Literary Wives Club: His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
(My fourth read with the Literary Wives online book club; see also Kay’s review and Naomi’s review.)
{SPOILERS IN THIS ONE}
Peace Adzo Medie’s 2020 debut novel was the first disappointment I’ve had from Reese Witherspoon’s book club. The Kirkus review excerpt inside the paperback’s front cover should have given me an idea of what to expect: “A Cinderella story set in Ghana … A Crazy Rich Asians for West Africa.” While both slightly reductive, those comparisons do give some sense of the book’s tone and superficiality.
Afi Tekple is a seamstress whose family arranges for her to marry Elikem Ganyo, a rich international businessman who has properties all over Ghana. In a neat bit of symmetry, I read a novel earlier this year that opened with a traditional Ghanaian divorce ceremony where the husband was in absentia (What Napoleon Could Not Do); this opens with a traditional wedding ceremony where, again, the groom isn’t there. The giving of schnapps as part of a dowry is a customary element of both.
The first half of the novel was agonizingly slow. Afi and her mother do little but sit in an opulent Accra flat, waiting for Eli to grace them with his presence. When he does appear, what luck! (eye roll) he and Afi have a magical sexual connection, described in romance novel language. But he’s only there part time, dividing his attentions between households. Afi enrols in fashion school, cooks and keeps house for Eli, and falls pregnant with his son, Selorm. (In another instance of poor pacing, we then jump to a year after the birth.) It should be a perfect life, yet she’s not happy because there is a rival for her husband’s affections.
You see, Eli’s family chose Afi in the hope that she’d get him to give up the Liberian woman who gave birth to his sickly daughter. They despise Muna for her independent spirit and transgressive behaviour. Although Afi knew about Muna, she doesn’t realize the extent to which she was the Ganyos’ pawn until late on. Meanwhile, Afi has gone from a timid country girl to a confident, high-class boutique owner accustomed to modern conveniences. She won’t ignore her longing to move into Eli’s house and get their marriage legally recognized. She issues an ultimatum: either she’s the only, official wife or she’s out of there.
I kept expecting a showdown between Afi and Muna; then, the further I got, the more I feared Muna wouldn’t appear at all. She does have a scene, 20 pages from the end, and instantly takes on more contours than the evil stereotype the Ganyos have spread, yet it doesn’t change Afi’s jealousy and determination to live independently. I hoped for more of a message of understanding and sisterhood. Initially, the arranged marriage plot reminded me of a particular Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie short story, but Afi’s narration was only so-so and there were more grammar and vocabulary errors than I’m used to encountering in conventionally published work. This might appeal to readers of Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay with Me. (Public library) 
The main question we ask about the books we read for Literary Wives is:
What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
My main takeaway from His Only Wife is that a marriage doesn’t work if there’s someone interfering – and that refers to Afi’s mother-in-law probably more so than it does to Muna.
Eli just wants to have his cake and eat it. He thinks he should be free to accumulate as many cars and houses and women as he wants. He never intended to leave that woman and you all knew it … I want him to be mine only. Is that too much to ask? I’m sorry that I’m not like other wives who are able to happily share their husbands with co-wives and mistresses and girlfriends. That’s just not me. I’m not built like that.
I was a little uncomfortable that Medie presents legal marriage and monogamy as the only viable option, with Afi coming to disparage the village ceremony she had and wanting the fairy tale proposal in Paris and church wedding instead. Polygamy has a long tradition in countries including Ghana and Nigeria; it might have been interesting for Medie to explore contrasting attitudes toward it. Instead, this feels like pandering to Western tastes.
Next book: The Harpy by Megan Hunter in June
Women’s Prize 2023: Longlist Predictions vs. Wishes
I’ve been working on a list of novels eligible for this year’s Women’s Prize since … this time last year. Unusual for me to be so prepared! It shows how invested I’ve become in this prize over the years. For instance, last year my book club was part of an official shadowing scheme, which was great fun.
