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?
Winter Reads, Part II: Au, Glück, Hall, Rautiainen, Slaght
In the week before Christmas I reviewed a first batch of wintry reads. We’ve had hardly any snowfall here in southern England this season, so I gave up on it in real life and sought winter weather on the page. After we’ve seen the back of Storm Franklin (it’s already moved on from Eunice!), I hope it will feel appropriate to start right in on some spring reading. But for today I have a Tokyo-set novella, sombre poems, an OTT contemporary Gothic novel, historical fiction in translation from the Finnish, and – the cream of the crop – a real-life environmentalist adventure in Russia.
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au (2022)
This slim work will be released in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions on the 23rd and came out elsewhere this month from New Directions and Giramondo. I actually read it in December during my travel back from the States. It’s a delicate work of autofiction – it reads most like a Chloe Aridjis or Rachel Cusk novel – about a woman and her Hong Kong-raised mother on a trip to Tokyo. You get a bit of a flavour of Japan through their tourism (a museum, a temple, handicrafts, trains, meals), but the real focus is internal as Au subtly probes the workings of memory and generational bonds.
The woman and her mother engage in surprisingly deep conversations about the soul and the meaning of life, but these are conveyed indirectly rather than through dialogue: “she said that she believed that we were all essentially nothing, just series of sensations and desires, none of it lasting. … The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches”. Though I highlighted a fair few passages, I find that no details have stuck with me. This is just the sort of spare book I can admire but not warm to. (NetGalley) 
Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück (2021)
The only other poetry collection of Glück’s that I’d read was Vita Nova. This, her first release since her Nobel Prize win, was my final read of 2021 and my shortest, at 40-some pages; it’s composed of just 15 poems, a few of which stretch to five pages or more. “The Denial of Death,” a prose piece with more of the feel of an autobiographical travel essay, was a standout; the title poem, again in prose paragraphs, and the following one, “Winter Journey,” about farewells, bear a melancholy chill. Memories and dreams take pride of place, with the poet’s sister appearing frequently. “How heavy my mind is, filled with the past.” There are also multiple references to Chinese concepts and characters (as on the cover). The overall style is more aphoristic and reflective than expected. Few individual lines or images stood out to me.
With thanks to Carcanet Press for the e-copy for review.
The Snow Collectors by Tina May Hall (2020)
Henna is alone in the world since her parents and twin sister disappeared in a boating accident. She lives a solitary existence with her sister’s basset hound Rembrandt in a New England village, writing encyclopaedia entries on the Arctic, until she stumbles on a corpse and embarks on an amateur investigation involving scraps of 19th-century correspondence. The dead woman asked inconvenient questions about a historical cover-up; if she takes up the thread, Henna could be a target, too. Her collaboration with the police chief, Fletcher, turns into a flirtation. After her house burns down, she ends up living with him – and his mother and housekeeper – in a Gothic mansion stuffed with birds of prey and historical snow samples. She’s at the mercy of this quirky family and the weather, wearing ancient clothing from Fletcher’s great-aunts and tramping through blizzards looking for answers.
This is a kitchen-sink novel with loads going on, as if Hall couldn’t decide which of her interests to include so threw them all in. Yet at only 221 pages, it might actually have been expanded a little to flesh out the backstory and mystery plot. It gets more than a bit ridiculous in places, but its Victorian fan fiction vibe is charming escapism nonetheless. What with the historical fiction interludes about the Franklin expedition, this reminded me most of The Still Point, but also of The World Before Us and The Birth House. I’d happily read Hall’s 2010 short story collection, too. (Christmas gift) 
Land of Snow and Ashes by Petra Rautiainen (2022)
[Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston]
In the middle years of World War II, Finland was allied with Nazi Germany against Russia, a mutual enemy. After the Moscow Armistice, the Germans retreated in disgrace, burning as many buildings and planting as many landmines as they could (“the Lapland War”). I gleaned this helpful background information from Hackston’s preface. The story that follows is in two strands: one is set in 1944 and told via diary entries from Väinö Remes, a Finnish soldier called up to interpret at a Nazi prison camp in Inari. The other, in third person, takes place between 1947 and 1950, the early years of postwar reconstruction. Inkeri, a journalist, has come to Enontekiö to find out what happened to her husband. An amateur photographer, she teaches art to the local Sámi children and takes on one girl, Bigga-Marja, as her protégée.
