A fun, fast-paced graphic novel that made for a quick and entertaining read. Newly out as trans, Sammie is invited on a bachelor party trip, where theA fun, fast-paced graphic novel that made for a quick and entertaining read. Newly out as trans, Sammie is invited on a bachelor party trip, where they’re repeatedly misgendered and forced to participate in all sorts of performatively macho activities. But there’s also something distinctly weird about the location, a manmade island where the ‘fun’ includes the chance to hunt your own clone, and an organisation called the Gray Hand are recruiting people into a shady cult-like ‘network’. Boys Weekend is a lot of things – emotional drama, holiday-gone-wrong comedy, Lovecraftian horror – but I thought it all worked, in terms of the story at least. The weak point for me was actually the art. The backdrops seem unfinished, with good ideas for details but shaky execution, and I couldn’t always figure out how characters were meant to be feeling/reacting from how their facial expressions were drawn....more
I just couldn’t put this down. I read the whole thing across a single evening. Like its predecessor London Gothic, this is a disorientating, animate bI just couldn’t put this down. I read the whole thing across a single evening. Like its predecessor London Gothic, this is a disorientating, animate book, full of stories that both unnerve and amuse. The opener, ‘Welcome Back’, is a perfect case in point: it delves into academic office politics, with the narrator getting tangled up in accusations of bias when a colleague resigns. But believe me when I say you will never guess the twist. In ‘Simister’, a man’s attempt to do good deeds turns into a macabre comedy of errors. There are also some cool narrative experiments here, like ‘Disorder’, made up entirely of Joy Division lyrics, and ‘Strange Times’, which (seemingly) collects messages highlighting the homogeneity of language used to address the Covid-19 pandemic, the way phrases spread like... a virus, I suppose.
It’s the longer stories I really enjoyed, though. In ‘The Child’, a man is led on a strange journey after he visits a mysterious video shop. I always adore a lost film story, and this one is so gripping, so rich, I was ready to read it for hundreds of pages more. ‘Someone Take These Dreams Away’ is also a film story of sorts, a more haunting one, framing the experiences of its characters through described visuals from if.... ‘Zulu Pond’ has the most unpromising start (man moves back to Manchester, dwells on the memory of a girl he met for one night years ago), yet it unfolds into a brilliant exploration of the city’s waterlogged edgelands. In ‘The Apartment’, perhaps the most uncanny of the stories, the narrator hears voices above his top-floor flat and finds himself between reality and the ‘people texture’ of an architect’s rendering.
As with Daniel Carpenter’s recent collection Hunting by the River, having lived in Manchester undeniably added to the appeal of the stories for me – but that’s just a nice extra; Royle’s visions of the uncanny are incredibly compelling. I’m looking forward to the final volume of his city-based trilogy, which will be about Paris....more
I’m surprised this book hasn’t had more attention, and a little frustrated to see it getting lumped in with mediocre ‘sad girl’ books. The Cellist folI’m surprised this book hasn’t had more attention, and a little frustrated to see it getting lumped in with mediocre ‘sad girl’ books. The Cellist follows a successful cello soloist, Luciana, as she looks back on a particular time of her life – a period of debilitating stage fright that happened to coincide with her only significant relationship. It’s a deeply introspective, mature story about the question of whether creative practice can coexist with romantic love and the big life changes that often follow it (marriage, children).
When Luciana meets Billy, she’s a rising star and he – an artist – is unknown. Then, after Luciana collapses during a performance, things start to shift. She struggles to find her way back to performing and to understand what effect falling in love has had on her as a musician. None of this happens in a straight line, though, and Luciana’s ability to logically assess her own feelings doesn’t make it any easier to work out the tangles.
Without regaining my certainty, I did not see a way back to the stage. I knew, then, that I had to consider the situation as an event that happened because I’d lost something. Yet I resisted considering it this way. I did not want to think of loss, which could, for all I knew, be permanent. I wanted that night to be an aberration, because I did not want to change any ideas of myself.
