East Anglian Horror for #RIPXXI: Sara Bayat and Natasha Pulley
My first Readers Imbibing Peril post featured three short story collections. I have more spooky reads to catch up on tomorrow, but today I’m featuring two 2026 works of East Anglian horror with fetching purple and black covers that I read during October. (This might seem like a niche subgenre, but I can actually think of several other books I’ve read that fit into the same tradition; if not all set in Norfolk/Suffolk, they still evoke fenland settings: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, The Hotel by Daisy Johnson, and Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver.) Both: 
Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting by Sara Bayat
I bought this after I saw Bayat speak at Marlborough Literature Festival last month. Eight linked chapters, bookended by a prologue and epilogue, colour in a picture of a Norfolk village plagued by strange events when a housing development disturbs the ground. Each character has a source of isolation: Isla and her husband have drifted apart since their daughter died; Nell lives in a retirement home and has lost her dearest friend; Emir doesn’t fit in with the other allotment gardeners due to his ethnic background – even though he was raised in England; and Arthur has extreme social anxiety and an unhealthy attachment to a woman old enough to be his mother.
Bayat is careful to share out the sympathy, including to a tree surgeon involved in cutting down the woods for the construction project and the well-meaning vicar who sometimes oversteps her duties and at the same time fails her family. Loss links her characters, from the participants at the séance local journalist Rio reports on to Finn and his single dad. The discovery of bones and the appearance of a ghost are reminders of medieval atrocities. Nine women were executed as witches here, and the injustice lingers. Alice Spry was drowned in the River Wensum, her body never recovered. She lives on in the name of Spry Woods – and perhaps another form.
My shipping notice featured what must be a previous title, “In Old Hesket Woods,” which feels more appropriate to the subdued folktale vibe. This novel shows promise and I’ll certainly follow Bayat’s career, but something about it was a little too … quiet? provincial? to stick with me. Certain chapters, particularly the first, are strong stand-alones, but some of the rest are thin. Those with ties to Norwich may be keenest to read this. (New purchase – Awesomebooks.com with voucher)
The Salt King by Natasha Pulley
Jesuit priest Avelyn Brocken is recalled from the Vatican to Hreodwater in East Anglia to investigate miracles said to have taken place at the salt mine. His hometown is like its own country, with an ancient language and customs. Legends of the Salt King and the “salt light” emanating from the mine characterise it as a benevolent place, as several recent healings would seem to support. Miracles have been reported at other salt mines from Jordan to Russia, too. But then a Hreodwater visitor is turned into a pillar of salt. As researchers at the Dead Sea have also found, proximity to the salt destroys all electronic devices and potentially threatens human health in a way similar to radiation.
Pulley’s eighth novel blurs the lines between good and evil when it comes to ‘gods,’ ‘witches’ and ‘angels’. Supernatural events might be the physical incarnation of belief or the punishments of a capricious deity. There is quite complicated world-building around Hreodwater, which I’m not used to because I don’t read, for example, hard SF. The inclusion of other salt mine locations, even when they’re not developed into full side plots, might serve as further evidence of what’s going on but also dilutes the central story. Overall, then, the novel felt much longer than it needed to be at over 450 pages.
This was my first experience with Pulley, and I found her style to be similar to T. Kingfisher’s – hip, shrewd fantasy-meets-horror in which sarcasm and queerness (a flirtation between Avelyn and the abbey caretaker, Jericho) reign – but Pulley is less grating. There’s a jokey faux-academic tone to the footnotes, and I loved the sense of humour:
“Avelyn broke. ‘Ssh yourself. What kind of sociopath eats a peach during Mass anyway?’”
“Fabian, I mean this in the most brotherly possible way, but f*ck off before I shove you in the f*cking fen.”
“Where do I find new jeans in Hreodwater? … what would you put on the delivery instructions? Proceed past imaginary castle, mind the angry knights, try not to turn to salt for no reason”
While Pulley doesn’t always gets it right about belief – she admits in the Acknowledgements that she isn’t religious at all so had to interview a lot of people to try to understand faith – it’s heartening that she makes the attempt, and the clash of organised religion and folk religion here, as realised in the troubled character of Avelyn, is intriguing. I’d try another of this author’s (shorter) works; any recommendations for me? (Public library)
My most striking bit of Halloween-relevant reading this year came from an unexpected place: the chapter “Spirits and Demons” in the memoir Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith. Her very religious mother was wary about her children celebrating Halloween, though she was happy to provide autumnal snacks and games for her daughter’s kindergarten classroom. When it came to trick-or-treating, though, she subverted the holiday’s tropes by dressing Tracy in a ghost costume disconcertedly reminiscent of a KKK outfit – a reminder that the true horrors are out there in the real world.
Are you doing anything for Halloween? Read anything spooky lately?
Booker Prize Shortlist Reads by Kennard and Perry & A Prediction
I’ve now read all but one of the novels on the Booker Prize shortlist (is it any surprise that it’s the longest one, The Disappearers by Marlon James, that I’ve been too daunted to attempt?). Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry are both poets, which tends to indicate that particular care will be taken over the prose. Apart from that and having unnamed first-person narrators, I see no similarities between the two books, which are wildly different in tone. I have a preference, and I bet it’s not what you expect. Both: Public library
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
This was uproarious entertainment from the meta first line onward: “If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable.” An out-of-work actor in his late thirties who survives from one murder mystery dinner theatre gig to the next sees an ad for an unusual job. All he has to do is sit silently at the back of a university lecture hall each week, wearing a black leather bag with eyeholes. The professor is repeating a famous psychology experiment about attitudes changing through repeated exposure. For the narrator, being black bag is about freedom from his identity and inhibitions; maybe, also, finding solidarity. For his friend Claudio, who streams footage of himself gaming for a living, it’s a potential investment opportunity. For Justine, a married academic the narrator meets on campus, it’s a chance for kinky anonymous sex. I laughed out loud at the narrator’s habits of imagining his life in a 19th-century Swedish village and voicing his parents’ dog’s thoughts, and at so many random lines:
Is it not the case that for most of my life I have felt like I have just put a large crisp in my mouth during what turns out to be a quiet and pivotal scene in a play?
In the kingdom of dumb f*cks the guy with the English major is king.
Think of the moment, following the 2008 subprime crisis, when cupcakes proliferated like a cancer.
Ridiculous the plot may be, but it’s as hilarious as the novel is at the sentence level. For all that, it is still a cogent critique of modern masculinity, hypercapitalism and artificial intelligence (the scene where he and Justine go to see an AI-produced film, The Orb of Homuncules, is side-splitting). My criticism would be, as I’ve heard from various others, that the novel is overlong and slightly aimless in the second half; it could easily lose the 80 pages covering Claudio’s temporary absence. Still, when’s the last time a Booker nominee was this much pure fun? 
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
An unnamed curator arrives at a historic palace to stage its rooms with scenes of historical accuracy, tenderly rendered in the sort of detail only the most attentive visitors will register. Among other things, she’s an aficionado of high-quality, lifelike (expensive) fake food. She throws herself into the work as a way of distracting herself from the emptiness of her personal life since her partner left. We figure this out by reading between the lines, because she’s quite cagey: “At this point, certain things had happened in my life. I was ready to immerse myself.” She also finds herself unexpectedly drawn to the archivist, referred to by they/them pronouns. Her sections are in one- to two-page fragments, titled in a way that can obfuscate or signal an interpretation, such as “Peeking through a Crack in the Curtain and Seeing Another Curtain.” My favourite passage came from “All Work Is Holy”:
The rule is this: it must appear as if the person or people have just left the room. The viewer must feel as if the air is alive with their energy, that they only just missed them, that they will be back in any moment. If this isn’t the case, the scene is no more than an arrangement of objects. The scene is dead.
