I was instantly mesmerised by the opening chapter of Old Soul, in which a teacher finds he has something very unusual in common with a woman he meets I was instantly mesmerised by the opening chapter of Old Soul, in which a teacher finds he has something very unusual in common with a woman he meets on a trip to Osaka. From this first scene onwards, this book is utterly compelling. It switches between a continuing narrative – titled ‘Badlands’ – and a series of testimonies that almost act as self-contained short stories. The latter are connected by the presence of Jake, the teacher from the first chapter, who goes all over the world in search of them. Together, these entwined narratives slowly paint a picture of the character at the book’s heart: a woman who takes on many guises, an immortal, the ‘old soul’ of the title, a dangerous and unknowable creature. In spite of all that, this isn’t a story with a clear-cut villain. As I read, I frequently found my sympathies shifting.
There are definite similarities to Barker’s earlier novel The Incarnations, which also follows a centuries-old character with many different faces, but this is clearly the superior product – slicker and impeccably paced, so unbearably tense I was constantly tempted to skip ahead because I just needed to find out where it was going next. (I tended to enjoy the testimonies most, but ‘Badlands’ is electric with suspense, like a taut wire pulled through the middle of the book.) It reminded me of The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, or even a supernatural version of Liz Nugent’s Skin Deep. I already want to read it again.
I received an advance review copy of Old Soul from the publisher through NetGalley....more
Read that Rob Savage is directing an adaptation of this, then discovered the ebook was free to read on Kindle. It’s a solid graphic novel about a lostRead that Rob Savage is directing an adaptation of this, then discovered the ebook was free to read on Kindle. It’s a solid graphic novel about a lost film. Didn’t really do what I want a lost film narrative to do – it’s too fixed to a single location, the film itself doesn’t seem interesting enough to warrant the reputation it has in-story – but a decent way to pass half an hour. ...more
(Review written July 2020.) An oral history of a fictional musician – so addictive I read it in a single night. It's something like Daisy Jones & T(Review written July 2020.) An oral history of a fictional musician – so addictive I read it in a single night. It's something like Daisy Jones & The Six meets The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, but smarter and wittier than either. Also has a villain so palpably punchable, it's a miracle my Kindle is still intact.
In the world of the book, Geffel was a hugely influential experimental pianist who rose to prominence in the late 1970s. Her impact was such that 'geffel' has become a verb (meaning 'to release pure emotion in a work of creative expression'). Now, however, she is absent, having been missing for decades, and we hear her story via family, friends, lovers, teachers, management and doctors. Adrianne's unique talent, we learn, is attributable to a form of synesthesia: she hears constant music in her mind, and it changes according to her mood. She's also the subject of hideous exploitation by those who see her gift as a way to make money.
The author's background as a music critic undoubtedly contributes to the effectiveness of Adrianne Geffel as a satire. There are some very entertaining asides and cameos (like when Adrianne and Barb inadvertently invent the Walkman, or when Philip Glass comes to fix their toilet). It's equally satisfying as good old enjoyable fiction. I don't know what it is about stories told this way that's so engrossing, but I just couldn't put it down.
I received an advance review copy of Adrianne Geffel: A Fiction from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
I loved Newman’s Municipal Gothic so much that I bought and started reading this new collection immediately after finishing it. There’s definitelyI loved Newman’s Municipal Gothic so much that I bought and started reading this new collection immediately after finishing it. There’s definitely more of a folk horror flavour to Intervals of Darkness. Things rise up from the earth, or the sea: an ancient skull in ‘Poor Ned’s Head’, a pair of antlers in ‘The Horns in the Earth’. Echoes of history reverberate through ‘Second Homes’ and ‘Tales from the Levels: ‘Remembrance’’; rural communities reject and/or terrorise outsiders in ‘Night of the Fox’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’.
