July Releases, I: Books by Nina Lohman and Ricky Ray for Disability Pride Month
The Wellcome Book Prize (for health- and medicine-related books) and the Barbellion Prize (for representations of disability and/or chronic illness) are much missed, but I continue to be drawn to their highlighted themes in my reading. This is the first year that I’ve been aware of July as Disability Pride Month, though it’s been a thing since 1990 in the USA and 2015 in the UK. My first set of July releases – I have reviews of three novels coming up tomorrow – consists of a nonlinear memoir interrogating life with chronic pain and a chronically ill poet’s collection in which an old dog is an example of grace through suffering.
The Body Alone: A Lyrical Articulation of Chronic Pain by Nina Lohman
For well over a decade, Nina Lohman has endured Chronic Daily Headaches – when a doctor presented her with this phrase, she remarks, it was not so much a diagnosis as a description. Having a clinical term for her extreme pain did nothing to solve it; no treatment she has tried has helped much either, from pharmaceuticals to acupuncture. (Doctors think they’re breaking new ground if they suggest ice packs or elevating her neck.) Like Meghan O’Rourke’s The Invisible Kingdom, this documents a quest with no natural end. Lohman’s health fluctuates, and medical professionals and family and friends minimize her pain because she is able to pass as well, to carry out the daily tasks of raising two children.
The subtitle is apt for a work that is fragmentary and not driven by chronology. Had Cataloguing Pain not already been taken (by Allison Blevins), it might have been a perfect title. Some of Lohman’s short pieces read like poems, including erasure poems based on her medical notes. Repeated headings demonstrate a desire to organise her illness so as to make sense of it: “A Primer,” “Classifications” and “Perhaps” musings. She dwells on the names of things – shades of colours, groups of animals – while she longs for a vocabulary tailored to her own circumstances. Imagined monologues by doctors, friends and her husband (“He”) show pain has not turned her insular; she has empathy even when people act in hurtful ways.
One aspect of the book that I found particularly interesting is that Lohman, though not raised with Christian beliefs, studied theology at university level. Doctrines of the Fall bringing anguish and the Cross offering atonement are logical to her yet feel irrelevant to her situation. She bristles when a religious friend suggests that pain might be “her cross to bear.” Lohman admits she has given up hope on ever being free of pain, so finds resonance with poet Christian Wiman, who has been living with cancer for decades and whose work is equally infused with pain and faith.
It’s a journalistic as well as personal narrative, in the tradition of Anne Boyer, Sinéad Gleeson and Susan Sontag, shifting between modes and registers as Lohman gives a history of opiates, records of her pregnancies, and précis of philosophical understandings of suffering. “Theorizing can only take me so far,” she acknowledges, toward comprehending bodily experiences that defy language. And yet she employs words exquisitely, marshalling metaphors though they’re inadequate. The tone flows from enraged to resigned to cynical and back as she depicts the helplessness of women in a medical system that ignores their pain. Especially if you have enjoyed work by any of the authors I mention above, I highly recommend this debut: it’s sure to be one of my books of the year.
Published by the University of Iowa Press. With thanks to Nectar Literary for the free advanced e-copy for review.
The Soul We Share: Life with Earth and an Old Brown Dog by Ricky Ray
New England poet Ricky Ray describes himself as an “eco-mystic” and is the author of several previous works. Maura Dooley chose this as the Aryamati Collection Prize winner in 2023. As in Birds Knit My Ribs Together by Phil Barnett, nature is a source of comfort in a life complicated by chronic illness. In “Pain: 8 on a Scale out of 10,” Ray explains how “Some days, I never make it out of my head, / that coal-eyed melon … The impinged nerves crack their whips / within my animal pelt”. An accidental overdose and depression are matter-of-fact components of the poet’s history. While uxorious, he regrets that he may never become a father. And yet this couplet expresses deep pleasure in life:
(Dis)ability
Some days, my body is so beautiful
I can’t believe I get to live here.
His elderly rescue dog Addie is his beloved companion, and the delight she takes in physical existence despite advancing cancer is a model to him: “she still has a lot / to teach me about aging, about ignoring it, about how to throw my body— / even when it fails me, even when it hurts like hell—headlong into joy.” Multiple poems remember particular walks with her, such as in a Connecticut forest. He even gets a tutorial from her in how to dig a hole. Later on, he remarks as if to her, “Forgive me, I’m human, / we’re slow to learn, quick to forget— / it could be said we live too long / to appreciate each drop of time in the heart’s well.”