Indeed, the French phrase for “still life” is nature morte or dead nature. To try to bring history back to life, Perry devotes all but the first 55 and last 26 pages to a recreation of an unwilling medieval king’s court. He’s only on the throne because his two brothers died. There are rumours of infidelity concerning both him and his wife, and talk of removing him for incompetence. Soon they will all pass from life into legend.
I loved the late scene when the curator is introducing the exhibit to visitors and hears their ideas about how we know what happened in history – this is like a transcript of absolutely the best uni lecture or event Q&A ever. What gets preserved and passed down, and why? To what extent is there meaning in physical artefacts? These questions are compelling, yet I only really engaged with the contemporary storyline, while the historical pastiche felt like sub-Hilary Mantel, occasionally evocative but often edging towards pretension. 
I’d already read:
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison: A “dull, watery postapocalyptic slog [that] sheds no real light on the past, present, or future”. 
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: About “a likeable Everyman with the same …secrets and struggles we all have.” It’s “the most engaged Strout has been with the present day, and the most specific she’s gotten about political outrages.” 
John of John by Douglas Stuart: One of my books of the year. “Cal seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and his devout upbringing. The characters’ power plays and acts of desperation are heartrending, but mischief and love of colour and crafts lend lightness.” 
Here’s my thinking…
Masculinity is a/the theme in four of this year’s shortlisted novels (from the Kennard: “men are mostly frightened and crazy and very easily misled”) – and in last year’s winner, Flesh by David Szalay, too.
I’ve felt sure that The Disappearers or John of John would win: previous winners whose works normalize homosexuality. I would want the latter to win for its beauty and emotional power, but I think the former more likely as the judges (including Raymond Antrobus, who is British Jamaican) may have an eye on the whiteness of recent winners.
Elizabeth Strout may be doomed to be a Booker bridesmaid. I don’t think this is her best book, but I wouldn’t mind if it won.
I would actually be delighted if the Prize went to the wildcard, Black Bag. But I can’t see that happening. The same goes for the Harrison (please oh please).
Let’s say, though, that the judges want something completely different. Then perhaps May We Feed the King is it. Mary Beard (chair) and Patricia Lockwood, in particular, came across as huge fans during the shortlist announcement event.
I’m torn, so I’ll just go with the novel I loved the most: John of John by Douglas Stuart.
What’s your prediction for the winner?
Autumn Reads, I: Maxine Clair and Kate Mosse
Our clocks went back on Sunday; combine that with the significant wind and rain we’ve had around Storm Austen and it has felt more wintry than autumnal recently – though today is a lovely mild day. This is the season for which it’s hardest for me to find appropriate reads (excepting R.I.P. spookiness), but I did read one book specifically about autumn and another that I’m including because of the title of its first chapter and its use of a school as a setting. The orange/leaf covers fit the bill, too.
Rattlebone by Maxine Clair (1994)
I found out about this after its 2023 reissue (by Daunt Books in the UK). Because the chapters are like linked short stories, I started reading it in September, but I’m still only two-thirds of the way through. Right from the first line, I got strong Tayari Jones vibes (particularly her latest, Kin):
We heard it from our friends, who got it from their near-eyewitness grandmothers and their must-be-psychic neighbour ladies, that when she was our same age, our teacher, Miss October Brown, watched her father fire through his rage right on into her mother’s heart.
In this opening chapter, “October Brown,” Irene Wilson and her friends start to awaken to the mores and secrets of adults. “Intuition is the guardian of childhood; it was keen in us, and we were right.” I always love the use of the first-person plural, however brief. Subsequent stories see the children resisting a Catholic missionary’s efforts and forming friendships across boundaries of class and respectability. We get glimpses of the wider Rattlebone, Kansas Black community, too. October Brown is considered a seductress, and dismissed from one of her boarding house situations because of rumours (as voiced by her landlady in “The Roomers”). I’d recommend this to fans of Jones, as above, and Alice Munro. (Secondhand – Better World Books with a voucher)
Autumn: The Story of a Season by Kate Mosse (2026)
I truly admire Mosse as a literary champion heavily involved with the Society of Authors and the Women’s Prizes in the UK. As I felt with the only other Mosse book I’ve read (An Extra Pair of Hands; Granny Rosie is still going!), though, this was pleasant but insubstantial. It may be because both are nonfiction works and she devotes her true energy to her expansive historical fiction.
I’d read Michael Morpurgo’s Spring and Val McDermid’s Winter (the best of the bunch) and wanted to continue with the series; even though all the entries have been somewhat lacklustre, I enjoy reading with the seasons and seeing what others cherish about each one. The challenge with such a book is to create something that is specific to one’s own experience but also can evoke universal feelings in others.
Mosse doesn’t keep to a strict diary format but does proceed from early September through the end of November in 2025, reporting every few days or so on the weather and happenings in her household and community. The cold nights drawing in, admiring local trees (“Trees, if conditions are right, outlast us. They are the true custodians of a house and garden, not the humans who come and go”), going for long country walks, having sloe gin and apple snow, thrilling to spooky stories: all good. But there’s also a little bit too much, even in such a short book, about Chichester and its West Sussex surroundings. This may be inevitable given that Mosse has lived there her whole life, but it was hard for me to summon much interest in local rituals related to Bonfire Night and the War Memorial. She has attempted to create a “marriage of landscape and memory and history,” an account of “the roots of my becoming a writer,” and perhaps for fans of her fiction she will have succeeded.
For a professed nature lover, though, there were a couple of howling errors here: monarch butterflies are incredibly rare UK migrants, so I doubt she saw them on her buddleia; and “a few ospreys are wading”? Hardly. She probably means oystercatchers. (She also misquotes Edith Wharton describing the appeal of ghost stories as “the thrill of the shudder”; the original quotation says “the fun.”) Samantha Rock’s linocuts are lovely, though. (Public library)
The Parent Trap by Erich Kästner for #1949Club
Simon and Karen’s classics reading weeks are always a good excuse to pick up an older book or two. The mistake I sometimes make is to have just one option lined up; if I don’t get on with it, I can’t participate. I read the first 20 pages of Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, which promised to be a psychologically astute picture of awakening to homosexuality in a repressive culture (“in this house it was tacitly required that I act like a boy. The reluctant masquerade had begun”) but also had the makings of a queer tragedy, which I couldn’t bear just now. Then I found a nearly new copy of The Parent Trap in the Little Free Library a few days ago and spotted that the twins share my birthday! Of course, I could have reviewed it for German Literature Month and Novellas in November, as I did with Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives last year, but instead I treated myself to the delightfully cosy, if far-fetched, story.
You likely know the story from a film adaptation starring Hayley Mills or Lindsay Lohan. I don’t think I’ve seen either, though they are culturally familiar to me. In Kästner’s original, separated twins are rejoined by chance at a summer camp in Bavaria. Luise Palfy has come here from Vienna, where she lives with her single father, a music director. One day an additional group of 20 little girls arrives from southern Germany, including Lottie Körner, who resides in Munich with her single mother, a journalist. It’s immediately evident that the two nine-year-olds are identical twins – same birthdate and -place – but with different hairstyles and their own personalities. They decide to switch places, partly as a trick to teach their parents a lesson, but partly to regain a long-lost and much-missed mother / father.
