitting for the contemporary world.

Mayhem & Death is the kind of collection you’ll want to give to writer friends and people who love lyrical and strange books. The shorter pieces create tiny atmospheres and stories in concise and clever ways and the novella Powdered Milk is difficult to stop reading as you find yourself drawn into a claustrophobic world.

Home by Amanda Berriman

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A child’s view of the housing crisis: Home by Amanda Berriman

Home is a moving and hard-hitting novel about a little girl and her family. Jesika is four and lives with her mum and her baby brother Toby in a flat that her mum calls a dump. She’s not allowed to touch the broken window and the scary money man is threatening to evict them. When Toby and her mum’s coughs get worse, Jesika finds herself away from home. All she wants is to be back at home, but her new friend Paige has a secret that Jesika isn’t sure if she should tell.

Told from the point of view of Jesika, the novel immerses the reader in her world and in the stark realities of the housing crisis. It doesn’t take long to get into the book’s style and understand the quirks in the way that a four year old sees the world, including the serious issues that she can’t quite grasp. Berriman uses campaigns and support for Shelter and the NSPCC to highlight real problems, including homelessness and sexual abuse, mixing this with heart and with a memorable protagonist.

With similarities to Kit de Waal’s My Name Is Leon, Emma Donoghue’s Room, and Allie Rogers’ Little Gold, this is a heartbreaking novel that uses a distinctive style and voice to show what children do and don’t understand about their situation and to present the housing crisis in a memorable and real way.

The Hoarder by Jess Kidd

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Unexpected characters: The Hoarder by Jess Kidd

The Hoarder is an intriguing and mysterious novel about a psychic carer who ends up drawn into the life of a strange old man. Maud Drennan faces the difficult challenge of helping the cantankerous Cathal Flood in his huge, ram-packed home in West London. He has scared off all the carers who have come before and lives with a menagerie of cats, a fox, and a few ghosts of the past. Soon Maud finds herself trying to work out what happened in the house and what the secrets of the Floods are, aided only by her agoraphobic landlady Renata and a legion of unhelpful ghostly saints.

Kidd blends Catholicism, mystery, and runaway girls in a narrative that develops interesting characters as the protagonist tries to unravel past secrets. Maud is headstrong and determined, but with a past of her own, and her battles with Cathal form much of the book’s premise. Her landlady Renata, an agoraphobic trans woman with a stage show past, is great as she eggs on Maud to see murder and conspiracy everywhere, and then helps her answer the real questions posed by what Maud finds. The plot is tense, but it is the characters that make the novel, even down to the saint ghosts that only Maud can see and who are generally completely useless.

From the premise, I wasn’t sure how enjoyable the book would be, as it didn’t sound hugely exciting or new. However, Kidd’s skilful combination of tense mystery and varied characters meant that it was an easy read to devour, that leaves the reader guessing the answers and appreciating the detail.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

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Knowing you’re going to die: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

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The Immortalists is a sweeping novel about four siblings and their lives with and without each other. In New York City in the late 1960s, the four Gold children visit a woman who it is promised will tell them each the date of their death. The siblings—aged seven to thirteen—must then deal with what they’ve each been told. They’re all very different and they choose to live their lives in different ways, but everything seems irrevocably changed by what they found out from that fortune teller.

The narrative follows each sibling through a chunk of time, whilst filling in details about the others: Simon, the youngest, who leaves home for San Francisco to find love and acceptance; Klara, the unstable magician; Daniel, who becomes an army doctor; and Varya, the oldest, who shields herself with science. In many ways—its setting, cast of related characters, depiction of major time periods such as the AIDS crisis and post-9/11 America—it is very typical of an American novel with an epic yet personal scope, and it isn’t difficult to see connections to many other books. However, there is something about the conceit of being told as a child when you will die along with the varied and sometimes unsteady relationships between the siblings that makes The Immortalists better than another rehashing of a similar theme.

It is easy to say that The Immortalists is a book about living rather than a book about dying. However, maybe, as the title suggests, it is also a book about both knowing you aren’t immortal, and wondering if you could be. This is a novel for those who like getting deeply involved with characters, whilst also knowing that their time with them has to come to an end.

Quick book picks for January

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We’ve all remembered that time continues to pass and prepared to blame a different numbered year for our troubles, so now it’s time for more books. The usual random mixture with some modern folk tradition reimagining, dystopian gangster noir, a painful story of trauma, and a biography of Mary Shelley for the anniversary of Frankenstein’s publication.