At the same time, the book continues and reinforces the political slant evident in Newman’s first collection. This is most apparent in two stories I can’t help but think of as a pair, ‘British Chemicals’ and ‘Industrial Byproducts’. In ‘Chemicals’, company directors discuss a factory worker’s mysterious death; though they acknowledge a strange presence on the factory floor, they ultimately decline to award his family compensation, adding a final indignity to a lifetime of exploitation. Strange elements notwithstanding, ‘Byproducts’ really feels like more of a realist, miserabilist story, in which a working-class couple struggle to maintain optimism in the face of the daily grind. The effects of decades of work manifest in unusual physical ways, but really the point is that these shining, beautiful people are ground down to nothing by the simple act of trying to survive.
I loved ‘The Horns in the Earth’, in which a cynical writer visits a series of council estates, hoping to find a topic for a book. He ends up being haunted (and somewhat oblivious about it) after digging a pair of antlers out of an old rubbish heap. ‘Winter Wonderland’, charting a doomed family outing to a Christmas theme park, is excellent, and so cinematic it feels like a ready-made basis for a film. I also enjoyed the Aickmanesque ‘Night of the Fox’, and ‘Competing Theories with Regards to the Origins of the Ghost of Totterdown Lock’ with its multitude of voices.
Overall, I didn’t fall as hard for this book as I did for Municipal Gothic – maybe it wasn’t the best idea to read the books back-to-back, but I was just so excited to discover a new writer to add to my collection of favourites. Although I’d recommend Municipal Gothic first, Intervals of Darkness is well worth a look if you’re interested in modern British horror....more
First things first: I had no idea that Elizabeth Hand’s ‘Near Zennor’ – literally my favourite short story of all time – would appear in this anthologFirst things first: I had no idea that Elizabeth Hand’s ‘Near Zennor’ – literally my favourite short story of all time – would appear in this anthology. For anyone thinking of buying Bound in Blood, Hand’s story is an absolute masterpiece that is worth the price of the book on its own. I wrote about it in my review of her collection Errantry, and there’s not much I can add to that, but again: it’s a masterpiece.
Yet its inclusion means I find Bound in Blood more difficult to review, overall, than I might otherwise. For me, ‘Near Zennor’ is such a standout it makes even the good stories here look mediocre by comparison. That’s not to say that it’s a bad collection, just your typical mixed bag. As with something like Darkness Beckons, I found this to be such a mixture of styles and subgenres of horror that I inevitably found myself skipping over some of the stories. As a result, I’m not sure I can assign a single rating to it.
With that said, Lucie McKnight Hardy’s ‘Broken Back Man’ is excellent: a barman is spooked when a customer reminds him of childhood night terrors; it’s truly atmospheric and creepy. As a non-enjoyer of cosmic horror, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Charlie Higson’s ‘From the Sea’, an ingenious and funny reinvention of Lovecraft that reminded me of Lynne Truss’s Cat Out of Hell. Other highlights were A.G. Slatter’s enjoyably gothic ‘Bell, Book and Lamp’; Robert Shearman’s odd, original ‘Beneath the Diaphragm, the Gut Itself’; and Alison Moore’s ‘The House Witch’, a typical Moore combination of mundanity and the weird....more
Dead Letters is an anthology with a brilliant concept which just happens to be weighted towards subgenres I don’t much enjoy. If you prefer monster stDead Letters is an anthology with a brilliant concept which just happens to be weighted towards subgenres I don’t much enjoy. If you prefer monster stories, cosmic horror, action/gore and dark fantasy over ghost stories and subtler shades of weird fiction, you might get more out of this book than I did. Which is to say I didn’t love it, but that’s not a value judgement, just a matter of taste. And of course there are some great stories here, especially ‘Re: The Hand (of god)’ by J.A.W. McCarthy, which uses emails and messages to tell the story of a woman who gets trapped at work... with a severed hand... that keeps getting bigger. How you even come up with an idea as original and strange as this story, I’ll never know. Also really liked ‘Something Cool Behind the Waterfall’ by Nat Reiher (similarly original), ‘Family Dirt’ by Justin Allec, ‘The Second Death’ by Christina Wilder, ‘Echo Chamber’ by Gemma Files and ‘Berkey Family Vacation 1988’ by Jacob Steven Mohr....more