The girls have to be quick studies to cover up that ‘Lottie’ has ‘forgotten’ how to cook and that ‘Luise’ has suffered a horrendous decline in her handwriting and schoolwork. But there’s no fooling some, such as the doctor’s pug, Peperl, who is suspicious of a blonde stranger pretending to be an old friend. The girls are canny and stubborn, envisioning a new future and then doing whatever it takes to achieve it, but the emotional strain starts to show. I found myself upset with the parents’ Solomonic decision to split up their twins at their divorce. It’s just cruel; who would do such a thing?! In a sense, the whole premise of the novel is as hard to believe as the fantasy ending (“Catching up with lost happiness as if it were a missed lesson at school”), yet I gave myself over to it. Kästner’s tone is just right, shrewd and playful, and Walter Trier’s illustrations are charming. I recommend reading something middle grade every once in a while as an antidote to the awfulness of adulting and the occasionally depressing nature of modern literature. [Translated from German by Anthea Bell] (Little Free Library)
(The whole Pushkin Children’s classics range is brilliant – see also From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsberg and The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius.)
Here are other famous 1949 titles that I’ve read (just 3 of the top 20 on the Goodreads list of the most popular books published that year):
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
- A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
- 1984 by George Orwell
I’ve previously participated in the 1920 Club, 1956 Club, 1936 Club, 1976 Club, 1954 Club, 1929 Club, 1940 Club, 1937 Club, 1970 Club, 1952 Club, 1925 Club, and 1961 Club.
Mega #ShortStorySeptember Catch-Up! Fetto, P. Fitzgerald, Henley, Logan, L. Moore, E. Williams & 2 Partial Reads, 3 DNFs, 2 Single Stories
In total, I read 10 collections, as well as parts of five more, and nine individual stories for Short Story September. It would be absurd for me to be disappointed with those numbers (in comparison to last year’s 15 collections, I guess). Today is the last day of the link-up, so I’m calling it a day and giving brief responses to the rest of the books I read for the challenge. (My other reviews: six stories, Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong, “Death in Midsummer” by Yukio Mishima, three R.I.P. collections.) The range of styles, settings, and subject matter in the below really showcase how much the short story can do, often in very few pages.
Hail Mary by Funmi Fetto (2025)
These nine stories explore religious and cultural limitations on Nigerian women’s lives at home and in London. The title story questions whether Riliwa’s efforts to assimilate have been worthwhile; “It amazed her how much England was lauded and celebrated back home. Her reality was cruel and cold.” In “Dodo Is Yoruba for Fried Plantain,” Morayo married into privilege in the Gloucestershire countryside, but long since discovered the relationship was a sham. On trips to London markets to buy authentic African ingredients, she wonders if reconnecting with her roots will redeem lost time. A longing for motherhood underpins several of the stories, even sometimes explaining willingness to ignore homosexual urges. I was most impressed by “House Girl,” in which the abused protagonist flees her inescapable situation in a full-on Anna Karenina finale. There is not a lot of cheer here, but ample Adichie-esque talent with character, details, and plot to keep one reading. (Public library)
The Means of Escape by Penelope Fitzgerald (2000)
I already reviewed the single story “The Axe,” which is the odd one out – a mischievous ghost story. The rest are more typical of Fitzgerald: elegant slices of historical fiction, immediately establishing mastery of a place, time and set of circumstances, whether that be a convict on the loose in 1850s Australia (the title story), Impressionist-era English painters seeking models in Paris (“The Red-Haired Girl)”, or a poor boy who loses his precious medal in the 1660s (“Desideratus”). A couple of the stories appear to be contemporary and have a gently comic tone: the fussy conductor located on a tiny Scottish island in “Beehernz,” the overbearing stately-home guide in “Not Shown.” There’s a timeless, allegorical feel to “The Prescription” (one of two Greek/Turkish settings), in which doctors who once had a mentor–student relationships give rival diagnoses, and the title of “Our Lives Are Only Lent to Us” indicates philosophizing about the tragic losses in a small Central American town. I was dazzled by the breadth of Fitzgerald’s imagination and the confidence of her execution. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
Apple & Palm by Patricia Henley (2026)
How had I never heard of Henley – an accomplished novelist, story writer, poet and playwright who was a National Book Award finalist for her debut? These eight linked short stories initially attracted me because they’re set in (fictional) Whistle Pig, Western Maryland, a region of my home state I know reasonably well, with Baltimore an occasional counterpart. Each spins its own web of connections and complications; together, they form a composite portrait of a community through its (ageing) women. Though Roxy’s 100th birthday has passed, she still shows her photographs and supports friends through a women’s art collective. Jill manages the family orchard and frets about her gambling-addicted father. After a disabling accident, Harper borrows Aunt Jill’s car for her gig as an artist’s model. Claire lashes out at her tenure refusal and her husband’s request for an open marriage. Sally leaves an IVF struggle behind for a vacation home in the Bahamas. A massage therapist hears a customer’s life story; sixtysomething friends diverge through varying experiences of illness and sex. I especially appreciated the matter-of-fact portrayal of a middle-aged asexual character. These fine stories reminded me of work by Stewart O’Nan and Ann Patchett.
Published by Cornerstone Press. With thanks to publicist Caitlin Hamilton Summie for the e-copy for review.
The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan (2014)
I’m not sure why I felt led to buy this Polari First Book Prize winner, as I’ve struggled with Logan’s fiction before (“The Gracekeeper” here was expanded into a novel). Of the 20 stories, many are flash length; I tended to prefer the slightly longer, queer takes on history and folklore. “Underskirts” is voiced by houseguests and servants, including the various maids the Lady of the manor seduces. It starts as a bit of fun when teenage girls experiment sexually with each other; then one goes to live with Baba Yaga in “Witch.” In “Coin-Operated Boys,” Elodie comes up with a novel solution to her lack of suitors. Many of the characters are young people reeling from loss or facing transition moments. A fair few stories are in titled or numbered fragments and have multiple narrators or a reverse chronology. You certainly couldn’t complain of them being samey. Still, many feel wispy, like there isn’t enough time to care about or understand the characters; to turn a skit into a full-length, satisfying drama. (New purchase from Salt Publishing)
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore (1985)
My fourth collection (after Bark, Birds of America and Like Life) by Moore, who is truly one of the great short story writers. In keeping with the title, four story names start with “How” and several are in the second person, to distance the main character and/or establish a tongue-in-cheek, advice-giving imperative. Women navigate marriage, infidelity, motherhood, and having ill or mentally compromised mothers of their own. I got Melissa Bank and Nora Ephron vibes from the first story, “How to Be an Other Woman.” Charlene’s quick wit makes her much more than just a mistress: “‘So, you’re a secretary.’ Squirm and quip: ‘More like a sedentary’.” “The Kid’s Guide to Divorce” adopts a child’s perspective with equal aplomb and is only four pages. In “Go Like This,” Liz schedules her escape from cancer for Bastille Day. The diary entries of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” wrestle with freedom vs. control in a couple’s relationship through their argument about whether or not to let the cat go outside. A woman persists in writing despite her professors and classmates objecting to her “outrageous and incompetent” sense of plot. There are such hilarious turns of phrase – “a strange flesh sundae of despair and exhilaration,” “full-haired as Easter basket grass” – throughout that I was taken aback by the dark turn in the final story, “To Fill,” where the narrator’s flippant wordplay masks her mental instability. A treat for Amy Bloom and Helen Simpson fans. (Secondhand – The Bookshop, Wigtown)
Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams (2024)
I could make a quip about how apt the title is for the contents, but that would feel mean. My sense with Williams’s second collection was that her practice was to think of an outlandish image or moment and go from there. What if a courtship withered because one partner accidentally sent footage of walrus sex? (“Scrimshaw,” which was a finalist for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2020.) What if someone hired a skywriter to scrawl “Will you marry me?” outside a restaurant window and it wasn’t received well? What if someone reading the radio shipping forecast (which lends the title phrase) used that segment to address their failing relationship? These 19 stories are inventive, yes, and often delight in wordplay and obscure vocabulary. That will be no surprise to anyone who’s read Attrib. and Other Stories or The Liar’s Dictionary. Too often, though, it feels like showing off skill but not committing emotionally, which means I didn’t believe in the lovelorn narrators and their peculiar predicaments. (“Too-quick chicanery of thought can cause a conversational form of the bends.” Quite.) The highlight was “Squared Circle,” about two pro wrestlers who convene every year on the anniversary of their famous showdown, even when one is seriously ill. (Gift from my wish list last year)
I’m still reading two excellent linked short story collections that I’m taking my time over:
Rattlebone by Maxine Clair (1994): Vibrant and varied snapshots of a Black community in Kansas. I feel like Tayari Jones must have been influenced by it.