We’re now less than a month out from the longlist, which will be announced on 7 March. Like last year, I’ve separated my predictions from a wish list; two titles overlap. Here’s a reminder of the parameters, taken from the website:
“Any woman writing in English – whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter – is eligible. Novels must be published in the United Kingdom between 1 April in the year the Prize calls for entries, and 31 March the following year, when the Prize is announced. … The Prize only accepts novels entered by publishers, who may each submit a maximum of two titles per imprint, depending on size, and one title for imprints with a list of ten fiction titles or fewer published in a year. Previously shortlisted and winning authors are given a ‘free pass’.”
This year I dutifully kept tabs on publisher quotas as I compiled my lists. I also attempted to bear in mind the interests of this year’s judges (also from the website): “Chair of Judges, author and journalist Louise Minchin, is joined by award-winning novelist Rachel Joyce; author, journalist and podcaster Irenosen Okojie; bestselling author and journalist Bella Mackie and MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq.”
Predictions
A Spell of Good Things, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
Joan, Katherine J. Chen
Maame, Jessica George
Really Good, Actually, Monica Heisey
Trespasses, Louise Kennedy
The Night Ship, Jess Kidd (my review)
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (my review)
Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng (my review)
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
I’m a Fan, Sheena Patel
Elektra, Jennifer Saint
Best of Friends, Kamila Shamsie
River Sing Me Home, Eleanor Shearer
Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Wish List
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz
The Weather Woman, Sally Gardner (my review)
Maame, Jessica George
The Great Reclamation, Rachel Heng
Bad Cree, Jessica Johns
I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai – currently reading
Sea of Tranquillity, Emily St. John Mandel (my review)
The Hero of This Book, Elizabeth McCracken (my review)
Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley (my review)
We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman – currently reading
Everything the Light Touches, Janice Pariat (my review)
Camp Zero, Michelle Min Sterling – review pending for Shelf Awareness
Briefly, A Delicious Life, Nell Stevens (my review)
This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub (my review)
Fight Night, Miriam Toews – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Of course, even if I’m lucky, I’ll still only get a few right across these two lists, and I’ll be kicking myself over the ones I considered but didn’t include, and marvelling at all the ones I’ve never heard of…
What would you like to see on the longlist?
~BREAKING NEWS: There are plans afoot to start a Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Now seeking funding to start in 2024. More details here.~
Appendix
(A further 99 eligible novels that were on my radar but didn’t make the cut:)
Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese
Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka
Milk Teeth, Jessica Andrews
Clara & Olivia, Lucy Ashe
Wet Paint, Chloë Ashby
Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson
Honey & Spice, Bolu Babalola
Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo
Either/Or, Elif Batuman
Girls They Write Songs About, Carlene Bauer
seven steeples, Sara Baume
The Witches of Vardo, Anya Bergman
Shadow Girls, Carol Birch
Permission, Jo Bloom
Horse, Geraldine Brooks
Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo
Mother’s Day, Abigail Burdess
Instructions for the Working Day, Joanna Campbell
People Person, Candice Carty-Williams
Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou
The Book of Eve, Meg Clothier
Cult Classic, Sloane Crosley
The Things We Do to Our Friends, Heather Darwent
The Bewitching, Jill Dawson
Common Decency, Susannah Dickey
Theatre of Marvels, L.M. Dillsworth
Haven, Emma Donoghue
History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Christy Edwall
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
Dazzling, Chikodili Emelumadu
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi
there are more things, Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Factory Girls, Michelle Gallen
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
The Illuminated, Anindita Ghose
Your Driver Is Waiting, Priya Guns
The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty
The Dance Tree, Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Weyward, Emilia Hart
Other People Manage, Ellen Hawley
Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
The Cloisters, Katy Hays
Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth
The Unfolding, A.M. Homes
The White Rock, Anna Hope
They’re Going to Love You, Meg Howrey
Housebreaking, Colleen Hubbard