I’m planning to reread this later in the year, and will write more then, but for now, I love LOVED it – a stunning spin on ‘dark academia’ tropes, a sI’m planning to reread this later in the year, and will write more then, but for now, I love LOVED it – a stunning spin on ‘dark academia’ tropes, a story that turns itself upside down and shakes everything out. Not only is it a story about privilege and obsession and envy, it gets to the heart of something about why we are so endlessly fascinated by these stories. An instant favourite, to sit next to The Party, The Bellwether Revivals and Engleby....more
I recently wrote a newsletter about what I look for in summer reading, and this is a perfect example of EXACTLY the sort of book I was thinking about.I recently wrote a newsletter about what I look for in summer reading, and this is a perfect example of EXACTLY the sort of book I was thinking about. Final Act is soapy, fun and easy to read, but it is also extremely well-written and expertly plotted. It follows a ‘lost’, and later rediscovered, painting by the forgotten surrealist painter of the title. The work, ‘Self-Portrait as Sphinx’, is a sensation in the 1930s and later believed to have been destroyed by Juliette Willoughby’s estranged family. In 1991, a student thinks she’s found it, only to have her research derailed by a conspiracy that will span decades. It’s a juicy, absorbing story, Fake Like Me but with a bigger historical angle, and I ate it up.
Given the book’s title and its central focus, it’s perhaps odd that Juliette’s narrative is the weakest of the three. We start with journal entries and then jump into her perspective – I didn’t think this quite worked, the way we’re at a remove from Juliette’s actual experience and then suddenly not, for reasons of narrative convenience. On the other hand, I couldn’t get enough of Caroline and Patrick’s story. Their world feels so rich (perhaps demonstrating the strengths of Ellery Lloyd as a husband-and-wife writing team) and everything is drawn together with surprising poignancy in the book’s concluding chapters....more
I absolutely cannot resist a ‘lost film’ horror novel, so, although I’ve struggled to get on with Tremblay’s books in the past, I was confident this wI absolutely cannot resist a ‘lost film’ horror novel, so, although I’ve struggled to get on with Tremblay’s books in the past, I was confident this would work for me. And it did! It’s the story of a cult film simply titled Horror Movie, as told by the only surviving member of its cast: the man who played a nebulous character known as the Thin Kid. I don’t want to describe the plot much beyond that; it’s one of those books best experienced with little knowledge of what is to come. It reminded me a lot of James Han Mattson’s Reprieve and John Darnielle’s Devil House, but at the same time, it’s doing almost the opposite of those books; a subversion of a subversion. That’s all I’m saying!
I received an advance review copy of Horror Movie from the publisher through NetGalley....more
The starting point for this anthology is Wellbrook High School, at which (we’re told) a terrible and infamous ‘Event’ took place in 1993, leaving onlyThe starting point for this anthology is Wellbrook High School, at which (we’re told) a terrible and infamous ‘Event’ took place in 1993, leaving only a handful of survivors. Styled as a recreation of the 1993 yearbook, For Tomorrow is a set of stories inspired by this premise. In many cases, surviving Wellbrook students are the protagonists, though some take a less direct approach. The setup also leaves a lot of room for stories that take place in different time periods, with some contributors opting for a nostalgic 90s setting and some the present day.
Three in particular stood out to me. ‘Amusements’ by Verity Holloway sees Libby setting herself up as a psychic in a fading British seaside town (a dependably great setting for horror); it seethes with sinister undercurrents and ambiguity. In ‘Habitual’ by Daniel Carpenter, a struggling Londoner is offered a job and flat in a luxurious, but weirdly empty, building. Featuring the best ending in the book, this story slots into the tradition of urban horror alongside Joel Lane and Gary Budden, and also reminded me a lot of Jonathan Sims’ Thirteen Storeys. Finally, there’s a pleasing 90s-urban-legend feel to ‘Hyperlink’ by Polis Loizou, which sees its internet-obsessed protagonist discovering some oddly addictive music online.