Collusion and secrets; escaped prisoners and physical measurements being taken of the Sámi: there are a number of sinister hints that become clearer as the novel goes on. I felt a distance from the main characters that I could never quite overcome, such that the reveals didn’t land with as much power as I think was intended. Still, this has the kind of forthright storytelling and precise writing that fans of Hubert Mingarelli should appreciate. For another story of the complexities of being on the wrong side of history, see The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck.
With thanks to Pushkin Press for the proof copy for review.
Winter words:
“Fresh snow has fallen, forming drifts across the terrain. White. Grey. Undulating. The ice has cracked here and there, raising its head in the thawed sections of the river. There is only a thin layer of ice left.”
Owls of the Eastern Ice: The Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght (2020)
Slaght has become an expert on the Blakiston’s fish owl during nearly two decades of fieldwork in the far east of Russia – much closer to Korea and Japan than to Moscow, the region is also home to Amur tigers. For his Master’s and PhD research at the University of Minnesota, he plotted the territories of breeding pairs of owls and fit them with identifying bands and data loggers to track their movements over the years. He describes these winter field seasons as recurring frontier adventures. Now, I’ve accompanied my husband on fieldwork from time to time, and I can tell you it would be hard to make it sound exciting. Then again, gathering beetles from English fields is pretty staid compared to piloting snowmobiles over melting ice, running from fire, speeding to avoid blockaded logging roads, and being served cleaning-grade ethanol when the vodka runs out.
The sorts of towns Slaght works near are primitive places where adequate food and fuel is a matter of life and death. He and his assistants rely on the hospitality of Anatoliy the crazy hermit and also stay in huts and caravans. Tracking the owls is a rollercoaster experience, with expensive equipment failures and trial and error to narrow down the most effective trapping methods. His team develops a new low-tech technique involving a tray of live fish planted in the river shallows under a net. They come to know individuals and mourn their loss: the Sha-Mi female he’s holding in his author photo was hit by a car four years later.
Slaght thinks of Russia as his second home, and you can sense his passion for the fish owl and for conservation in general. He boils down complicated data and statistics into the simple requirements for this endangered species (fewer than 2000 in the wild): valleys containing old-growth forest with large trees and rivers that don’t fully freeze over. There are only limited areas with these characteristics. These specifications and his ongoing research – Slaght is now the Northeast Asia Coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society – inform the policy recommendations given to logging companies and other bodies.
Amid the science, this is just a darn good story, full of bizarre characters like Katkov, a garrulous assistant exiled for his snoring. (“He fueled his monologue with sausage and cheese, then belched zeppelins of aroma into that confined space.”) Slaght himself doesn’t play much of a role in the book, so don’t expect a soul-searching memoir. Instead, you get top-notch nature and travel writing, and a ride along on a consequential environmentalist quest. This is the kind of science book that, like Lab Girl and Entangled Life, I’d recommend even if you don’t normally pick up nonfiction. (Christmas gift) 
And a bonus children’s book:
If Winter Comes, Tell It I’m Not Here by Simona Ciraolo (2020)
The little boy loves nothing more than to spend hours at the swimming pool and then have an ice cream cone. His big sister warns him the carefree days of summer will be over soon; it will turn cold and dark and he’ll be cooped up inside. Her words come to pass, yet the boy realizes that every season has its joys and he has to take advantage of them while they last. Cute and colourful, though the drawing style wasn’t my favourite. And a correction is in order: as President Biden would surely tell you, ice cream is a year-round treat! (Public library)
Any snowy or icy reading (or weather) for you lately?
Rathbones Folio Prize 2021 Shortlist Reviews & Prediction
I’ve nearly managed to read the whole Rathbones Folio Prize shortlist before the prize is announced on the evening of Wednesday the 24th. (You can sign up to watch the online ceremony here.) I reviewed the Baume and Ní Ghríofa as part of a Reading Ireland Month post on Saturday, and I’d reviewed the Machado last year in a feature on out-of-the-ordinary memoirs. This left another five books. Because they were short, I’ve been able to read and/or review another four over the past couple of weeks. (The only one unread is As You Were by Elaine Feeney, which I made a false start on last year and didn’t get a chance to try again.)