There’s a startling clarity of prose here, and Luciana’s narrative voice embodies a confidence that sits interestingly (and uneasily?) alongside the character’s uncertainty. It’s a story that carries a strong sense of emotional truth. I found it extremely moving at points, especially when Billy moves on and Luciana struggles, despite a deeply held conviction that they don’t want or need the same things. In devoting herself to art, has she made the right choice? The answer is always obvious, yet never fully fixed.
I would compare The Cellist to White on White by Aysegül Savas, another elegantly written novel about art and selfhood, and Arrangements in Blue by Amy Key; while Key’s book is non-fiction, it similarly explores the landscape of a life lived without romantic love. Though less of a psychological puzzle, it also reminded me of Delphine de Vigan’s Based on a True Story – the same sense of a a narrator working through the devastating effect of creative blockage, as well as the subsumption of their identity into another person....more
It’s the damp summer of 1972 and 10-year-old Deborah is accustomed to the familiar rhythms of life in a small English village. The only child of a sinIt’s the damp summer of 1972 and 10-year-old Deborah is accustomed to the familiar rhythms of life in a small English village. The only child of a single parent, she sees everything reflected through the views of her mother, an opinionated young working-class widow. Then comes change: into this tiny world sweeps a new family in the village and a new girl at school. Sarah-Jayne is only Deborah’s age, but she dresses in fashionable clothes and is full of outlandish tales – she’s lived abroad, she’s tried alcohol, her house has a swimming pool... While the other girls are captivated, Deborah’s response is more complex. She both doubts Sarah-Jayne’s claims and is fascinated by her apparent maturity and mysterious knowledge.
There’s plenty of humour in Levitation for Beginners, much of it deriving from Deborah’s childish misunderstandings of things other people say (when she learns a boy and girl at school are ‘going out’, she wonders why the two of them haven’t left the classroom). Even so, it’s not hard to sense a darkness lurking beneath the surface. From the start, Sarah-Jayne seems disturbingly adult for a ten-year-old; this is, after all, the source of her glamour for the village girls. Place that alongside her oddly close relationship to her much older sister’s even older boyfriend, and the way she parrots his chauvinistic ideas about women, and a disturbing picture starts to form – for the reader, if not for Deborah.
Yet one of the main strengths of the book, for me, is how ambiguous it remains. Many major elements of the plot are only ever implied. Even when we seem to have confirmation of something, it’s essentially just hearsay. The voice is perfectly balanced between young Deborah and her adult reassessment of the events of 1972; her 10-year-old voice is distinct, but it never feels like you’re actually reading a child’s narrative (which neatly allows Dunn to get away with using the sort of evocative description a child never would).
Little about this book was what I expected, and it was all the better for it. It’s a quietly well-crafted novel: discomfiting without overt drama, comforting but not schmaltzy, and inconclusive yet satisfying....more
Benjamin Wood’s fourth novel is a reflective tale that seems only mildly tense when compared to the harrowing drama of A Station on the Path to SomewhBenjamin Wood’s fourth novel is a reflective tale that seems only mildly tense when compared to the harrowing drama of A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better. In 1952, young siblings Charlie and Joyce Savigear have just been released from borstal; they join a rural architectural practice, Leventree, as apprentices. Leventree is the idea of architects Arthur and Florence Mayhood, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin as well as Arthur’s redemption after his own youthful period of incarceration. At first, all seems well. But soon Joyce is dragged into a criminal scheme by an old acquaintance, threatening the tenuous peace of this makeshift family.
The Young Accomplice has echoes of the author’s previous work: the setup, with troubled young people arriving at a kind of artistic refuge, reminded me of The Ecliptic; the malevolent influence of (the aptly named) Mal recalls Francis from Station. I know Wood can write ruthlessly, but that isn’t really on display in this relatively slow-paced novel – for example, there’s a section about how the Mayhoods fell in love that doesn’t seem fully relevant, and could have been cut without the story losing anything. Instead, this is a book concerned more with quiet emotion than suspense (though there are certainly moments of the latter). It sometimes steers away from moments of potential turmoil to focus on what the characters are thinking. The writing is always beautiful. It’s unlikely I would have picked this up if it wasn’t by Wood, and I’m glad I did – its unhurried grace felt like a literary palate cleanser.