Vladimir, Julia May Jonas
This Is Gonna End in Tears, Liza Klaussmann
The Applicant, Nazli Koca
Babel, R.F. Kuang
Yerba Buena, Nina Lacour
The Swimmers, Chloe Lane
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li
Amazing Grace Adams, Fran Littlewood
All the Little Bird Hearts, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Now She Is Witch, Kirsty Logan
The Chosen, Elizabeth Lowry
The Home Scar, Kathleen MacMahon
Very Cold People, Sarah Manguso
All This Could Be Different, Sarah Thankam Mathews
Becky, Sarah May
The Dog of the North, Elizabeth McKenzie
Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet
Young Women, Jessica Moor
The Garnett Girls, Georgina Moore
Black Butterflies, Priscilla Morris
Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh
Someone Else’s Shoes, Jojo Moyes
The Men, Sandra Newman
True Biz, Sara Nović
Babysitter, Joyce Carol Oates
Tomorrow I Become a Woman, Aiwanose Odafen
Things They Lost, Okwiri Oduor
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, Soraya Palmer
The Things that We Lost, Jyoti Patel
Still Water, Rebecca Pert
Stargazer, Laurie Petrou
Ruth & Pen, Emilie Pine
Delphi, Clare Pollard
The Whalebone Theatre, Joanna Quinn
The Poet, Louisa Reid
Carrie Soto Is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan
Blue Hour, Sarah Schmidt
After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz
Signal Fires, Dani Shapiro
A Dangerous Business, Jane Smiley
Companion Piece, Ali Smith
Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow
Flight, Lynn Steger Strong
Brutes, Dizz Tate
Madwoman, Louisa Treger
I Laugh Me Broken, Bridget van der Zijpp
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, Rebecca Wait
The Schoolhouse, Sophie Ward
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, Laura Warrell
The Odyssey, Lara Williams
A Complicated Matter, Anne Youngson
Avalon, Nell Zink
The Wellcome Book Prize 2018 Awards Ceremony
Hey, we got it right! Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine, our shadow panel’s pick, won the Wellcome Book Prize 2018 last night. Of the three shadow panels I’ve participated in and the many others I’ve observed, this is the only time I remember the shadow winner matching the official one. Clare, Paul and I were there in person for the announcement at the Wellcome Collection in London. When we briefly spoke to the judges’ chair, Edmund de Waal, later in the evening, he said he was “relieved” that their decision matched ours – but I think it was definitely the other way around!
Simon Chaplin, Director of Culture & Society at the Wellcome Trust, said that each year more and more books are being considered for the prize. De Waal revealed that the judges read 169 books over nine months in what was for him his most frightening book club ever. “To bring the worlds of medicine and health into urgent conversation” requires a “lyrical and disciplined choreography,” he said, and “how we shape stories of science … is crucial.” He characterized the judges’ discussions as both “personal and passionate.” The Wellcome-shortlisted books make a space for public debate, he insisted.
Judges Gordon, Paul-Choudhury, Critchlow, Ratcliffe and de Waal. Photo by Clare Rowland.
The judges brought each of the five authors present onto the stage one at a time for recognition. De Waal praised Ayobami Adebayo’s “narrative of hope and fear and anxiety” and Meredith Wadman’s “beautifully researched and paced thriller.” Dr Hannah Critchlow of Magdalene College, Cambridge called Lindsey Fitzharris’s The Butchering Art “gruesome yet fascinating.” Oxford English professor Sophie Ratcliffe applauded Kathryn Mannix’s book and its mission. New Scientist editor-in-chief Sumit Paul-Choudhury said Mark O’Connell’s book is about the future “just as much as what it means to be human in the twenty-first century.” Journalist and mental health campaigner Bryony Gordon thanked Sigrid Rausing for her “great honesty and stunning prose.”
But there can only be one winner, and it was Mark O’Connell, who couldn’t be there as his wife is/was giving birth to their second child imminently. The general feeling in the room was that he’d made the right call by deciding to stay with his family. He must be feeling like the luckiest man on earth right now, to have a baby plus £30,000! Max Porter, O’Connell’s editor at Granta and the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, received the award on his behalf and read out the extremely witty speech he’d written in advance.
Afterwards we spoke to three of the shortlisted authors. Kathryn Mannix said she’d so enjoyed following our shadow panel reviews and that it was for the best that O’Connell won, as any other outcome might have spoiled the lovely girls’ club the others had going on during the weekend’s events. I got two signatures and we nabbed a quick photo with Lindsey Fitzharris. It was also great to meet Simon Savidge, the king of U.K. book blogging, and author and vlogger Jen Campbell. Other ‘celebrities’ spotted: Sarah Bakewell and Ben Goldacre.