Nominations come from the Folio Academy, an international group of writers and critics, so the shortlisted authors have been chosen by an audience of their peers. Indeed, I kept spotting judges’ or fellow nominees’ names in the books’ acknowledgements or blurbs. I tried to think about the eight as a whole and generalize about what the judges were impressed by. This was difficult for such a varied set of books, but I picked out two unifying factors: A distinctive voice, often with a musicality of language – even the books that don’t include poetry per se are attentive to word choice; and timeliness of theme yet timelessness of experience.
Poor by Caleb Femi
Femi brings his South London housing estate to life through poetry and photographs. This is a place where young Black men get stopped by the police for any reason or none, where new trainers are a status symbol, where boys’ arrogant or seductive posturing hides fear. Everyone has fallen comrades, and things like looting make sense when they’re the only way to protest (“nothing was said about the maddening of grief. Nothing was said about loss & how people take and take to fill the void of who’s no longer there”). The poems range from couplets to prose paragraphs and are full of slang, Caribbean patois, and biblical patterns. I particularly liked Part V, modelled on scripture with its genealogical “begats” and a handful of portraits:
The Story of Ruthless
Anyone smart enough
to study the food chain
of the estate knew exactly
who this warrior girl was;
once she lined eight boys
up against a wall,
emptied their pockets.
Nobody laughed at the boys.
Another that stood out for me was the two-part “A Designer Talks of Home / A Resident Talks of Home,” a found poem partially constructed from dialogue from a Netflix documentary on interior design. It ironically contrasts airy aesthetic notions with survival in a concrete wasteland. If you loved Surge by Jay Bernard, this should be next on your list.
My Darling from the Lions by Rachel Long
I first read this when it was on the Costa Awards shortlist. As in Femi’s collection, race, sex, and religion come into play. The focus is on memories of coming of age, with the voice sometimes a girl’s and sometimes a grown woman’s. Her course veers between innocence and hazard. She must make her way beyond the world’s either/or distinctions and figure out how to be multiple people at once (biracial, bisexual). Her Black mother is a forceful presence; “Red Hoover” is a funny account of trying to date a Nigerian man to please her mother. Much of the rest of the book failed to click with me, but the experience of poetry is so subjective that I find it hard to give any specific reasons why that’s the case.
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
After the two poetry entries on the shortlist, it’s on to a book that, like A Ghost in the Throat, incorporates poetry in a playful but often dark narrative. In 1976, two competitive American fishermen, a father-and-son pair down from Florida, catch a mermaid off of the fictional Caribbean island of Black Conch. Like trophy hunters, the men take photos with her; they feel a mixture of repulsion and sexual attraction. Is she a fish, or an object of desire? In the recent past, David Baptiste recalls what happened next through his journal entries. He kept the mermaid, Aycayia, in his bathtub and she gradually shed her tail and turned back into a Taino indigenous woman covered in tattoos and fond of fruit. Her people were murdered and abused, and the curse that was placed on her runs deep, threatening to overtake her even as she falls in love with David. This reminded me of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Lydia Millet’s Mermaids in Paradise. I loved that Aycayia’s testimony was delivered in poetry, but this short, magical story came and went without leaving any impression on me.
Indelicacy by Amina Cain
Having heard that this was about a cleaner at an art museum, I expected it to be a readalike of Asunder by Chloe Aridjis, a beautifully understated tale of ghostly perils faced by a guard at London’s National Gallery. Indelicacy is more fable-like. Vitória’s life is in two halves: when she worked at the museum and had to forego meals to buy new things, versus after she met her rich husband and became a writer. Increasingly dissatisfied with her marriage, she then comes up with an escape plot involving her hostile maid. Meanwhile, she makes friends with a younger ballet student and keeps in touch with her fellow cleaner, Antoinette, a pregnant newlywed. Vitória tries sex and drugs to make her feel something. Refusing to eat meat and trying to persuade Antoinette not to baptize her baby become her peculiar twin campaigns.
The novella belongs to no specific time or place; while Cain lives in Los Angeles, this most closely resembles ‘wan husks’ of European autofiction in translation. Vitória issues pretentious statements as flat as the painting style she claims to love. Some are so ridiculous they end up being (perhaps unintentionally) funny: “We weren’t different from the cucumber, the melon, the lettuce, the apple. Not really.” The book’s most extraordinary passage is her husband’s rambling, defensive monologue, which includes the lines “You’re like an old piece of pie I can’t throw away, a very good pie. But I rescued you.”