A Desert between Two Seas by A. Muia (2025): Exquisitely detailed historical stories about a Mexican priest, his houseboy’s enforced pearl-diving, and the wanderings that ensue.
A few DNFs:
Fen by Daisy Johnson (2016): Adolescent girls discover sex – “Virginity was a half-starved dog you were looking after, wanted to give away as quickly as possible so you could forget it ever existed.” I read six stories but found the majority of them too similar, and provocative for the sake of it. Two good ones: “Starver” compares disordered eating with local eels that refuse to eat when the land is drained; in “Language,” a ghost struggles to communicate. (Gift from my wish list)
Everest by Ashani Lewis (2024): I read more than two-thirds of the book but can barely tell you anything about it. There’s some anxiety about social media, some coming-of-age discovery, some mean-girls friendship. Technically, the stories are accomplished, but they lack warmth. Two good ones: “Antarctica,” about an ill, older woman petitioning to go to the Scott Polar Research Institute; in “The Imitation Oyster,” fine dining is the basis of a liaison. (Public library)
Night, Neon by Joyce Carol Oates (2021): I reviewed two stories on Oates’s birthday. My third Oates DNF; I don’t have high hopes of getting through a book by this lady. Despite the short form, she has such repetitive phrasing. Two good ones: in “Curious,” a writer makes generous anonymous donations to change a grocery clerk’s life; in “Parole Hearing, California Institution for Women, Chino, CA,” a Charles Manson follower appeals. Even in this nine-pager – short for Oates – the anaphora of “Because…” statements gets old. (Public library)
Single stories:
“The Quiet” by Carys Davies (2014)
[from The Redemption of Galen Pike]
A good companion to West and Clear; all three share a vivid historical setting and a surprise ending that makes you want to stand up and cheer. Susan Boyce is a pioneer’s wife, isolated and battered. Her neighbour, Henry Fowler, keeps coming around, including when her husband is away, and at first there’s a hint of menace about his visits. But then they compare their scars. Brilliant. (New purchase from Salt Publishing)
“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant (1884)
[translated from French by Marjorie Laurie; from the Everyman Short Stories volume]
Thanks to Emma of Words and Peace for recommending this one. It’s such an instant classic I a) can’t believe I’d never encountered it before and b) can’t imagine a time when it didn’t exist. A young woman with little money but grand pretensions marries.
She was eternally restive under the conviction that she had been born to enjoy every refinement and luxury. Depressed by her humble surroundings, the sordid walls of her dwelling, its worn furniture and shabby fabrics were a torment to her.
She had no pretty gowns, no jewels, nothing—and yet she cared for nothing else. She felt that it was for such things as these that she had been born.
Now, as Madame Loisel, she is keen to make a good impression at her first society outing, an At Home at the Education Office, but has nothing to wear. She begs her husband for money to buy a new dress, then borrows a diamond necklace from a friend. When the necklace gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the party, it has lasting consequences. “How small a thing can serve to save or ruin you!” This sobering morality tale is like Flaubert crossed with O. Henry. The lesson I drew from it was, just confess! I lost one of the earrings that I borrowed from a friend to wear to the Booker Prize ceremony, and everything was fine! (Little Free Library)
Whew, all caught up!
And the final statistics for Short Story September:
25 bloggers
80 posts
38 individual stories &
60 whole collections reviewed
(+ 1 bonus biography of a short story writer)
All the posts are here and here.
Thank you all again for joining in!
September Releases by Ilić, Lowe, McCallum, Philyaw & Temple
Dreamlike pandemic-era comics, cold-water swimming in Scottish lochs, poetry about art and a mixed-race heritage, a cheeky novel about beauty queens and Black church politics, and a laugh-out-loud guide to how (not) to traverse a midlife crisis: some great books came my way last month!
Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 by Mirko Ilić
“A.C.” stands for “After Covid.” In 2020, the Bosnian-born, New York City-based artist started drawing comics again after many years. These wordless, one-page, greyscale pieces explore the emotions of the pandemic era, with entrapment, surrealism and startling violence as recurring elements. Ilić plays with scale, scope and time. There are Escher-like optical illusions and mise-en-abîme effects. People meld with each other, metamorphose or disappear. A multi-lane city street splits open to reveal a chasm that swallows the cars and pedestrians and then closes back up as if nothing ever happened. The artist himself seems to appear in a number of scenes, looking out windows, sleeping in a coffin-like box or watching porn on his computer. There are a number of images that verge on the pornographic, in fact, with naked women and a dominatrix. (Shara McCallum (below) voices my reaction to these in “The Nude”: “Don’t offer me a neatly trimmed or, God forbid, / shaved, depilated, waxed, exfoliated c**t.) Disappointingly, Ilić lists his inspirations in a “Visual reference index” at the end, which rather spoils the mystery. I knew without consulting it that spread 29, in which a bedbound old man reaches out his arm and clenches his fist in front of a portrait of Dylan Thomas, was an allusion to “Do not go gentle into that good night.” That was one of my favourites in an inventive and striking but sometimes vulgar work.
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy for review.
Shiver: The Lessons of the Lochs by Brigid Lowe
When Brigid Lowe’s marriage broke down, she moved with her three children from northern England to an Edinburgh flat. Feeling simultaneously unmoored and free in her early forties, she undertook an ongoing challenge-to-self to swim in 1,000 of Scotland’s lochs (there are 30,000 in total). “I am a fanatic. I swim outside now most days,” she confesses. For her, cold-water swimming means “taking in, and being taken in, by each loch and each moment on its own terms. There is no template.” Although she argues for the uniqueness of each loch, I found that the story quickly grew repetitive. Lowe is so sparing with personal details that I didn’t feel as engaged as I might have been with the overlaid narrative of her transformation from a traumatised wanderer to a strong, rooted matriarch. A prime example is her rape, which she refuses to name as such and recounts, in vague terms, in two pages. I’ve read a spate of swimming memoirs now, among them Freya Bromley’s The Tidal Year, Ruth Fitzmaurice’s I Found My Tribe and Jessica J. Lee’s superlative Turning, and it takes a lot for a book to hold its head up above that flood. I thought the setting of Scotland – her zeal for which I share (“Sometimes you fall in love with a place, and it’s as mysterious as any falling in love”) – would be that point of difference. While the prose is sumptuous and I enjoyed the glimpses of Scottish landscapes and wildlife across the seasons, they weren’t enough to hold my interest. The frequent references to Celtic legends, with a feminist slant, means that, in addition to swimming enthusiasts, I’d be more likely to recommend this to readers of works such as Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted than to memoir junkies or tourists.