If his primary engagement with the nonhuman world is via a pet, Ray also widens the scope to include environmental plight: “you look up and extinction’s / already guzzling half the bestiary, / You think, / God, what have I done? / And the God in you answers: / harm, now what will you do?” This sense of responsibility meeting resolution echoes throughout the book. Ache is a spur to seek remedies; “I learned that hurt inducts all painfolk as conspirators // in the craft of healing.” The prose poems were a bit long and ranty for me (e.g., “Identity Earth: A Brief Biography of Our Planetary Self” goes on for more than six pages) and overall I found the book a little sentimental and New Age-adjacent. However, the poems about Addie are undeniably touching, and perfect for fans of Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs.
With thanks to Fly on the Wall Press for the free copy for review.
Have you read anything to tie into Disability Pride Month?
New Poetry Releases by Phil Barnett, Victoria Kennefick and Rachel Mann
I was slow off the mark this month, but finally managed to finish a first batch of review copies. The rest from January will be coming up soon.
Birds link the first and second poetry collections below, and the trans experience the second and third. Other themes include chronic illness, miscarriage, motherhood, history, prayer and praise.
Birds Knit My Ribs Together by Phil Barnett
What an evocative title – reminiscent of last year’s You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis by Kelly Weber – and powerful image of how nature has bolstered the author through chronic illness.
The title phrase comes from the poem “Trepanning,” which imagines different species keeping him company in pain. If they’re sometimes held figuratively responsible, they’re also part of the solution; openness to experience means vulnerability, but also solidarity:
a woodpecker bored my skull
in trepanation
drummed a hole and wasps flew out
goldcrests’ needle-calls put punctures
all along the kidney’s line
swallow’s flightlines skywrote my ill
when thrushes sang it out loud
I appreciated the alliteration, the out-of-the-ordinary verbs, and the everyday metaphors. When spring finds Barnett unable to go further than his garden, the birds come to him, inviting him into “a prosecco world, still all winter / stirred in March, shaken in April”. There is highly visual and aural language throughout the book. In “Unsprung,” a dead heron becomes, in an echo of T.S. Eliot, the “still point at the centre of a wheeling world”. Though a pretty niche collection, it’s a lovely little one that nature-lovers should take a chance on.
With thanks to Arachne Press for the free copy for review.
Carcanet have set the bar high for 2024 poetry with these next two releases:
Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick
I was blown away by Kennefick’s 2021 debut, Eat or We Both Starve, which I described as “audacious,” “fleshly,” and “pleasingly morbid.” Her sophomore collection is just as strong, with motherhood and the body continuing as overarching themes. The speaker is, by turns, pregnant and mother to a daughter. She experiences multiple miscarriages and names her lost children after plants. Becoming a mother is a metamorphosis all its own (see my recent post on matrescence), while the second long section is about her husband transitioning. This is not actually the first book I’ve read about the changes in a marriage precipitated by a spouse transitioning, and the welter of emotions that it provokes; there’s also Some Body to Love by Alexandra Heminsley in memoir and Cataloguing Pain by Allison Blevins in poetry.
As in Barnett’s collection, bird metaphors are inescapable. “The Wild Swans at the Wetland Centre” must be a nod to W.B. Yeats (his were at Coole). Here, the recurring chickens and swans are the poet’s familiars, and their eggs her totems – ideal vessels, but so easily broken. The same is true of “Cup,” whose lines form the shape of a teacup perched on a saucer. The structure varies throughout: columns, stanzas; a list, a recipe. Amid the sadness, there is a lot of self-deprecation and dark humour in the poem titles (“Victoria Re-Enacts the Stations of the Cross,” falling and spilling coffee all over herself) and one-line poems that act as rejoinders. (“Orientation: A Tragedy” reads “I am so straight I give myself paper cuts.”)
If you’re wondering how life can be captured in achingly beautiful poetry, look no further. I doubt I’ll come across a better collection this year.
More favourite lines:
I get sad as earth becomes sea. I get sad
that in showing you this sinking world
I teach you how to say goodbye.
(from “On Being Two in the Anthropocene”)
I want people
to know me, and to hide.
(from “Le Cygne, My Spirit Animal”)
I want to write down the names of all my dead relatives.