I also liked ‘Shadow Burdens’ by Charlotte Bond; tonally different from the rest, this story follows a woman who can see the shadow-like physical manifestations of people’s emotional burdens, and faces a dilemma when she meets someone with a different shadow to the rest. I knew I was going to like ‘Comments On This Video Have Been Disabled’ by James Everington based on the title alone, and it’s a great take on the ‘found footage’ trope that reminded me of Ray Cluley’s ‘6/6’. Speaking of which, ‘As I Want You To Be’ by Ray Cluley is another strong story, with what is perhaps the book’s best link to the events at Wellbrook, and Lucie McKnight Hardy’s ‘Carrion’ delivers an unnerving modern folk tale in the author’s signature style.
Part of me wishes there had been more ‘yearbook’ content to flesh out the nature of the Event and bring a more cohesive feel to the whole thing. But then again, the lack of specificity allows for a fun range of interpretations (working similarly to the Eden Book Society series from Dead Ink). I always find something interesting to read from Black Shuck Books, and they should definitely be on your radar if you’re interested in modern British horror writing....more
(3.5) Despite a title that seems to be in conversation with Kunzru’s two previous novels, White Tears and Red Pill, this book dispenses with its p(3.5) Despite a title that seems to be in conversation with Kunzru’s two previous novels, White Tears and Red Pill, this book dispenses with its predecessors’ touches of surrealism (the uncanny song in White, the prophetic TV show in Red) and tells a more straightforward story. The three main characters, all aspiring artists, are in a love triangle as students; many years later, one of them – Jay, now so destitute he’s living in his car – washes up at the luxurious home of the other two, married couple Alice and Rob. It’s also a pandemic novel, with all the key scenes set in the late spring/early summer of 2020. Characters’ panic about the virus manifests in a variety of ways (and is arguably the engine of the plot, too).
Much of the first half consists of Jay reflecting on his short, messy relationship with Alice; these scenes are well-written, but inconsequential. While Kunzru sketches a neat portrait of the young Jay – his naivety and idealism, as well as the late-90s London art scene through which he moves – I wasn’t sure why I should care, or where this was all going. Meanwhile, whenever we return to 2020, the dialogue between Jay, Alice, Rob and another couple has a sheen of unreality. Maybe it was just the Covid references, but I felt like I was watching actors perform a scene, rather than eavesdropping on a real conversation.
And I questioned whether this artificiality is deliberate; we are, after all, encouraged to wonder what is true about Jay. (A sculpture made of multiple, spiralling mirrors – which Jay visits several times, and is even moved to tears by – seems significant here. As does the belief, shared by almost everyone and thus communicated to the reader, that Jay’s presence is too wild a coincidence to have happened purely by chance.) I found Jay’s account of himself unconvincing. Are we supposed to think he’s lying? Partly because he’s still hung up on Alice after so long, it’s hard to believe Jay has had the rich life experience he claims; it’s as though he’s jumped from being a student straight into middle age. Which, of course, for the purposes of the story, he has. But should it feel quite so much like that’s the case? Is it meant to be so noticeable?
As I read Blue Ruin, and especially throughout the climax and ending, I kept thinking of questions like this – about the characters, and about the book. I found myself inventing and discarding theories about what was really going on, and whether some of the vaguely frustrating narrative techniques were a tricksy manoeuvre on the part of the author and/or his narrator (as in something like Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands). Should we ask whether this whole story is part of Jay’s performance art, or is that stretching the metaphor too far, inventing an authorial intention that isn’t there? Is it better for fiction to be thought-provoking than a good story? Even if so, is it enough for it to be thought-provoking?
The closing lines put such a neat cap on the story that they make it all seem weightless. As if Rob, Alice et al have disappeared in a puff of smoke. While it takes particular talent to write something that feels that way, I’m not sure I want to read books where the characters leave no impression. I’m left with mixed feelings about Blue Ruin. It’s more interesting to think about than to read. But then, sometimes I really enjoy that.