With thanks to Elliott & Thompson for the free copy for review.
Behold by Shara McCallum
McCallum’s seventh book is a lush collection of ekphrastic poems (responses to artworks) and reflections on Jamaican American ancestry. In “Self-Portrait” – the first in a series with that heading – those major themes blend beautifully with a hefty dollop of assonance and sibilance: “At this point, I don’t know what in me is Jamaican / versus American. … since / we’re on the topic of the singular, about this subject: / she’s awfully tired of being parsed to see if she’s a fraud.” She applies art terms to the self: “Chiaroscuro” for a mixed-race identity and “Craquelure” for the wrinkles that provide “evidence of my ravishment” by time. Passion for art history (especially art by women and people of colour) meets fervour for social justice as McCallum exposes “the casual violence of misseeing” – who would look twice at the photograph of her Jamaican grandmother sweeping in midlife? I was unfamiliar with most of the artists and works featured, but that was fine; I almost didn’t want to look them up lest I spoil the magic of both by comparing the image with the poem.
With thanks to Alice James Books for the advanced e-copy for review.
The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw
Philyaw’s 2020 short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a surprise hit and set the bar high for her debut novel. Luckily, this lives up to the promise of her first book, which I called “bold and sexy,” and is all the more provocative for being set in the rarefied world of Southern U.S. Black megachurch pastors and their wives. Scharisse Freeman came from poverty, born to a single teenage mother who died of breast cancer when Scharisse was an adolescent. When she married David, 15 years her senior, it wasn’t unlike ascending to royalty. Together, they’ve raised a daughter, built a thousands-strong congregation, and lent their brand to everything from relationship books to salad dressing. At home they have a personal chef (David’s cousin Marcus) and an ice cream parlor. Schar seems like a shoo-in to win the annual First Lady pageant, but that’s before a scandal breaks linking her to her nemesis Daphne Lancaster’s husband, Jeddah, a mayoral candidate and inveterate adulterer also based in their town of Belleton, Georgia. Deciding how to refute the false allegations opens Schar’s eyes to her husband’s and the church’s priorities and uncovers a shocking secret about her father’s identity and the real cause of her mother’s death. Along the way, she tries to fix her relationship with her estranged bestie Petra, who is Black British and lesbian.
Fun fact you probably didn’t know about me: I grew up attending a Black megachurch in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. I recognised so much here: the opulence, the scripture quoting, the high fashion. A few names of public figures are real (Creflo Dollar and his yacht!); most other details are made up but totally believable if you’re at all familiar with this world. The novel is a little overlong (400+ pages) and soapy, but Schar’s voice is so fun and sassy that it carries the whole thing. Her footnotes and comebacks are hilarious, and you’ll want to cheer as she defies convention and blazes a trail for herself. (Read via NetGalley)
A Very British Midlife Crisis: A Survival Guide to the Best Years of Your Life by Rob Temple
I started reading the Very British Problems series (which arose from a Twitter account of the same name) from the beginning, with the launch of Temple’s first book in 2013. Though I’ve missed some of the sequels, I’m delighted that this one unexpectedly dropped through my letterbox. I laughed and grimaced my way from start to finish; I could recognize pretty much every nonsensical decision, pathetic impulse, odd habit, and crotchety opinion. Not all of them are applicable to me, I hasten to add, but might be quirks I’ve observed in others of my generation or above. Temple proceeds thematically, considering health and work challenges, fashion, exercise, relationship and parenting issues, and so on. He translates dating profile phrases and rates hobbies by their potential regret value. Occasionally, his wife offers a female perspective. I probably guffawed the most at the section where he goes to a student house party as research (“I felt a TREMENDOUS urge to clean the bathroom”) and the glossary at the end (sample entries: “Being Knackered: Your permanent energy level,” “Cancelled Plans: Your favourite thing in the whole wide world”). This is silly, sure, but also warm and relatable. I think any reader of a certain age would get a kick out of it. I plan to pass my copy on to my brother-in-law, who turns 40 next month.
With thanks to Allen & Unwin for the free copy for review.
More to come: A sci-fi pairing as Under Story by Chloe Benjamin goes head to head with Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
Which of these September releases have you read, or will you seek out now? What am I missing out on?
#ShortStorySeptember, Meet #RIPXXI: Fremlin, M.R. James & Navarro
I can hardly believe it’s October; I still have a bunch of short stories to finish and review! I’m taking the opportunity to start on Readers Imbibing Peril with these three collections that crank up the suspense with their scenes of the unexplained.
Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark by Celia Fremlin (1970)
(Faber reprint: 2024)
I wasn’t wild about Fremlin’s Uncle Paul, but these 13 stories were terrific. Nightmares sometimes become reality as children and women of a certain age face up to threats, whether concrete or imaginary. The twist endings can reassure or unsettle, but in either case they call into question the tenor of what’s gone before. Only three tales are in the first person, with the other 10 in an authoritative third person. The need to protect children is a recurring impulse, ageing is a frequent cause of angst, and there are a couple of instances of frightening bird imagery (a nod to du Maurier?). There are also tweaks of horror story tropes – the haunted house in “The Hated House” and “The Locked Room.” Visual and auditory clues ramp up the tension. I’ll highlight a couple of favourites: “The Quiet Game,” in which a mother’s mental illness has dangerous implications for her twins; and “The Baby-Sitter,” about a little girl who’s afraid of The Hen with Great Big Eyes and her child-minder, who’s lived out her own horrors as a European refugee. This one is a fine example of how Fremlin mixes the everyday with suggestions of the supernatural. (Little Free Library)
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary: A Graphic Collection of Short Stories by M.R. James, Volume I (2016)
(Adapted by Leah Moore and John Reppion)
(I reviewed Volume II in 2017.) Though all retold by the same duo, these four stories are each illustrated by a different artist. So although the setup and voice tends to be samey – a dignified man investigating strange happenings at a country house – the art style varies significantly While I didn’t care for the approach in the first two (“Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” – Marvel; “Lost Hearts” – Pixar), the others, “The Mezzotint” and “The Ash-tree,” made up for it. I liked the monochrome palette, gentlemen detecting vibe, and Wildean mark of a morphing image of the former. In the latter, a Gothic setting and a history of suppressing witchcraft pave the way for unnatural spectacles. James’s classic ghost stories have been hugely influential on the likes of Susan Hill. (I also wondered if Stephen King borrowed the girl in the bath from “Lost Hearts” for The Shining.) Still, my conclusion about the second volume stands for the whole project: the “problem with using the graphic form for … tales that center around nameless horror is that depicting [what is feared] saps it of its power.” 
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy of The Compendium (Volumes I and II) for review.
Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard by Elvira Navarro (2025; 2026)
[Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney]
My introduction to Navarro, a Spanish author, reminded me most of Agustina Bazterrica’s 19 Claws and a Black Bird. These nine stories are full of derelict buildings, outsider characters, and traces of the uncanny. Seven are in the third person and two in first. A nice touch: two stories are linked in that they feature Almudena, who is studying in Paris. “The Fear of the City” is, we realize, the story she wrote about femicide, as mentioned, fittingly, in “The City of Fear.” “Idiotic Love” is narrated by a trans woman with an anal fissure and conjures a seedy world of nightclubs and sex shops. This was the longest story and not a pleasant one. There were just three standouts for me. In “The Washing Machine,” which contains the title line, a couple’s appliance keeps filling with blood for no reason. “The Animal Collector” is a tough one for animal lovers because of all the injuries and deaths, but the idea of a highway maintenance man assembling a makeshift zoo for his roadside rescues is alluring. Eventually, he becomes overwhelmed and compassion turns into a burden. In “A Small Bunch of Violets,” Mari chooses a new ornament for her father’s grave during a heat wave, but the flowers keep being displaced. There were too many so-so stories, though.