How are they not here anymore? How are yours absent too?
What do we do with them, their names? Is there a box for grief?
(from “Census Night Poem”)
With thanks to Carcanet Press for the free copy for review. Coming out on 29 February.
Eleanor Among the Saints by Rachel Mann
This is Mann’s second collection, after A Kingdom of Love. In reviewing that book I remarked on the psalm-like cadence, the anatomical and allusive language, and the contrast of past and present. All are elements here as well. The first long section was inspired by Eleanor/John Rykener, a 14th-century seamstress and sex worker whom some have claimed as a trans pioneer. Little is known about her life or self-identification, so Mann does not attempt biography here, but rather is thinking alongside the character. “Construct me weird and kind, leave it to me / To strip off when I’m ready. I shall run wild, / Naked as I dare, out into sober streets.”
Three later poems share the title “A Charm to Change Sex,” each numbered and in two columns – you have a choice of whether to read them across or down the page. Either way, they land somewhere between a spell and a prayer (and there are many other prayers in the table of contents): “Hidden: transfix / Invisible made visible … oh so holy, words lead everywhere / inside become out”. Bodies are as provisional as speech (“All text is stitched, / Body too only subset of making, a stored magic”), and inescapably frail, as evidenced by a father’s illness and death, the subject of several poems.
Repetition and wordplay (“razed/raised”) sometimes tail off into faltering phrases – “#TDOR” is most notable for this. And “Seven Proof Texts on a Transitioned Body” is, by itself, worth buying the book for, with alliteration and slang pushing back at medical and scriptural vocabulary. Mann is an incredibly versatile writer: I’ve read a memoir, a work of literary appreciation, and an academic thriller by her as well as her published poetry. And while I found less that resonated in this collection, I still admired its rigorous engagement with history, theology, and the facts of a life.
With thanks to Carcanet Press for the free copy for review.
Three on a Theme: “Rainbow” Books for Pride Month
Two of these are short story collections (and one almost is); two are specifically queer in outlook; all attracted me for their colorful covers, and all were borrowed from the library. #LoveYourLibrary
Rainbow Rainbow: Stories by Lydia Conklin (2022)
The 10 stories in this confident debut collection are unabashedly queer, and half involve the trans experience, whether ideation or reality. Conklin is nonbinary, so it’s tempting to read several stories as autobiographical: female characters long to get top surgery and transition to male or nonbinary, but worry it will change how they are perceived or desired. “Pink Knives” and “Boy Jump,” especially, have the flavor of autofiction, with protagonists traveling in Poland and feeling attraction to people of various genders. (The former has a pandemic setting, which I’ve noticed has at this point started to feel dated.) My overall favorite was “Sunny Talks,” in which middle-aged Lillia accompanies her trans teenage nephew to a conference for celebrity YouTubers but can’t bring herself to announce her own intended transition. Though life hasn’t been easy for Sunny, he has support she lacked growing up.
Asher and Ivan, two characters of nebulous sexuality and future gender, are the core of “Cheerful Until Next Time” (check out the acronym), which has the fantastic opening line “The queer feminist book club came to an end.” “Laramie Time” stars a lesbian couple debating whether to have a baby (in the comic Leigh draws, a turtle wishes “reproduction was automatic or mandatory, so no decision was necessary”). “A Fearless Moral Inventory” features a pansexual who is a recovering sex addict. Adolescent girls are the focus in “The Black Winter of New England” and “Ooh, the Suburbs,” where they experiment with making lesbian leanings public and seeking older role models. “Pioneer,” probably my second favorite, has Coco pushing against gender constraints at a school Oregon Trail reenactment. Refusing to be a matriarch and not allowed to play a boy, she rebels by dressing up as an ox instead. The tone is often bleak or yearning, so “Counselor of My Heart” stands out as comic even though it opens with the death of a dog; Molly’s haplessness somehow feels excusable.
Six of the stories are in the third person and four in first person. I’d be interested to try Conklin’s longer-form work, and think first-person narration would particularly suit her. I didn’t really sense that this was a book meant for me, but that’s okay; a lot of readers will feel seen and represented. Pair this with, or have it on hand as a follow-up to, work by Allison Blevins, Melissa Febos and, most of all, Eley Williams. 
Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey (2020)
In Laskey’s debut, which has been marketed as a novel but reads more like linked short stories, a favorite format of mine, researchers have identified Big Burr, Kansas as the most homophobic town in America. A task force from Acceptance Across America descends on the rural backwater for a targeted two-year program promoting education and friendship. Each chapter is a first-person, present-tense confession from a local or a queer visitor, whose stories interlock and push the chronology forward. For every positive step – a gender-neutral bathroom in the high school, a closeted individual who summons up the courage to come out – there is a regressive one, such as a AAA billboard being set on fire or a house being egged.
Laskey inhabits all 11 personae with equal skill and compassion. Avery, the task force leader’s daughter, resents having to leave L.A. and plots an escape with her new friend Zach, a persecuted gay teen. Christine, a Christian homemaker, is outraged about the liberal agenda, whereas her bereaved neighbor, Linda, finds purpose and understanding in volunteering at the AAA office. Food hygiene inspector Henry is thrown when his wife leaves him for a woman, and meat-packing maven Lizzie agonizes over the question of motherhood. Task force members David, Tegan and Harley all have their reasons for agreeing to the project, but some characters have to sacrifice more than others.
Little references in later chapters catch you up on what’s happened with the others. I only questioned the need for Elsie as a POV character, and the exclusion of Jamal (presumably Laskey thought it unwise to write from the perspective of a Black man, but he’s a glaring omission). A final chapter, returning to one of the protagonists and set 10 years later, presents a town that’s changed enough to host its first gay wedding and first LGBTQ-owned business.
The novel is realistically sad, but not overly so, and was compellingly readable and heartwarming in a way that reminded me of how I felt about Shotgun Lovesongs. You might not want to live there, but I guarantee you’ll develop a certain fondness for Big Burr. 
Scattered Showers: Stories by Rainbow Rowell; illus. Jim Tierney (2022)
I spotted this collection while shelving in the YA section of the library one day and admired the sky blue naked hardback for its red sprayed edges, chunky rainbow endpapers, distinctive font, and teal and magenta interior color scheme. I’d read one Rowell book before, the graphic novel Pumpkinheads. This is probably a better match for her dedicated fans in that three of the stories are spin-offs from her fiction and a few of the rest are one-offs (Amazon Original Stories, a World Book Day publication, a contribution to an anthology), such that I felt a little like I was reading leftovers. A B-sides volume, if you will.
Four of the nine are holiday-themed, so this could make a good Twixtmas read if you like seasonality; eight are in the third person and just one has alternating first person narrators. All are what could be broadly dubbed romances, with most involving meet-cutes or moments when long-time friends realize their feelings go deeper (“Midnights” and “The Snow Ball”). Only one of the pairings is queer, however: Baz and Simon (who are a vampire and … a dragon-man, I think? and the subjects of a trilogy) in the Harry Potter-meets Twilight-meets Heartstopper “Snow for Christmas.” The rest are pretty straightforward boy-girl stories.
I liked “Kindred Spirits,” in which Elena joins a small group (“three cold nerds”) of hardcore Star Wars fans waiting in line for the first sequel and notices Gabe, a classmate, as if for the first time; “Winter Songs for Summer,” in which a sensitive jock proves he knows his upstairs dorm mate better than anyone through the breakup-recovery tracks he puts on a mix CD for her; and “If the Fates Allow,” about Nebraska neighbors who bond over Jell-O salad during a couple of pandemic Christmases.
I wasn’t as enamored by the couple of fantasy stories, “The Prince and the Troll,” a fairy tale twisted into a vague environmental dystopian parable (“This isn’t easy. This is just another kind of hard. That’s all that’s left now, for any of us”), and “In Waiting,” about the evolving characters incubating in a writer’s head. “Mixed Messages” was refreshing for having middle-aged characters, two friends texting back and forth to try to work out whether the one missed a period because she’s pregnant or in perimenopause, but I doubt I’d be tempted to seek out the book these characters originated in (Attachments), or any of Rowell’s others. 
There was a clear winner here: Under the Rainbow!
Extra goodies:
Celebrate Pride Month! The Bookshop.org team has curated this list of books by LGBTQIA+ authors for you to enjoy. Please enjoy 20% OFF all titles. [affiliate link]
A song Sufjan Stevens wrote for Pride Month 2019.