It seems this has been received as a feminist story, a cheeky parable of what happens when a woman needs a room of her own but is trapped by her social class. When I read in the Acknowledgements that Cain took lines and character names from Octavia E. Butler, Jean Genet, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Rhys, I felt cheated, as if the author had been engaged in a self-indulgent writing exercise. This was the shortlisted book I was most excited to read, yet ended up being the biggest disappointment.
On the whole, the Folio shortlist ended up not being particularly to my taste this year, but I can, at least to an extent, appreciate why these eight books were considered worthy of celebration. The authors are “writers’ writers” for sure, though in some cases that means they may fail to connect with readers. There was, however, some crossover this year with some more populist prizes like the Costa Awards (Roffey won the overall Costa Book of the Year).
The crystal-clear winner for me is In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, her memoir of an abusive same-sex relationship. Written in the second person and in short sections that examine her memories from different angles, it’s a masterpiece and a real game changer for the genre – which I’m sure is just what the judges are looking for.
The only book on the shortlist that came anywhere close to this one, for me, was A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, an elegant piece of feminist autofiction that weaves in biography, imagination, and poetry. It would be a fine runner-up choice.
(On the Rathbones Folio Prize Twitter account, you will find lots of additional goodies like links to related articles and interviews, and videos with short readings from each author.)
My thanks to the publishers and FMcM Associates for the free copies for review.
Recommended June Releases
I have an all-female line-up for you this time, with selections ranging from a YA romance in verse to a memoir by a spiritual recording artist. There’s a very random detail that connects two of these books – look out for it!
In Paris with You by Clémentine Beauvais
[Faber & Faber, 7th]
I don’t know the source material Beauvais was working with (Eugene Onegin, 1837), but still enjoyed this YA romance in verse. Eugene and Tatiana meet by chance in Paris in 2016 and the attraction between them is as strong as ever, but a possible relationship is threatened by memories of a tragic event from 10 years ago involving Lensky, Eugene’s friend and the boyfriend of Tatiana’s older sister Olga. I’m in awe at how translator Sam Taylor has taken the French of her Songe à la douceur and turned it into English poetry with the occasional rhyme. This is a sweet book that would appeal to John Green’s readers, but it’s more sexually explicit than a lot of American YA, so is probably only suitable for older teens. (Proof copy from Faber Spring Party)
Favorite lines:
“Her heart takes the lift / up to her larynx, / where it gets stuck / hammering against the walls of her neck.”
“an adult with a miniature attention span, / like everyone else, refreshing, updating, / nibbling at time like a ham baguette.”
“helium balloons in the shape of spermatozoa straining towards the dark sky.”
My rating: 
Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter by Elizabeth W. Garber
[She Writes Press, 12th]
The author grew up in a glass house designed by her father, Modernist architect Woodie Garber, outside Cincinnati in the 1960s–70s. This and his other most notable design, Sander Hall, a controversial tower-style dorm at the University of Cincinnati that was later destroyed in a controlled explosion, serve as powerful metaphors for her dysfunctional family life. Woodie is such a fascinating, flawed figure. Manic depression meant he had periods of great productivity but also weeks when he couldn’t get out of bed. He and Elizabeth connected over architecture, like when he helped her make a scale model of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye for a school project, but it was hard for a man born in the 1910s to understand his daughter’s generation or his wife’s desire to go back to school and have her own career.