I received an advance review copy of Blue Ruin from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
This might be Hurley’s most accessible book yet, while at the same time also being perhaps his most ambitious. It’s a set of linked stories all set inThis might be Hurley’s most accessible book yet, while at the same time also being perhaps his most ambitious. It’s a set of linked stories all set in Barrowbeck, a valley on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, progressing through time from the founding of its first settlement to its fate in the near future. As we learn more about Barrowbeck, the mood shifts from contemplative to ominous and back again. Barrowbeck contains some of the folk horror that’s become synonymous with the author’s name – but there’s also reflective historical fiction, hints of magic, a couple of excellent character studies, even a bit of sci-fi (the final story takes place in 2041).
The first five stories all have elements of scene-setting, though this doesn’t mean they’re uninteresting. ‘After the Fair’, which sees a girl attending a magical travelling fair where children can win tiny circus animals, has one of the most memorable premises in the book. ‘The Strangest Case’ is haunting; by contrast, ‘Hymns for Easter’ is one of the least chilling and most thoughtful, a story that effectively captures the shifting sands of history. It’s a theme that runs through the book: one version of the world is lost; all moves on.
‘Autumn Pastoral’ (my favourite) is such a wonderful story that it feels like a novel in itself. An art valuer visits a house in Barrowbeck that’s filled with paintings of the valley – part of a strange inheritance the house’s occupant left to an ex-lover as an act of spite. This is easily the creepiest and most atmospheric of the stories; I also felt it gave me a much stronger mental image of the valley than any of the others. In ‘Sisters’, it’s the rich character development that stands out. Its obsessive protagonist is captured so well, it hardly needs a macabre twist. ‘Covenant’ is vaguely Aickmanesque, loaded with portent: a house of mismatched believers, a curious New Year’s Eve tradition.
The strength of ‘An Afternoon of Cake and Lemonade’ lies in how it leaves the reader wondering. What exactly is the nature of Jason’s sinister ‘calling’? Where does it take him, after 1970? I liked many of the details in ‘A Celestial Event’, though the ending let it down; it needed to go a bit further, I think. ‘The Haven’ is good but maybe a bit too obviously aiming to tick all the boxes on a folk horror checklist.
Then there’s ‘A Valediction’, which is most effective as a way of tying everything together. As two environmental inspectors traverse the now-flooded valley by boat, they see remnants of its history, places and names the reader will recognise from the earlier stories. It’s an elegy for both Barrowbeck and the world in which it – in which we – existed. It’s common for folk horror stories to emphasise that ‘the land remembers’; in Barrowbeck, the river keeps flowing.
(PS: If, like me, you’ve listened to Hurley’s BBC audio series Voices in the Valley and have been wondering whether the stories in this book are the same – not exactly. Some have the same outline, but almost all have been rewritten or expanded for this book, in many cases significantly so. The book also has more stories (13) than the series has episodes (10). Most of the stories are much better for being fleshed out.)
I received an advance review copy of Barrowbeck from the publisher through NetGalley....more
Animals meets Bridget Jones’s Diary: neither the sort of book I usually read nor the sort of book I expected it to be, but a load of fun and I couAnimals meets Bridget Jones’s Diary: neither the sort of book I usually read nor the sort of book I expected it to be, but a load of fun and I couldn’t put it down. Can see why this has near-universal high ratings; it’s very charming and easy to like. ...more
‘The Closet Game’ is the standout of this collection. A closeted boy plays a game as a teen, and finds it comes back to haunt him as an adult – or, pe‘The Closet Game’ is the standout of this collection. A closeted boy plays a game as a teen, and finds it comes back to haunt him as an adult – or, perhaps, it’s the other way around. It embodies the ‘loss and longing’ theme: thwarted desire, the ache of missed chances. My personal favourite was ‘The Rental Sister’, a short, creepy, urban-legend-style tale in a colloquial style, about a young woman in Tokyo who briefly works in the titular role (designed to help hikikomori ease back into the world). ‘Giallo’ is everything you could want in a story called ‘Giallo’, capturing every aspect of the film genre so perfectly and vividly, you’ll never need to watch one again. The queasy, bloody ‘Conversion’ takes a more brutal tack, following a perverted therapist who successfully ‘converts’ an unhappily gay young man, but with horrifyingly extreme results.