Recent Poetry Releases by Allison Blevins, Kit Fan, Lisa Kelly and Laura Scott
I’m catching up on four 2023 poetry collections from independent publishers, three of them from Carcanet Press, which so graciously keeps me stocked up with work by contemporary poets. Despite the wide range of subject matter, style and technique, nature imagery and erotic musings are links. From each I’ve chosen one short poem as a representative.
Cataloguing Pain by Allison Blevins
Last year I reviewed Allison Blevins’ Handbook for the Newly Disabled. This shares its autobiographical consideration of chronic illness and queer parenting. Specifically, she looks back to her MS diagnosis and three IVF pregnancies, and her spouse’s transition. Both partners were undergoing bodily transformations and coming into new identities, the one as disabled and the other as a man. In later poems she calls herself “The shell”, while “Elegy for My Wife,” which closes Part I, makes way for references to “my husband” in Part II.
“I won’t wail for your dead name. I don’t mean that violence. I wish for a word other than elegy to explain how some of this feels like goodbye.”
In unrhymed couplets or stanzas and bittersweet paragraphs, Blevins marshals metaphors from domestic life – colours, food, furniture, gardening – to chart the changes that pain and disability force onto their family’s everyday routines. “Fall Risk” and “Fly Season” are particular highlights. This is a potent and frankly sexual text for readers drawn to themes of health and queer family-making (see also my Three on a Theme post on that topic).
Published by YesYes Books on 19 April. With thanks to the author for the advanced e-copy for review.
The Ink Cloud Reader by Kit Fan
Kit Fan was raised in Hong Kong and moved to the UK as an adult. This is his third collection of poetry. “Suddenly” tells a version of his life story in paragraphs or single lines that all incorporate the title word (with an ironic nod, through the epigraph, to Elmore Leonard’s writing ‘rule’ that “suddenly” should never be used). The “IF” statements of “Delphi” then ponder possible future events; a trip to hospital sees him contemplating his mortality (“Glück,” written as a miniature three-act play) and appreciating tokens of beauty (“Geraniums in May”). “Yew,” unusually, is a modified sonnet where every line rhymes.
As the collection’s title suggests, it is equally interested in the natural and the human. There are poems describing the cycles of the moon (the lines of “Moon Salutation” curve into a half-moon parabola) and the wind. Ink pulls together calligraphy, the Chinese zodiac and literature. “The Art of Reading,” which commemorates important moments, real and imaginary, of the poet’s reading life, was a favourite of mine, as was “Derek Jarman’s Garden.” Fan also writes of memory and travels – including to the underworld. His relationship with his husband is a subtle background subject. (“Even though we’ve lived together for nearly twenty years and are always reading sometimes I can’t read you at all which I guess is a good thing”). It’s an opulent and allusive work that has made me eager to try more by Fan. Luckily, I have his debut novel (passed on to me by Laura T.) on the shelf.
Readalike: Moving House by Theophilus Kwek
Published on 27 April. With thanks to Carcanet Press for the advanced e-copy for review.
The House of the Interpreter by Lisa Kelly
Lisa Kelly’s concern with deafness is sure to bring to mind Raymond Antrobus and Ilya Kaminsky, but I prefer her work. Kelly is half-Danish and has single-sided deafness, and in Part I of this second collection, entitled “Chamber,” her poems engage with questions of split identity:
Is this what it is like for us all? Always having to relearn home
with a strange tongue and alien hands, prepared to open our mouths
as if to beg, to touch tongue-tip with fingertip to reveal ourselves?
The title poem relishes the absurdities of telephone communication, closing with:
In the House of the Interpreter,
Oralism and Manualism, like Passion and Patience,
are rewarded differently and at different times.
Hello, this is your Interpreter. What is your wishlist?
This section ends with “#WhereIsTheInterpreter,” about the Deaf community’s outrage that the Prime Minister’s Covid briefings were not simultaneously translated into BSL.
Bizarrely but delightfully, Kelly then moves onto “Oval Window,” a sequence of alliteration-rich poems about fungi. “Mycology Abecedarian” is a joyful list of species’ common names, while “Mycelium” notes how mushrooms show that different ways of evolution and reproduction are possible. “Darning Mushroom” even combines images of fungi and holey socks. Part III, “Canal,” is a miscellany of autobiographical poems and homages to Faith Ringgold, full of references to colour, language, nature and travel.
Readalike: In the Quaker Hotel by Helen Tookey
Published on 27 April. With thanks to Carcanet Press for the advanced e-copy for review.