Mixed feelings towards a charismatic creative genius who made home life a torment and the way their fractured family kept going are reasons enough to read this book. But another is just that Garber’s life has been so interesting: she witnessed the 1968 race riots and had a black boyfriend when interracial relationships were frowned upon; she was briefly the librarian for the Oceanics School, whose boat was taken hostage in Panama; and she dropped out of mythology studies at Harvard to become an acupuncturist. Don’t assume this will be a boring tome only for architecture buffs. It’s a masterful memoir for everyone. (Read via NetGalley on Nook)
My rating: 
Florida by Lauren Groff
[William Heinemann (UK), 7th / Riverhead (USA), 5th]
My review is in today’s “Book Wars” column in Stylist magazine. Two major, connected threads in this superb story collection are ambivalence about Florida, and ambivalence about motherhood. The narrator of “The Midnight Zone,” staying with her sons in a hunting camp 20 miles from civilization, ponders the cruelty of time and her failure to be sufficiently maternal, while the woman in “Flower Hunters” is so lost in an eighteenth-century naturalist’s book that she forgets to get Halloween costumes for her kids. A few favorites of mine were “Ghosts and Empties,” in which the narrator goes for long walks at twilight and watches time passing through the unwitting tableaux of the neighbors’ windows; “Eyewall,” a matter-of-fact ghost story; and “Above and Below,” in which a woman slips into homelessness – it’s terrifying how precarious her life is at every step. (Proof copy)
Favorite lines:
“What had been built to seem so solid was fragile in the face of time because time is impassive, more animal than human. Time would not care if you fell out of it. It would continue on without you.” (from “The Midnight Zone”)
“The wind played the chimney until the whole place wheezed like a bagpipe.” (from “Eyewall”)
“How lonely it would be, the mother thinks, looking at her children, to live in this dark world without them.” (from “Yport”)
My rating:
The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Seen: Opening Your Eyes to Wonder by Lisa Gungor
[Zondervan, 26th]
You’re most likely to pick this up if you enjoy Gungor’s music, but it’s by no means a band tell-all. The big theme of this memoir is moving beyond the strictures of religion to find an all-encompassing spirituality. Like many Gungor listeners, Lisa grew up in, and soon outgrew, a fundamentalist Christian setting. She bases the book around a key set of metaphors: the dot, the line, and the circle. The dot was the confining theology she was raised with; the line was the pilgrimage she and Michael Gungor embarked on after they married at 19; the circle was the more inclusive spirituality she developed after their second daughter, Lucie, was born with Down syndrome and required urgent heart surgery. Being mothered, becoming a mother and accepting God as Mother: together these experiences bring the book full circle. Barring the too-frequent nerdy-cool posturing (seven mentions of “dance parties,” and so on), this is a likable memoir for readers of spiritual writing by the likes of Sue Monk Kidd, Mary Oliver and Terry Tempest Williams. (Read via NetGalley on Kindle)
My rating:
Orchid & the Wasp by Caoilinn Hughes
[Oneworld, 7th] – see my full review. 
Ok, Mr Field by Katharine Kilalea
[Faber & Faber, 7th]
Mr. Field is a concert pianist whose wrist was shattered in a train crash. With his career temporarily derailed, there’s little for him to do apart from wander his Cape Town house, a replica of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, and the nearby coastal path. He also drives over to spy on his architect’s widow, with whom he’s obsessed. He’s an aimless voyeur who’s more engaged with other people’s lives than with his own – until a dog follows him home from a graveyard. This is a strangely detached little novel in which little seems to happen. Like Asunder by Chloe Aridjis and Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner, it’s about someone who’s been coasting unfeelingly through life and has to stop to ask what’s gone wrong and what’s worth pursuing. It’s so brilliantly written, with the pages flowing effortlessly on, that I admired Kilalea’s skill. Her descriptions of scenery and music are particularly good. In terms of the style, I was reminded of books I’ve read by Katie Kitamura and Henrietta Rose-Innes. (Proof copy from Faber Spring Party)
My rating:
This came out in the States (from Riverhead) back in early April, but releases here in the UK soon, so I’ve added it in as a bonus.
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
[Chatto & Windus, 7th]
An enjoyable story of twentysomethings looking for purpose and trying to be good feminists. To start with it’s a fairly familiar campus novel in the vein of The Art of Fielding and The Marriage Plot, but we follow Greer, her high school sweetheart Cory and her new friend Zee for the next 10+ years to see the compromises they make as ideals bend to reality. Faith Frank is Greer’s feminist idol, but she’s only human in the end, and there are different ways of being a feminist: not just speaking out from a stage, but also quietly living every day in a way that shows you value people equally. I have a feeling this would have meant much more to me a decade ago, and the #MeToo-ready message isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but I very much enjoyed my first taste of Wolitzer’s sharp, witty writing and will be sure to read more from her. This seems custom-made for next year’s Women’s Prize shortlist. (Free from publisher, for comparison with Florida in Stylist “Book Wars” column.)
My rating:
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