This time I stayed long enough for pudding canapés to come around – raspberry cake pops and mini meringues with strawberries. What a great idea! On the way out I again acquired a Wellcome goody bag: this year’s tote with a copy of The Butchering Art, which I only had on Kindle before. I’d also treated myself to this brainy necklace from the Wellcome shop and wore it to the ceremony. An all-round great evening. I’m looking forward to next year’s prize season already!
Paul, Lindsey Fitzharris, Clare and me.
Wellcome Book Prize Shortlist Event
Five of the six shortlisted authors (barring Dublin-based Mark O’Connell) were at the Wellcome Collection in London yesterday to share more about their books in mini-interviews with Lisa O’Kelly, the associate editor of the Observer. She called each author up onto the stage in turn for a five-minute chat about her work, and then brought them all up for a general conversation and audience questions. Clare and I found it a very interesting afternoon. Here’s some context that I gleaned about the five books and their writers.
Ayobami Adebayo says sickle cell anemia is a massive public health problem in Nigeria, as brought home to her when some friends died of complications of sickle cell. She herself was tested for the gene and learned that she is a carrier, so her children would have a 25% chance of having the disease if her partner was also a carrier. Although life expectancy with the disease has improved to 45–50, a cure is still out of reach for most Nigerians because bone marrow/stem cell transplantation and anti-rejection drugs are so expensive. Compared to the 1980s, when her book opens, she believes polygamy is becoming less fashionable in Nigeria and people are becoming more open to other means of becoming parents, whether IVF or adoption. It’s a way of acknowledging, she says, that parenthood is “not just about biology.”
Sigrid Rausing started writing her book soon after her sister-in-law Eva’s body was found: just random paragraphs to make sense of what had happened. From there it became an investigation, a quest to find the nature of addiction. She thinks that as a society we still don’t quite understand what addiction is, and the medical research and public perception are very separate. In addition to nature and nurture, she thinks we should consider the influence of culture – as an anthropologist by training, she’s very interested in drug culture and how that drew in her brother, Hans. Although there have been many memoirs by ex-addicts, she can’t think of another one by a family member. Perhaps, she suggested, this is because the addict is seen as the ultimate victim. She referred to her book as a “collage,” a very apt description.
Kathryn Mannix spoke of how her grandmother, born in 1900, saw so much more death than we do nowadays: siblings, a child, and so on. Today, though, Mannix has encountered people in their sixties who are facing, with their parents, their very first deaths. Death is fairly “gentle” and “dull” if you’re not directly involved, she insists; she blames Hollywood and Eastenders for showing unusually dramatic deaths. She said once you understand what exactly people are afraid of about dying (e.g. hell, oblivion, pain, leaving their families behind) you can address their specific concerns and thereby “beat out the demon of terror and fear.” Mannix never intended to write a book, but someone heard her on the radio and invited her to do so. Luckily, from her medical school days onward, she’d been writing an A4 page about each of her most mind-boggling cases to get them out of her head and move on. That’s why, as O’Kelly put it, the characters in her 30 stories “leap off the page.”
Mannix, Adebayo, O’Kelly, Rausing, Wadman & Fitzharris
Lindsey Fitzharris called The Butchering Art “a love story between science and medicine” – it was the first time that the former (antisepsis) was applied to the latter. She initially thought Robert Liston was her man – he was so colorful, larger than life – but eventually found that the real story was with Joseph Lister, the quiet, persistent Quaker. (However, the book does open with Liston performing the first surgery under ether.) Fitzharris is also involved in the Order of the Good Death, author Caitlin Doughty’s initiative, and affirmed Mannix’s efforts to remove the taboo from talking about death. I think I heard correctly that she said there is a film of The Butchering Art in the works?! I’ll need to look into that some more.
Meredith Wadman started with a brief explanation of how immunization works and why the 1960s were ripe for vaccine research. This segment went really science-y, which I thought was a little unfortunate as it may have made listeners tune out and be less interested in her work than the others’. It was perhaps inevitable given her subject matter, but also a matter of the questions O’Kelly asked – with the others she focused more on stories and themes than on scientific facts. It was interesting to hear what Wadman has been working on recently: for the past 6–8 months, she’s been reporting for Science on sexual harassment in science. For her next book, though, she’s pondering the conflict between a congressman and a Centers for Disease Control scientist over funding into research that might lead to gun control.