The Fourth Sister by Laura Scott
Back in 2019 I reviewed Laura Scott’s debut collection, So Many Rooms. Her second book reflects some of the same preoccupations: art, birds, colour and Russian literature. Chekhov is a recurring point of reference across the two; here, for instance, we have a found poem composed of excerpts from his letters. Scott also writes about the deaths of her parents, voicing resentment towards her father and remarking on life’s irony. As the title suggests, her family constellation includes sisters. Her godparents loom surprisingly large; her godmother was, apparently, a spy. My favourite of the poems, “Still Life,” imagines the whole of life being prized as a glass in an exhibit, appealingly pristine and praiseworthy in comparison to what we usually perceive: “the raggy sprawl of a life … the wrong turns and longing of it.” Elsewhere, metaphors are drawn from the theatre: performing lines, taking items from a wardrobe. I loved the way the pull of nostalgia is set up in opposition to the now.
Published on 23 February. With thanks to Carcanet Press for the advanced e-copy for review.
Read any good poetry recently?
Review Catch-Up: Jhalak and Women’s Prize Nominees, Etc.
Another in an ongoing series as I catch up on the current and previous year releases I’ve been sent for review. Today I have four books by women: a poetry collection about living between countries and languages, a magic realist novel about vengeful spirits in Vietnam, a memoir in verse about the disabled body and queer parenting, and a novel set in gentrifying Puerto Rican neighbourhoods of New York City.
From the Jhalak Prize longlist:
Honorifics by Cynthia Miller (2021)
Miller is a Malaysian American poet currently living in Edinburgh. Honorifics was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Its themes resonate with poetry I’ve read by other Asian women like Romalyn Ante and Jenny Xie and with the works of mixed-race authors such as Jessica J. Lee and Nina Mingya Powles: living between two or more countries and feeling like an exile versus finding a sense of home.
Nightly, you rosary American synonyms for success learned the hard way: suburb – 10-year visa – promotion – carpool – mortgage – parent-teacher conference – nuclear family – assimilation … Homecoming is the last, hardest thing you’ll ask yourself to do.
(from “Homecoming”)
“Loving v. Virginia” celebrates interracial love: “Look at us, improper. Look at us, indecent. Look at us, incandescent and loving.” Food is a vehicle for memory, as are home videos. Like Ante, Miller has a poem based on her mother’s voicemail messages. “Glitch honorifics” gives the characters for different family relationships, comparing Chinese and Hokkien. The imagery is full of colour and light, plants and paintings. A terrific central section called “Bloom” contains 10 jellyfish poems (“We bloom like nuclear hydrangea … I’m an unwound chandelier, / a 150-foot-long coil of cilia, // made up of a million gelatinous foxgloves.”).
Miller incorporates a lot of unusual structures, some of them traditional forms (“Sonnet with lighthouses,” “Moon goddess ghazal,” “Persimmon abecedarian”) and others freer forms like a numbered list, columns, dictionary definitions or prose paragraphs. Six of the poems cite an inspiration; I could particularly see the influence in “The Home Office after Caroline Bird” – an absurdist take on government immigration policy.
There’s much variety here, and so many beautiful lines and evocative images. “Malaysiana,” a tour through everything she loves about the country of her birth, was my single favourite poem, and a couple more passages I loved were “the heart measuring breaths like levelling sugar / for a batter, the heart saying / why don’t you come in from the cold.” (from “The impossible physiology of the free diver”) and the last two stanzas of “Lupins”: “Some days / their purple spines // are the only things / holding me up.” Flora and fauna references plus a consideration of the expat life meant this was custom made for me, but I’d recommend it to anyone looking to try out different styles of contemporary poetry.
With thanks to Nine Arches Press for the free copy for review.
From the Women’s Prize longlist:
Build Your House around My Body by Violet Kupersmith (2021)
Back in 2014, I reviewed Kupersmith’s debut collection, The Frangipani Hotel, for BookBrowse. I was held rapt by its ghostly stories of Vietnam, so I was delighted to hear that she had written a debut novel, and it was one of my few correct predictions for the Women’s Prize nominees. The main action takes place between when Winnie – half white and half Vietnamese – arrives in Saigon to teach English in 2010, and when she disappears from the house she shared with her boyfriend of three months, Long, in March 2011. But the timeline darts about to tell a much more expansive story, starting with the Japanese invasion of Vietnam in the 1940s. Each date is given as the number of months or years before or after Winnie’s disappearance.