I liked ‘The Oestridae’, in which two siblings are blindsided when a previously-unheard-of aunt turns up shortly after their mother’s disappearance. I couldn’t get on with the indulgent ‘The Cenacle’, and ‘My Heart’s Own Desire’ left me with a lot of questions. There’s also the fact that a large proportion of the book is taken up by a novella, ‘Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol’. It’s well-written, and a good expression of the collection’s project, so it doesn’t feel out of place; but it’s a big chunk of pages, and I felt I was missing something – some essential context that might have made it more satisfying.
This is a collection united by theme more than anything else, so it’s not easy to find any one point of comparison. After reading ‘The Closet Game’ and ‘The Oestridae’, I felt it was going to be a similar book to What Makes You Think You’re Awake? by Maegan Poland and The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise. Yet ‘Ceremonials’ and ‘Giallo’ might slot quite neatly into a Carmen Maria Machado collection, while at other points (e.g. ‘DST (Fall Back)’) I was reminded more of Lovecraftian stylists such as John Langan. In the end No One Dies from Love was a mixed bag for me, simply because the subject matter and particular brand of horror weren’t always to my taste – the stories lost me whenever they veered too far towards dark fantasy – but it was a book that left me impressed with Levy’s skills as a storyteller, and sure I’ll still read more from the author....more
Very quick read for a long train journey. This is a faux-true-crime oral history novel (one of my favourite niche things) about a small-town massacre Very quick read for a long train journey. This is a faux-true-crime oral history novel (one of my favourite niche things) about a small-town massacre in the early 2000s. A bunch of high schoolers set out to spend the night drinking and hooking up; then they hear a local urban legend, and quickly discover it is in fact very real. The setup is great, with lots of detail to establish the dynamic within the group, who’s lusting after who, etc. Unfortunately, it lost me a bit when it turned into flat-out gore in the second half. If that’s your thing, you’ll love it....more
Quite silly and very entertaining. You can probably glean everything you need to know about this book from the marketing tagline branding it ‘the darkQuite silly and very entertaining. You can probably glean everything you need to know about this book from the marketing tagline branding it ‘the dark academia event of 2024’. Like The Cloisters, it appears to have been written and published with this particular niche in mind, and also feels quite juvenile compared to the novels it strives to emulate – perhaps best suited to readers who are just making the jump from YA to adult fiction. It’s the tale of four scholarship students at a private school where the social hierarchies are strict and the bullying is relentless. While narrator Rose makes some headway towards fitting in, her eccentric roommate Marta is less fortunate. When a popular girl is involved in an accident, Marta is blamed and the central ‘four’ are dragged into a bizarre game of subterfuge. The story is told from an adult perspective by Rose, but aside from a brief epilogue, it doesn’t delve into the characters’ lives after these events, instead concentrating on their school experience only (which, again, makes the book feel like it has quite a young focus). At the same time, the miseries heaped on one character are so extreme that they start to tip the scale into parody. Still, I can’t deny the narrative power this book has. It held my attention and absorbed and compelled me when nothing else could. It’s a gripping story that’s best not taken too seriously.
I received an advance review copy of The Four from the publisher through NetGalley....more
This is pitched as a gothic coming-of-age novel set in a isolated coastal village, but that’s only part of the story. In the parts of the book entitleThis is pitched as a gothic coming-of-age novel set in a isolated coastal village, but that’s only part of the story. In the parts of the book entitled ‘The North Shore’, the young narrator is at home alone during a storm. The next morning, walking on the beach, they encounter what at first seems like a dead man. He revives – albeit coughing up impossible quantities of seaweed, and apparently unable to speak – before undergoing a bizarre transformation. ‘The North Shore’ itself reminded me of several writers who combine a strong sense of a specific place and beautiful landscape writing with the uncanny: Lucy Wood, Tim Cooke, Gary Budden. But swathes of the book, notably the sections ‘Knotty Entrails’ and ‘Knapped Flint’, slip into a more conversational style of (perhaps) autofiction that’s more in line with something like Edward Parnell’s Ghostland. In these, the narrator finds the ‘North Shore’ manuscript among some old papers, many years later. Unable to reconcile the written version of events with what they remember, they reflect on this seemingly distorted memory with reference to stories, myths and art about transformation, thresholds, the vast unknown.