The question time brought up the issues of medical misinformation online, the distrust people with chronic illnesses have of medical professionals, and euthanasia – Mannix rather dodged that one, stating that her book is about the natural dying process so that’s not really her area. (Though it does come up in a chapter of her book.) We also heard a bit about the projects up next for each author. Rausing’s next book will be a travel memoir about the Capetown drought, taking in apartheid and her husband’s family’s immigration. Adebayo is at work on a very nebulous novel “about people,” and possibly how privilege affects access to healthcare.
Wellcome Book Prize: Shortlist Recap
Tomorrow morning we will announce our Wellcome Book Prize 2018 shadow panel winner. Beforehand I wanted to do a quick recap of my reviews, especially for the two books that I read before the shortlist announcement. My full reviews are here:
Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo 
To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell 
Mayhem by Sigrid Rausing
The Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman
I give some extra thoughts on and favorite quotes from the other two below:
The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris
This is a great blend of medical history and popular science that should draw in readers who wouldn’t normally gravitate to either topic – provided they aren’t too squeamish. Fitzharris has recently returned to Oxford as a visiting academic, and this has also been nominated for the Wolfson History Prize. Follow her on Instagram (@drlindseyfitzharris) for a steady stream of gruesomely fascinating photos (I wish The Butchering Art had been illustrated!). Her next book will be much of a muchness, it seems, documenting the early years of plastic surgery after World War I through the story of pioneering surgeon Harold Gillies. 
In the days before Joseph Lister…
“Operating theaters were gateways to death. It was safer to have an operation at home than in a hospital, where mortality rates were three to five times higher than they were in domestic settings.”
“The surgeon was very much viewed as a manual labourer who used his hands to make his living, much like a key cutter or plumber today.”
See what the rest of the shadow panel has to say about this book:
Annabel’s review: “[A]n extremely readable account of a ground-breaking career which led to real advances in hospital medicine. I enjoyed the whole, but particularly the grisly bits!”
Laura’s review: “It’s easy for me to feel a bit impatient with popular histories of periods or subjects that I know well, but Fitzharris strikes exactly the right note, writing clearly and accessibly with no dumbing down.”
Paul’s review: “It is one of the better books that I have read on medical history[;] Fitzharris writes in an engaging way on a subject that is not going to appeal to everyone, but in amongst all the blood is the fascinating story of Joseph Lister.”
With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix
“It’s time to talk about dying. This is my way of promoting the conversation,” Mannix writes in her introduction to this accessible and reassuring book about death. She believes we are afraid of death because of our misconception that it is inevitably painful and undignified. In her decades of working in hospice care, this has rarely been the case. (Thank goodness that, compared to the earlier nineteenth-century situation Fitzharris surveys, we have reliable pain control options.) Mannix sees the role of the hospice worker as being like a midwife for the dying, a helpful idea I first encountered in Henry Fersko-Weiss’s Caring for the Dying: The Doula Approach to a Meaningful Death.
Many of the stories in this book are of peaceful deaths the patient and family had time to prepare for. Others are sad stories of denial. One, though, is quite gruesome, yet magnificently described. Alex, a young man with testicular teratoma, has a massive GI bleed:
“Alex’s head is thrown back, almost as though it is a voluntary movement. A huge, dark-red python slithers rapidly out of his mouth, pushing his head backwards as it coils itself onto the pillow beside him; the python is wet and gleaming and begins to stain the pillowcase and sheets with its red essence as Alex takes one snoring breath, and then stops breathing. His mother screams as he realises that the python is Alex’s blood. Probably all of his blood.”
See what the rest of the shadow panel has to say about this book:
Annabel’s review: “[I]t is helping patients, and their families and loved ones, to understand the process of dying, and dispelling the taboos around it that make this book such a valuable and compelling read. I wish I’d read something like this book before my mum died.”
Clare’s review: “For me, this enlightening book is a strong potential winner for the Wellcome Book Prize and I hope it brings comfort and guidance for those who need it.”
Laura’s review: “[The book is] written from her own experiences as a specialist in palliative care, and this proved, for me, both its strength and its downfall. … Mannix writes particularly well on the characteristic patterns of somebody who is entering a gradual decline.”