Winnie starts off living with a great-aunt and cousins, and meets a family friend, Dr. Sang, who’s been experimenting on a hallucinogenic drug made from cobra venom. Long and his brother, Tan, a policeman, were childhood friends with a fearless young woman named Binh – now a vengeful ghost haunting them both. Meanwhile, the Saigon Spirit Eradication Company, led by the Fortune Teller, is called upon to eradicate a ghost – which from time to time seems to inhabit a small dog – from a snake-infested highland estate. These strands are bound to meet, and smoke and snakes wind their way through them all.
I enjoyed Kupersmith’s energetic writing, which reminded me by turns of Nicola Barker, Ned Beauman, Elaine Castillo and Naoise Dolan, and the glimpses of Cambodia and Vietnam we get through meals and motorbike rides. What happens with Belly the dog towards the end is fantastic. But the chronology feels needlessly complex, with the flashbacks to colonial history and even to Binh’s story not adding enough to the narrative. While I’d still like to see Kupersmith make the shortlist, I can recommend her short stories that bit more highly.
With thanks to Oneworld for the free copy for review.
Handbook for the Newly Disabled: A Lyric Memoir by Allison Blevins (2022)
Allison Blevins, a poet, has published five chapbooks or collections and has another forthcoming. Based in Missouri and the director of an indie press, she tells her story of chronic illness and queer parenting in 10 “chapters” composed of multi-part poems. She moves through brain fog and commemorates pain and desire, which cannot always coexist (as in “How to F**k a Disabled Body”).
I’ll never
ride a bike again, hike, carry my children. I’m learning to number what I’ve lost.
Because of the pills, I no longer fall into sleep, I stop. I used to hate queer at 19
when I was a dyke. I can’t be disabled. I need a better word. I need a body that floats—
translucent and liquid—to my daughter’s bed, to cover her like cotton-red quilted stars.
(from “Brain Fog”)
Sometimes the title is enough: “My Neurologist (Who Doesn’t Have MS) Explains Pain Is Not a Symptom of MS.” Other times, what is left out, or erased (as in “Five by Five”) is what matters the most. For instance, the Photo Illustrations promised in the titles of two chapters are replaced by Accessibility Notes. That strategy reminded me of one Raymond Antrobus has used. Alliteration, synesthesia and the language of the body express the complexities of a friend’s cancer, having a trans partner, and coming to terms with sexuality (“I think now that being queer was easy, easy as forgetting / being born”). A really interesting work and an author I’d like to read more from.
Published by BlazeVOX [books] on 22 March. With thanks to the author for the e-copy for review.
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González (2022)
This was on my radar thanks to a starred Kirkus review. It would have been a good choice for the Women’s Prize longlist, with its bold heroine, Latinx and gay characters, and blend of literary and women’s fiction. The Puerto Rican immigrant community and gentrifying neighbourhoods of New York City are appealing locales, and Olga is a clever, gutsy protagonist. As the novel opens in 2017, she’s working out how best to fleece the rich families whose progeny’s weddings she plans. Today it’s embezzling napkins for her cousin Mabel’s wedding. Next: stockpiling cut-price champagne. Olga’s brother Prieto, a slick congressman inevitably nicknamed the “Latino Obama,” is a closeted gay man. Their late father was a drug addict; their mother left to be part of a revolutionary movement back in PR and sends her children occasional chiding letters when they appear to be selling out.
The aftermath of Hurricane Maria coincides with upheaval in Olga’s and Prieto’s personal and professional lives. The ins and outs of Puerto Rican politics went over my head somewhat, and the various schemes and conspiracy theories get slightly silly. The thread that most engaged me was Olga’s relationship with Matteo, a hoarder. I hoped that, following the satire of earlier parts (“Olga realized she’d allowed herself to become distracted from the true American dream—accumulating money—by its phantom cousin, accumulating fame. She would never make that mistake again”), there might be a message about the emptiness of the pursuit of wealth. So I ended up a little disappointed by a late revelation about Matteo.
However, I did appreciate the picture of how Olga is up against it as both a woman and a person of colour (“no person of color serious about being taken seriously was ever late to meet white people”). This debut was perhaps a little unsure of what it wanted to be, but the novelty of the main elements was enough to make it worth reading.
With thanks to Fleet for the free copy for review.
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Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
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