The North Shore deliberately plays into ideas about liminality and ‘the instability of that state we call reality’; nothing is fixed or certain. It’s a novel that reads like non-fiction, hard to categorise. It’s natural to assume the narrator is male (if only because the author is), but as far as I can tell, their gender is never stated. At one point they glimpse their own reflection in a dream, and the language is intentionally vague, as if they are aware of themselves as a cipher: ‘the face is unfamiliar and I am not sure if it is a boy or a girl that looks back at me.’ The narrator starts to read like a ghost in their own story. They are ephemeral while the ‘dead’ man becomes – literally – more solid, more permanent.
The only elements that didn’t work for me were those relating to the narrator’s relationship with a childhood friend known only as ‘Quill’. This whole strand seems unfinished, and particularly bothered me as The North Shore is otherwise such an effective portrait of a solitary person – it’s as though Tufnell felt obliged to give his character at least one friend, but Quill’s presence in the story adds nothing, with the few letters that pass between the two reading as rather mawkish. This aside, I found this book very interesting – its combination of haunting fiction and more rational analysis, the sense of a narrator dismantling their own narrative as they go along, is strangely spellbinding. And even after all this dissection, the story still retains a sense of mystery....more
Barely a day goes by that I don’t think about Jen Silverman’s We Play Ourselves, so this was easily one of my most highly anticipated books of the yeaBarely a day goes by that I don’t think about Jen Silverman’s We Play Ourselves, so this was easily one of my most highly anticipated books of the year. Like Cass in Play, Minerva (known by the nickname Minnow) is a woman fleeing scandal. All but fired from her teaching job, she seizes the chance to take up a role in Paris, where she starts a relationship with a colleague 15 years her junior. Charles is the son of a wealthy and influential family, but he’s also a passionate activist who’s become embroiled in the gilets jaunes movement alongside his mercurial friend Luc. Unbeknownst to her, Minnow’s choices have parallels to those of her father, Christopher, long before she was born. In a parallel storyline, set 50 years earlier, we follow a young Christopher as he’s swept up in student protests at Harvard and falls in love with firebrand campaigner Olya.
This premise isn’t necessarily something that would have got my attention on its own, but with Silverman’s name attached, I was interested – and I’m so glad I was, because this is a masterfully crafted novel. The author’s background as a playwright seems to influence her writing in the best way: her ear for dialogue is matched only by her ability to write a perfect setpiece. So we get great, plausible debates between the characters; smart, snappy, but also believable as things people would actually say. Silverman has a gift for making something new and startling out of a cliche (it’s a tiny detail, but this book has possibly the best ‘parent meeting their new baby’ scene I’ve ever read). At times, the book is unexpectedly open – the mystery of what sent Minnow to Paris is dealt with swiftly, rather than being held back and used as a plot twist. The characters act in frustrating ways, and both central relationships seem obviously doomed to fail, but I don’t think we’re meant to be rooting for anyone here; this is a story about making mistakes and what happens afterwards, whatever that means.
I received an advance review copy of There’s Going to Be Trouble from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
I haven’t had much spare time in which to read recently, so my consumption of Kala was spread over a few spaced-out bursts, and I’m not sure whether tI haven’t had much spare time in which to read recently, so my consumption of Kala was spread over a few spaced-out bursts, and I’m not sure whether this helped my experience of the book or hindered it. Certainly I felt the pacing was off, which I’d probably just think a result of my disjointed reading if it wasn’t mentioned in so many other reviews. I also had a few reservations about the voices. But, but, it was a pleasure to be drawn into a world that felt so complete, and I loved the depth of the character work. This is what made Kala a success for me, ultimately; the plot is secondary to the people who populate this book, their relationships and memories. Like so many people who enjoyed this, I’m looking forward to the future novels Colin Walsh will write....more
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