Paul’s review: “Can highly recommend this moving book and I think it should be essential reading for anyone who has any concerns about death.”
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see either of these win the Wellcome Book Prize on Monday. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s shadow panel winner announcement, and Sunday’s write-up of a shortlist event I’m attending in London.
Wellcome Book Prize Shortlist: Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo
“Women manufacture children and if you can’t you are just a man. Nobody should call you a woman.”
On balance, I’m glad that the Wellcome Book Prize shortlist reading forced me to go back and give Stay with Me another try. Last year I read the first 15% of this debut novel for a potential BookBrowse review but got bored with the voice and the story, rather unfairly dismissing it as a rip-off of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I also doubted that the health theme was strong enough for it to make the Wellcome shortlist, but that’s because I hadn’t read far enough to realize just how many medical conditions come up for consideration: it’s not just infertility, but also false pregnancy, cot death (or SIDS), sickle cell disease, and impotence.
This time around I found Yejide a more sympathetic character. The words that open this review are cruel ones spoken by her mother-in-law. Her desperation to become and stay a mother drives her to extreme measures that also give a window onto indigenous religion in Nigeria: ‘breastfeeding’ a goat on the Mountain of Jaw-Dropping Miracles, and allowing an act of ritual scarification to prevent the return of an abiku, or spirit child (I’ve heard that one narrates Ben Okri’s Booker Prize-winning 1991 novel, The Famished Road).
Polygamy is another Nigerian custom addressed in the novel. Yejide’s husband, Akinyele Ajayi, allows himself to be talked into taking another wife, Funmilayo, when Yejide hasn’t produced a child after four years. There’s irony in the fact that polygyny is considered a valid route to pregnancy while polyandry is not, and traditional versus Western values are contrasted in the different generations’ reactions to polygamy: does it equate to adultery?
There are some welcome flashes of humor in the novel, such as when Yejide deliberately serves a soup made with three-day-old beans and Funmi gets explosive diarrhea. I also enjoyed the ladies’ gossip at Yejide’s hair salon. However, the story line tends towards the soap operatic, and well before halfway it starts to feel like just one thing after another: A lot happens, but to no apparent purpose. I was unconvinced by the choices the author made in terms of narration (split between Yejide and Akin, both in first person but with some second person address to each other) and structure (divided between 2008 and the main action starting in the 1980s). We see certain scenes from both spouses’ perspective, but that doubling doesn’t add anything to the overall picture. The writing is by turns maudlin (“each minute pregnant with hope, each second tremulous with tragedy”) and uncolloquial (“afraid that my touch might … careen him into the unknown”).
Things that at first seemed insignificant to me – the 1993 election results, what happens to Funmi, the one major scene set in 2008 – do eventually take on more meaning, and there is a nice twist partway through as well as a lovely surprise at the end. I did feel the ache of the title phrase as it applies to this couple’s children and marriage, so threatened by “all the mess of love and life that only shows up as you go along.” It all makes for truly effortless reading that I gobbled up in chunks of 50 or 100 pages – which indicates authorial skill, of course – yet this seems to me a novel more interesting for the issues it addresses than for its story and writing.
My rating:
See also:
My gut feeling: I would be very surprised if a novel won two years in a row. While the medical situations examined here are fairly wrenching, Stay with Me isn’t strong enough to win. Its appearance on the shortlist (for the Women’s Prize, too) is honor enough, I think.
Shortlist strategy:
- I’m one-third through The Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman but have started skimming because it’s dense and not quite as laymen-friendly as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Emperor of All Maladies, the two books its subject matter is most reminiscent of for me.
- On Friday I started To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell, which I’m also one-third through and have taken away on our mini-holiday. This is the shortlisted book whose topic appealed to me the least, so I’m pleasantly surprised to be enjoying it so much. It helps that O’Connell comes at the science as an outsider – he’s a freelance writer with a literature background, and he’s interested in the deeper philosophical questions that transhumanism raises.
- I’m awaiting a review copy of Mayhem by Sigrid Rausing, which I’ll be featuring as part of the official Wellcome Book Prize shortlist blog tour.
Quick Reactions to the Wellcome Book Prize Shortlist
From 12, we are now down to six. The 2018 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist is here!