With thanks to Two Lines Press and publicist Nicolette Praça for the proof copy for review.
Late Summer Novels (Bamford, Ellis, Hornak, King) & Poetry Collections for the Transition into Autumn (Hurst, McNish, Plath)
It’s been feeling autumnal for a few weeks now with the drizzle, chilly mornings and evenings, honking of geese overhead, and harvesting our last garden apples – though it remains warm and summer only officially ended on Monday. I’ve recently finished off a summer-titled trilogy and the second entry in a seasonal quartet. I’m also throwing in a couple fun novels I bought earlier in the year.
Before and after Tuesday’s autumn equinox, a few poetry collections have been my fitting companions for the start of a new season.
Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford (2025)
“The following is an account of an afternoon in June in which we sallied forth, and then, for the most part, back.” I was drawn in by the mock-heroic first-person plural voice of a gaggle of cousins at a New England family get-together. It’s 1989 and they’re here for one of the adults’ birthdays, but that’s of no concern to the kids, who are a world unto themselves. In the first chapter, three-year-old Abi goes missing and the rest set out on a quest to rescue her. The shed, the woods, a driveway full of cars, the river: every setting seems to offer adventure, but maybe also danger. And then the oldest boy cousin, Travis, vanishes too. “Intermezzo” chapters offer snippets of family lore – about their grandmother Beezy’s awful novel, The Lilac Swing, and so on – that don’t add much of interest to this meandering novella. To deliver on the promise of the narrative voice, Bamford needed to give her debut a little more: more intrigue, more pivotal scenes, more closeness to a few characters rather than surface descriptions of a bunch, maybe more pages to make something of the not-so-momentous family secrets. As it is, I had to agree with this tongue-in-cheek line on p. 136: “in our depleted state, we thought the very thought you’re thinking now, which is enough already.” (New purchase with voucher – Hungerford Bookshop) 
Book 3 of The Summerhouse Trilogy
The Fly in the Ointment by Alice Thomas Ellis (1989)
{BEWARE SPOILERS!}
Following The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1987) and The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1988), this novella revisits the run-up to Margaret and Syl’s wedding from Lili’s perspective. It’s the shortest of the three books and adds no new plot details or real character insight, but Lili’s voice is alluring all the same. She’s an incorrigible flirt, or perhaps what we would now call a love (not necessarily sex) addict: “Sometimes I felt I would disappear if I couldn’t see the person opposite falling in love with me. I just wouldn’t be there.” Lili is pivotal to the narrative because of her well-meaning interventions: first, she falsely portrays the coming union as blessed by creating a fake (tissue paper) bloom for the cactus in the summerhouse; then, in agreement with other characters such as Mrs Monro that there shouldn’t be a wedding after all, she decides to sabotage it by ensuring that she and Syl be caught in flagrante in the summerhouse. While this was an interesting project for Ellis to undertake, the first volume was by far my favourite and I didn’t think the second and third wholly necessary. (Secondhand – Regent Books, Wantage)
So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak (2025)
Daniel, Rosie and Serge were good friends at Oxford but since their graduation in 2004 they’ve drifted into indifference and resentment. Daniel is a Hollywood star but still can’t forgive filmmaker Serge for stealing his idea for a biopic of a working-class lad. Serge is on a break from his relationship with Isla, a younger movie makeup artist with whom he has twins. Rosie regrets that her on-again, off-again relationship with Serge meant she wasted prime years. In August 2019, they’re all brought together for Serge’s cousin Caspar’s big gay wedding in Provence. The Campbell cousins come from inherited wealth, but no one knows Serge’s production company is heavily in debt. As best man and “best woman,” Serge and Rosie have to write a joint speech; Daniel has to hide his dependency on alcohol and drugs.
This is a light, Taylor Jenkins Reid-esque soap opera that I swallowed in big gulps. I’d enjoyed Hornak’s Christmas-set debut, Seven Days of Us (2017), but when I looked back at it I realised how identikit the two are: set mostly over a matter of days, with each chapter marked by a precise place and time stamp. I guess she hit on a winning formula and decided to repeat it, but I was disappointed to notice the similarity. In this case, zooming in slows the action and makes the book feel overlong, though it’s perceptive about class, privilege, disappointment, the longing for parenthood, and loyalty among family and friends. (Her previous novel now seems almost prescient with its depiction of a Christmas in quarantine! Perhaps I’ll reread it.) (New purchase with voucher – Hungerford Bookshop)
Apt Pupil by Stephen King (1982)
(Novella published in Different Seasons under the heading “Summer of Corruption”)
{BEWARE SPOILERS!}
Thirteen-year-old Todd Bowden becomes obsessed with his elderly neighbour, whom he has identified as German concentration camp officer Kurt Dussander, in the summer of 1974. His parents think that he goes over to read to “Mr. Denker,” but in fact he’s extorting sordid war stories out of the old man. When Todd’s grades nosedive, Dussander agrees to impersonate his grandfather at a conference with the school counsellor so his parents remain oblivious. Now each has dirt on the other; blackmail goes both ways. The book suggests Dussander’s ongoing sadism sparks something inexorable in the young man, and both engage in further senseless carnage. I wasn’t sure if it was respectful of King to treat the Holocaust like a contagious sin. As Todd’s (real) grandfather says, “Sometimes the past don’t rest so easy. Why else do people study history?” I don’t think an editor would have let the story stand today. This is not as full-on horror as others I’ve read by King (Misery and Pet Sematary), but still gruesome and – for an animal lover like me – Dussander’s torture of cats and dogs was harder to read about than the murders of unhoused people. A neat connection back to Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which I read back in the spring: Dussander mentions that “The banker who bought [the stocks] for me went to jail for murdering his wife a year” later in Maine. (Little Free Library) 
Three on a Theme: Autumnal Poetry
Keats described autumn as the season of “mellow fruitfulness,” as I was reminded by Kate Mosse’s Autumn. Fruit and feminism are themes that link these three collections. All:
The Fox’s Wedding by Rebecca Hurst (2022)
I’ve read Hurst’s debut full-length collection, The Iron Bridge, and jumped at the chance to catch up on her previous chapbook. Its hint of fairy tale menace feels appropriate for early spooky season. A witch turns into a hare and flees in “Familiar.” The girl who will win the hand of “The Frog Prince” spends her evenings “squashing worms and slugs and snails beneath / the crêpe soles of her black school shoes.” Needlecraft recurs: “Once there was a child/ who woke alone in the forest. … S/he took the path of needles / to ask needle-sharp questions.” There are folktale rhythms to “Brothers,” which also mentions gingerbread men. The woods morph with the advance of the year (“let the seasons pleat / folding one year to the next”) and hide creatures real and imagined. “Now it is Michaelmas: the land sun-warm, / fields shorn, blackberries ripe to bursting.” The atmosphere of this pamphlet – defiant, magical, mischievous – casts a spell. (New purchase from The Emma Press)
Plum by Hollie McNish (2017)
A late tree-shaped poem captures a treasured ritual with her daughter. But if I tell you that “plum” is also the last in a long string of euphemisms for female genitalia in “Voldemort,” that will give a better sense of McNish’s tone, which is often cheeky and snarky. She includes poems she wrote as a child and teenager but also remembers her adolescence from adulthood, pinpointing moments of peer pressure and misogyny that she experienced. She wishes she and her friends had been less obsessed with what boys thought of them and hopes to teach her daughter to stand firm in her own identity. McNish has local roots and is known for her conversational memoirs and her spoken word poetry. Like Harry Baker, Jay Bernard and Kae Tempest’s works, it’s probably not best encountered in print. In performance, fairly simple and repetitive phrasing can come to life. (Secondhand – Library book sale)
I spend the summer months watching like a hawk for when wild and waste-ground plums ripen and fall so I can scurry around gathering them to eat or freeze for autumn and winter desserts. Our cherry plum tree produced its first fruits this year, too (below).
Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath (1971)
I got less out of this posthumous collection than I did from Ariel and Winter Trees, but there are still striking turns of phrase: “The future is a grey seagull / Tattling in its cat-voice of departure, departure” (from “A Life”) and “At our feet, the weed-moustachioed sea / Exhibits its glaucous silks” (from “Whitsun”). Canada, age, sleep, surgery: the imagery feels a little all over the place. The stand-out poems for me were “Small Hours,” in which marble statues metaphorically watch over the speaker’s troubled insomnia, and “Mirror,” which reflects the unstoppable advance of age and contrasts true self with appearances. Most redolent of autumn were a poem about pheasant hunting and “Blackberrying”:
Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, …
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb
The Devon lanes aren’t so empty these days, I can attest! A line from “Last Words” ties in perfectly and is a good resolution for us all: “I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit!” (University library)
I started my preserving late and will not do as much as I have in other years. So far I’ve made apple and tomato chutney and set some rosehip cordial steeping. This afternoon I’m going to attempt rosehip curd – we found a jar of “hagebutten” in a Berlin supermarket this time last year and it was so delicious that we’re going to try to recreate it, though it requires laborious deseeding and mincing plus two boiling stages. More Vitamin C than orange juice, apparently!
Rosehips ready for preserving!
#ShortStorySeptember: “Death in Midsummer” by Yukio Mishima (1952; 1966)
Tomoko Ikuta is on a beach vacation with her three children and sister-in-law, Yasue, who is their de facto nanny and housekeeper. The trip soon turns nightmarish when three family members die in quick succession.
{BEWARE SPOILERS IN THE REMAINDER}
Tomoko is taking a well-deserved nap to escape the punishing sun. Yasue is an attentive babysitter who has already chased after the children and warned them about going any deeper. She’s barely looked away for a second when the six-year-old boy, Kiyoo, and five-year-old girl, Keiko, disappear. Yasue runs into the ocean to find them and is hit by a massive wave that seems to trigger a heart attack. In the ensuing chaos, the missing children are forgotten – even by Tomoko – until it’s far too late.
All of the above happens within the first six pages; the rest is aftermath. The idyllic setting introduced in the story’s first few paragraphs (the beach “unspoiled for sea bathing,” the hotel’s “beautiful” view, the placid image of the mother asleep) feels like mockery when set against the “ridiculous” and “excessive” tragedy that has befallen the family. The husband, Masaru, on the train from Tokyo to join his diminished kin, wishes he could “shout at the other passengers: ‘Listen, everybody. You don’t know it, but I have just lost my sister and two of my three children.” The season itself seems to have betrayed them: “If only summer would end. The very word ‘summer’ carried with it festering thoughts of death.”
Mishima’s vision is of fate as cruel and capricious. As the bereaved parents undertake the necessary funeral preparations, he explores the practicalities and the ironies of the situation:
A death is always a problem in administration. They were frantically busy administering.
Tomoko listened to the subdued humming of the autumn cicadas, and smelled the incense and the cool, shady grass. ‘What a nice place. They’ll have room to play, and they won’t be bored. I can’t help thinking it will be good for them. Strange, isn’t it?’
She’s found a perfect, peaceful spot for her children to spend eternity, since they’ll never get to grow up.
As time passes, the memory of the incident is less painful. What had been unbearable becomes simple reality. But then something curious happens. One family’s losses take on legendary status, transformed into a widespread cautionary tale:
Rather than an injury it became a moral lesson, and it changed from a concrete fact to a metaphor. It was no longer the property of the Ikuta family, it was public. … You have to watch children constantly when you take them to the beach. People drown where you would never think it possible. Not that Masaru and his wife had sacrificed two children and a sister to teach a lesson. The loss of the three had served no other purpose, however; and many a heroic death produces as little.
Yet Mishima also extends an opportunity for redemption when, two years later, the couple returns to the same beach with their remaining son, five-year-old Katsuo, and their new daughter, Momoko. It’s an act of faith and an acceptance that danger is always present and that no parent, however protective, can completely eliminate risk. By inscribing a full circle like that, Mishima emphasizes the severity of the loss but also somehow atones for it.
I found this story so powerful – emotionally charged but understated – that I’m surprised I’d not come across it before in my constant quest to find the best classic grief literature. At 29 pages, it feels just right; a note at the end mentions that it was abridged by translator Edward G. Seidensticker. I’ll be sure to try more by Mishima.
From Death in Midsummer and Other Stories (1966) (Secondhand – Better World Books)
Booker Prize Longlist Reads (Switzy, The End of Everything) & Shortlist Predictions
In an hour or so, the Booker Prize shortlist will be announced. I’ve now read four of the longlisted novels; I’m still awaiting a library hold of May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, which is the only other I’m particularly keen to read. This is the first time in four years that I’ve made much of an effort to read from the longlist, i.e., besides what I happen to have already read. I think this year’s judging panel may have something to do with it: I have read (almost) everything by Raymond Antrobus and Patricia Lockwood, and I admire Mary Beard even if I don’t know her work so well.
This pair contains unavoidably bleak stuff – dementia and preparing for an assisted death at Dignitas; weird goings-on in postapocalyptic London and Kent – but with some glints of humour. I could see the first being shortlisted but not the second.
Switzy by Emma Cline
Like many, I read Cline’s debut, The Girls, but lost track of her career afterwards. I was taken aback at the subject matter of her fourth book, which sounded like fodder for a different author – an older male. I also worried that her portrait of a privileged businessman trying to make meagre amends for the wrongs from his past would be too similar to George Saunders’s subpar Vigil. But in the end she won me over with her close-third-person portrait of the last few days of an Everyman defying the inexorable course of dementia.
David Hastings, 70, is en route to Zurich, headed to the never-named Dignitas. He’s on a private plane borrowed from a longtime associate, and has with him a personal assistant, Cody. Their first stop is London so he can see his daughter, Rebecca, and his musical prodigy grandson, Rainer, and say a sort of goodbye – although his relatives have no idea it’s the last time they’ll see him. He has one more stop to make, just over the Swiss border, to see Tom, a boarding school chum who endured hazing that David didn’t intervene to stop. Beyond the guilt, we sense that he longs to see Tom because he has always been half in love with him – a recurring homoerotic impulse never consummated. (An interesting parallel is that Rebecca is having clandestine meet-ups with a female friend. Is same-sex attraction inherited?)
Depicting the mental turmoil of a character sinking into dementia is not that ground-breaking; I’ve read a number of novels that do so with aplomb (Still Alice, Elizabeth Is Missing, Turn of Mind, The Night Guest, The Swimmers). However, Cline convincingly traces David’s bewilderment at everyday traveller experiences of hotels, restaurants and taxis. It’s no mawkish tour through disability; instead, his outsider’s view skewers the ridiculousness of modern life. I was most impressed by the way David’s internal monologue skirts lost language and gets stuck on arbitrary phrases: sayings, song lyrics, liturgy. “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”; “The hills are alive…”; “Now and at the hour of our death…”; his ex-wife’s exhortation to their little girl to “brush away the sugar bugs”; and the story of Little Nemo in Slumberland (which lends the anomalous cover image).