  • Swansong by Kerry Andrew – A lyrical novel about a twentysomething escaping to the Highlands from London which combines folk tradition and modern issues.
  • This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel – A novel about a big family in which the youngest child is transgender, and how they all keep secrets and try to make their lives work.
  • The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton – A literary dystopian noir set in an always raining Dublin, in which a boy steals a baby amidst gang war.
  • In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson – A biography of Mary Shelley that tries to look beyond the picture usually painted of her, whilst also doing a bit of questioning the cultural idea of Frankenstein itself as a novel.
  • Peach by Emma Glass – Short and visceral story of a girl who has been assaulted, shown with immediacy through her perspective.

Swansong by Kerry Andrew

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Haunting ballad reinvention: Swansong by Kerry Andrew

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Swansong is a haunting mix of modern life and ballad mythology in a novel about guilt, the past, and transformation. Polly is in the Scottish Highlands to escape everything that went wrong in London—her degree, her flat, her friends, and an incident after a night out she’s fleeing from. There’s not much to do except drink, drugs, and seducing the local bartender. However, Polly keeps seeing strange white shapes across the water and soon she’s intrigued by the mysterious loner who lives in the woods. She’s keeping her secret whilst trying to work out his.

Part of the novel is based on a folk ballad story and even without knowing this until the end, the book has a feeling of being steeped in tradition, whilst also being about a girl firmly in the modern day. Andrew combines descriptions of the landscape and Polly’s strange visions with imagery rooted in contemporary references to create a writing style that updates old tradition and stories of metamorphosis into another iteration, a modern one.

Swansong is a book about a young woman escaping messed up city life and mental health issues by ending up somewhere more remote, similar to other recent novels like Sara Baume’s A Line Made By Walking. This sub-genre feels like a reaction to modern life for young people and at its best—like in Swansong—feels like it combines literary and other traditions with contemporary issues in interesting ways. The folk music side to the novel is quite understated in the actual reading experience, becoming most apparent in the following author’s note, but the not quite natural goings on hint towards something mythological.

This is an eerie and strangely tense novel that shows how the transformation of old material and styles can produce stories both modern and traditional at once.

In Search of Mary Shelley by Fiona Sampson

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In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson

In Search of Mary Shelley is a new biography of the author in time for the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein. It aims to look for the person behind the famous novel and her famous poet husband and writer parents (the latter being Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, for those who don’t know much about her life). Of course, other biographies do that too, but Sampson’s is a concise and approachable book that suits a wide audience and those wanting to dip into the writer’s life for her most well-known creation’s anniversary.

The introduction talks about the difference between the prevalent cultural image of Frankenstein—a science fiction horror story with a futuristic vibe and a huge green monster—and the reality of the novel and its connections to the past, to Romanticism, and to thinking of Mary Shelley’s time. It also counterpoints her reputation as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley that lasted for a long time, pointing out the time it took for more critical discussion of her. Beyond this opening, it is a fairly straightforward account of Mary Shelley’s life, though each chapter tends to start with a time jump and then backtrack to fill in the detail, possibly to keep more casual readers engaged. It is punchy and balances not being bogged down with explaining who all the key figures are, whilst using a fairly informal tone to keep it readable.

As with all Mary Shelley biographies, the author has to make some implicit value judgements about key figures, particularly Percy, though it is unlikely even his fans will argue with some of his faults given by Sampson. She paints Mary as a varied and interesting woman and, though self-consciously speeds up after Percy’s death, doesn’t discount all the years of writing after Percy’s death. The main downside to the biography is also its selling point to some readers: it covers all the major events and characters, but is not hugely detailed. It doesn’t, for example, quote letters and journals as much as other literary biographies; this makes it far more accessible to a casual reader, but lacks some of the colour and interesting snippets that can be found in other books. This can be made up for, however, by supplementing with existing books such as Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws (on both Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft and, as such, a very large book) or Daisy Hay’s short and also readable Young Romantics.

Sampson’s biography of Mary Shelley is perfect for those who know far more about Frankenstein (or think they do!) than its author, or perhaps for people who want to know more about the female writers who are so often misrepresented even in the modern day in simplistic or even offensive ways. It is a chance for people to look past the image of an eighteen-year-old magically conjuring a sci-fi novel out of nowhere and then solely being a poet’s wife, and see past these myths and misrepresentations to understand the intellectual, political, and social world in which Mary Shelley and Frankenstein came from.

My Favourite 2017 Books (In Order of When I Read Them)

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Ended up as a top nineteen.

  • Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo – A book about hope and a couple in Nigeria who dream of having children, told from both their perspectives (full review).
  • The Lonely City by Olivia Laing – A multi-layered non-fiction book about art, LGBT history, and loneliness in New York City (full review).
  • All The Good Things by Claire Fisher – A moving and relevant novel about Beth, a young woman in prison, who is trying to document the good things in her life whilst remembering how she got where she is (full review).
  • A Line Made By Walking by Sara Baume – In the new genre ‘millenials, mental health, and escaping to the country’ sits this novel (full review).
  • The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel – A twisted story of a family with dark secrets that has hints of (and an epigraph from) Lolita (full review).
  • New Boy by Tracy Chevalier – From the Hogarth modern Shakespeare retellings series comes Othello in a single day in a Washington schoolyard, a version that gives new light to the original (full review).
  • Girlhood by Cat Clarke – The setting is a boarding school in the Scottish countryside, where everything feels more intense to the girls who live and study there, and a newcomer puts everyone on edge (full review).
  • My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent – The unnerving and intense story of Turtle, her apocalypse-obsessed father, and her fight for survival (full review).
  • Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman – A novel about trauma and ways of seeing the world that follows Eleanor as she tries to navigate her life according to the strict rules she has set herself (full review).
  • Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney – Frances and Bobbi are performance poets and exes who are drawn into the complicated moneyed world of an older journalist and her husband in this fresh and distinctive novel (full review).
  • Good As You: From Prejudice To Pride by Paul Flynn – An account of British gay culture from the 1980s until the present day and some of the milestones in music and TV that showed change and progress (full review).
  • The Gender Games by Juno Dawson – A funny, clever, and often informative book that is part memoir and part guide to navigating gender (full review).
  • Hings by Chris McQueer – Weird and hilarious Scottish short stories feat. drink, drugs, and knees on backwards (full review).
  • A Change Is Gonna Come by various – An anthology of diverse YA fiction written by both established and new voices (my fave is a great story about living with OCD) (full review).
  • English Animals by Laura Kaye – A touching and wry novel about a Slovakian woman who goes to work in a rural English country house, gets into taxidermy, and falls in love with the wife (full review).
  • If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio – Short description: the Shakespearean Secret History (featuring a group of obsessed actors, death, and a fair amount of quotation) (full review).
  • The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst – Hollinghurst’s new book is an expected delight, the story of complicated relationships spanning from Oxford during the war to the 21st century (full review).
  • The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee – My new ‘enthuse about this to everyone’ book, this is the story of a debauched young 18th century aristocrat who goes on a grand tour with his best friend Percy (who he is in love with) and his secretly rebellious sister and they get into a bunch of scrapes (full review).
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas – A vital YA novel about a black girl torn between her posh school and the area in which she grew up.

Goodbye Europe: Writers and artists say farewell

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Goodbye Europe is a collection of pieces by various artists and writers of various backgrounds and focuses that looks at Britain’s connection to Europe and people’s feelings about being European post-Brexit. Perhaps inevitably, it is predominantly pro-Europe and pro-Remain, featuring a variety of personal recollections of times in Europe, thoughts on Brexit and national mentality, and the odd bit of fiction or humour.

Even for Remain-supporting readers, it is quite a strange experience to read it. Most people are sick of hearing about Brexit by now, or have been trying not to think about it any more than necessary for their own mental wellbeing. Many of the pieces are undeniably good, but there is something jarring—especially as a twentysomething reader—to hear how great it was to visit Europe in the 1970s and 80, or have the chance to live there. Perhaps it is a book for older people who can look back with a plethora of memories of Europe, rather than a desperate wish for those days not to be over.

One of the best piece is one by a fifteen-year-old who won a prize to be included in the collection, because it strikes a chord with how many young people felt about their future and their hopes and dreams after the referendum, especially those too young to vote. The humorous inclusions are good, too: like watching Have I Got News For You, repetitive news is good to find jokes in. Jacob Rees-Mogg seems to be in there to provide “balance” or as a kind of publicity stunt, particularly as it seems unlikely many people who strongly believe in leaving the EU would buy or read a collection of essays which are almost entirely pro-Europe.

The collection doesn’t feel like it has much hope for the future, though a few of the contributors have a stab at suggestions. The real audience for this book has got to be people with decades of memories of feeling European and visiting Europe, who want to enjoy thinkpieces and reminiscences that often look back to these times. It is fond, but for younger readers, it is like being told how great things were before you were born, or old enough to appreciate them.