Some quick thoughts:
I sort-of predicted three out of the six in yesterday’s post: The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris, With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix, and To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell.
I’m relieved that I’d already gotten to two of the shortlisted titles (Fitzharris and Mannix), so I can focus on reading the other four over the next 5+ weeks, and will briefly revisit those first two on my Kindle when it’s decision time.
I am pretty shocked that Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am did not advance to the shortlist. Mayhem will have to be a truly amazing memoir to outdo it; I wanted to read it anyway, but now I’m particularly keen – it would be a good one for me to feature on the official blog tour if that happens to work out.
I’m not feeling very cheerful about having to start Stay with Me again (I DNFed it last year), but I’ll try to approach it with an open mind.
To Be a Machine is currently on shelf at my local library (fingers crossed that it’s still there when I go on Friday) and I’ve reserved The Vaccine Race from another branch. I’ll start with one of those.
I’ve also been promised two review copies at random in the post – let’s hope it’s not the two I’ve already read!
(See also Laura’s initial thoughts.)
Feel like joining the shadow panel in reading one or more of these six books?
Thoughts on the Wellcome Book Prize Longlist
The 2018 Wellcome Book Prize longlist is here! From the prize’s website, you can click on any of these 12 books’ covers, titles or authors to get more information about them.
Some initial thoughts:
I correctly predicted three of the entries (or 25%) in yesterday’s post: In Pursuit of Memory by Joseph Jebelli, With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix, and I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell. I’m pretty shocked to not see Fragile Lives or Admissions on the list.
Of the remainder, I’ve already read one (Midwinter Break) and DNFed another (Stay with Me). Midwinter Break didn’t immediately suggest itself to me for this prize because its themes of ageing and alcoholism are the background to a story about the disintegration of a long marriage. Nonetheless, it’s a lovely book that hasn’t gotten as much attention as it deserves – it was on my runners-up list from last year – so I’m delighted to see it nominated. Stay with Me was also on the Women’s Prize shortlist; it appears here for its infertility theme, but I wouldn’t attempt it again unless it made the Wellcome shortlist.
As to the rest:
- I’m annoyed with myself for not remembering The Butchering Art, which I have on my Kindle. Sometimes I assume that books I’ve gotten from NetGalley are USA-only and don’t check for a UK publisher. I plan to read this and With the End in Mind (also on my Kindle) soon.
- I already knew about and was interested in Mayhem and The White Book.
- Of the ones I didn’t know about, Plot 29 appeals to me the most. I’m off to get it from the library this very afternoon, in fact. Its health theme seems quite subtle: it’s about a devoted gardener ‘digging’ into his past in an abusive family and foster care. The Guardian review describes it thus: “Like Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk, this is a profoundly moving account of mental trauma told through the author’s encounters with nature. Jenkins sees his garden as a place where a person can try to escape from, and atone for, the darkness of human existence.” This is the great thing about prize lists: they can introduce you to fascinating books you might never have heard of otherwise. Even if it’s just one book that takes your fancy, who knows? It might end up being a favorite.
- While I’m not immediately drawn to the books on the history of vaccines, the evolution of human behavior, and transhumanism, I will certainly be glad to read them if they make the shortlist.
Some statistics on this year’s longlist, courtesy of the press release I was sent by e-mail:
- Three novels, three memoirs, and six nonfiction titles
- Five debut authors
- Three titles from independent publishers (Canongate and Granta/Portobello Books)
- The authors are from the UK, Ireland, USA, Nigeria, Canada, and – making their first appearance – Sweden (Sigrid Rausing) and South Korea (Han Kang)
Chair of judges Edmund de Waal writes: “The Wellcome Book Prize is unique in its reach across genres, and so the range of books that we have considered has been exhilarating in its extent and ambition. This is a remarkable time for readers, with a great flourishing of writing on ideas around science, medicine and health, lives and deaths, histories and futures. After passionate discussions we have arrived at our longlist for the Wellcome Book Prize 2018 and are proud to be part of this process of bringing to a wider public these 12 tremendous books that have moved, intrigued and inspired us. All of them bring something new to our understanding of what it is to be human.”
The shortlist is announced on Tuesday, March 20th, and the winner will be revealed on Monday, April 30th.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 