“Unflinching” is a reviewing cliché, but this is what people have in mind when they say it. Cline follows David right up to his last moment, taking us into the room at the clinic with him. There’s nothing special, or even very likable, about this man, but as we follow along on his final physical experiences we get a sense of the weight of any life – which can still have value even if there are no longer any words for what’s happening. I found this much more affecting than I expected to, reaching the final pages with tear-soaked cheeks. (Read via NetGalley)
Also recently reviewed by Cathy and Susan.
I’ve read and thought a lot about the topic of assisted dying, including with In Love by Amy Bloom, Intervals by Marianne Brooker, That One Patient by Ellen de Visser, The Inevitable by Katie Engelhart, and One Last Thing by Wendy Mitchell. Switzy would make a particularly good fictional counterpart to the Bloom, for those who wish to read further.
A bonus review:
A Better Death: The case for assisted dying by Jonathan Romain
Romain is a rabbi and former chair of Dignity in Dying. In this short work, he gives a valuable history of relevant legislation in the UK and internationally, and a rundown (with rebuttals) of potential ethical objections to assisted dying. The party line of the major religions is to uphold the sanctity of life and thus oppose assisted suicide, but there are notable exceptions. Romain mentions a former archbishop of Canterbury who attends my church. George Carey changed his mind after the high-profile case of Tony Nicklinson, who was paralysed after a stroke and lost his appeal over the right to die. Pious supporters of the Campaign for Dignity in Dying emphasise the duty to be merciful to the suffering. Romain puts it this way: “From a religious perspective[,] it makes much more sense to say that we honour God most by healing someone when we can, comforting them when we cannot do so and helping them let go of life gently when desired.” Most medical bodies, too, have now reversed their official positions, with the majority voting to remain neutral on the matter. Romain characterises the campaign as a sign of humanitarian progress – like universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery – that future generations will look back on as overdue. He hopes that charismatic campaigners will arise from among the dying and their relatives. (The foreword is by TV presenter Esther Rantzen, who appealed after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Just days ago, she announced she’s too fragile to travel to Dignitas.)
For me, this book offered little new because I was familiar with arguments around the issue, pro and con. However, it would be a good primer for those coming to such questions for the first time. What I did find helpful was a discussion of rituals we might develop to accompany an assisted death – a new sort of funeral that may one day be routine. Music, readings, a toast; a candle snuffed out or lit at the moment of death, and so on. Imagine a whole new category of human rite, one that should no longer be clouded in secrecy or available only to the wealthy. Alas, the latest version of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was voted down by the House of Commons on 11 September, but no doubt it will be back in a new form soon.
With thanks to Reaktion Books for the free copy for review.
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
I was willing to give this a try for several reasons: it was readily available from my library (someone donated it), Harrison is lauded yet I’ve never approached his large back catalogue, and it’s novella length. Alas, those were insufficient to overcome my antipathy for vague dystopian scenarios in which characters’ actions have no clear motivations. Years post-crisis and -invasion, some people are still trying to flee Britain, but most seem content muddling along. “What were the iGhetti and where had they come from?” That’s a good question, and one to which we never get a straightforward answer, but the main hint is that they are jelly-like and arrived from elsewhere. Phillip Tennent engages in mudlarking – except some of the artefacts he discovers are amorphously humanoid and evolve human traits.
Initially it seems as if Phillip is the protagonist, but his 70-year-old painter aunt, Marnie, has more enduring importance. When she’s hounded out of her falling-down home, she shelters in an abandoned art gallery. She’s a surprising and almost admirable broad, handy with a weapon whenever she senses her way of life being threatened. There are some darkly comic outrageous happenings, and gruesome set pieces that blur the line between living and dead, human and non-. I had to wonder if there is also a Brexit allegory, given Marnie’s signs reading “HOW CAN YOU MISPLACE A CONTINENT?” Harrison’s prose is smooth and the pages turn quickly, but when I look back at the gnomic dictums I marked out, they don’t seem to mean anything:
Are we watching a film the universe is showing itself?
The world’s over. But that doesn’t matter. Because another one will be along soon enough.
Rather, significance is located in the expressions of uncertainty:
the apocalypse seemed to withhold itself, quickly becoming just another historical continuity.
There was a vigorous ambiguity to everything.
Believe all you like that at some level unavailable to you an organising principle exists. You will never have any evidence of that.
I suspect Harrison’s aim was to show how one can get used to anything, even random violence and purposeless wandering. But this watery postapocalyptic meander sheds no real light on the past, present, or future, and feels as if it should have been published more like a decade ago (at the time of The Wall by John Lanchester et al.). A couple of great scenes, such as children playing with fallen ash as if it were snow, aren’t enough to take the bitter edge off even such a short novel. I’m not tempted to try more by Harrison. (Public library) 
Also recently reviewed by Annabel.
Longlisted novels that I’d already read:
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: Artie Dam is a likeable Everyman with the same sorts of secrets and struggles we all have. Sometimes he thinks his marriage is going well and he’s touching his high school history students’ lives; other times he feels fatalistic about his relationships and the US’s trajectory. Along with Lucy by the Sea, this is the most engaged Strout has been with the present day, and the most specific she’s gotten about political outrages. I liked how the flash-forwards prove Artie right in his predictions (occasionally based on premonitory dreams) or confirm what he couldn’t have known about the difference he made for two particular students. In his small way, Artie is a new Stoner.
John of John by Douglas Stuart: One of my books of the year for sure. (I reviewed it for Shelf Awareness.) Stuart’s superb third novel is set on the Isle of Harris in the 1990s. Cal seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and his devout upbringing. An absorbing, deliciously melodramatic story is built around the contrast between modernity and the old ways. The characters’ power plays and acts of desperation are heartrending, but mischief and love of colour and crafts lend lightness. Stuart’s every observation is profound; the simplest phrase is memorable for its beauty. 
Here’s my thinking about the shortlist:
Lockwood may be to thank/blame for the weirder and more niche selections (i.e. previously unknown young Americans’ second books), whereas the judges are likely to come to a consensus on more straightforward, reader-friendly material. I imagine we’ll see a shortlist dominated by women and repeat nominees.
The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis – Especially with Antrobus and critic Rebecca Liu on the panel, we can expect at least two non-Anglo authors to make it through. Djamel White’s subject matter sounds neither appealing nor fresh. [Kenan Orhan is apparently Turkish American, though he looks white.] Though I’m personally not eager to read Aridjis again (after a DNF of Sea Monsters), I’m taking a gamble on this one being the second.
Switzy by Emma Cline – Edgy and powerful enough to deserve a place.
The Disappearers by Marlon James – A previous winner and a writer’s writer, though I’ve never particularly gotten on with his work.
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry – I’ve heard almost exclusively good things.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout – She’s getting to be a Booker bridesmaid and has been nominated for poorer books, so I hope she’ll get another shot.
John of John by Douglas Stuart – How could you not?! I’ll throw a tantrum if it doesn’t make it through.
But, of course, the judges could surprise me with a wildcard such as Black Bag by Luke Kennard; Gwendoline Riley is inexplicably popular with judging panels, too.
What have you read from the longlist? Which book(s) do you most want to read, or see on the shortlist?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