There's something both claustrophobic and cinematic about the black-and-white art in Black Hole. It demands concentration: in many panels, multiple chThere's something both claustrophobic and cinematic about the black-and-white art in Black Hole. It demands concentration: in many panels, multiple characters, with their epicene seventies haircuts, appear identical unless you look carefully. It evokes quiet but expansive sounds, like the wind stirring a field of tall grass at night. It's intense, something to be measured out in small doses, and I can see how it would have been perfect as a serialised comic; in a single volume it's perhaps a little overwhelming. Reading it all in one sitting would've been like drinking a pint of espresso. As much as a lot of the story is made up of social scenes, the impression I'm left with is one of solitude and darkness, an overwhelming (but not entirely awful; in some way oddly comforting) sense of one's helplessness and insignificance in the vastness of the universe.
Infinite Ground starts as a mystery. A young man named Carlos disappears from a family gathering at a restaurant; he goes to the bathroom and simply dInfinite Ground starts as a mystery. A young man named Carlos disappears from a family gathering at a restaurant; he goes to the bathroom and simply doesn't come back. An inspector is brought in to review the case. But traces of the absurd soon creep in. First, the inspector discovers that Maria, the woman he has been assuming is Carlos's mother, is not his mother but an actress employed to portray her. The real Maria, the explanation goes, is too distraught to be seen in public. Later, it transpires that 'the corporation' which employed Carlos (it doesn't have an official name) does a similar thing, hiring actors to beef up its workforce for motivational and surveillance purposes. The inspector takes these developments in his stride: a clear indication of what type of story Infinite Ground is.
The inspector himself remains nameless, and the same applies to many other people and things in the book. Even the setting is simply 'an unnamed South American country'. Part of Infinite Ground's appeal is its slipperiness; the disadvantage of this is that, particularly in the early stages of the novel, it's quite difficult to get any sort of grip on the story. Even though I found it engrossing, would even describe it as unique in many ways, I kept realising I'd read whole chapters and, immediately afterwards, could barely remember what had happened. Perhaps that's also because it's formally conservative even as the content becomes more and more bizarre; the most meta it gets is a chapter listing all the things that 'may or may not' have happened to Carlos, including the suggestion that the whole thing is the inspector's own invention.
Whatever the truth, the inspector's imagination is what shapes this story. He first imagines Carlos eaten away by parasites, then creates a scenario in which Carlos has decided to reject human society and simply walked into the rainforest to live like a wild animal. In turn, he follows this path himself and seems to become Carlos. Images of insects and vegetation recur constantly – the word 'verdure' is virtually a motif. The overall effect is a vision of man consumed by nature, reverting to a primal state. Nature in this book is an unstoppable and insidious force, effecting rapid disintegration everywhere – Carlos's undefinable illness (if this indeed exists), the reclamation of Santa Lucía.
There is an oddly effective balance between three elements of the story: its mundane surrealism (strongest in part 1, 'Corporation', which might easily slot into the dystopian workplace trend); the portrayal of nature as an all-powerful force (unsurprisingly at its height in part 3, 'Forest'); and the inspector's investigation, which – despite outlandish methods – he never stops taking seriously, providing a pragmatic grounding for all the strangeness. But in the end, the whole resists interpretation and is near-impossible to categorise.
Giving a rating to this is difficult. I really liked it, but I feel sure all the details of the story will slip from my mind very easily; it seems desGiving a rating to this is difficult. I really liked it, but I feel sure all the details of the story will slip from my mind very easily; it seems designed to be forgotten; there's something curiously elusive about it, and you feel like you are never quite getting to the heart of things. Part of this, I think, is due to its uneventfulness. Stella, a nurse and mother to five-year-old Ava, finds herself bothered by a neighbour who rings the doorbell and asks if he can talk to her. When Stella refuses, he comes back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, gradually filling her mailbox with notes, letters, photos and objects. But this is not a prelude to some thriller-like plot, and if tension builds, it does so imperceptibly. Stella rarely even looks at the missives left by the man she comes to regard as her stalker.
Another part of this book's elusiveness is the cool, matter-of-fact style in which it is written (comparable to How to Be a Good Wife, but with a less dramatic plot. The initial setup is also quite similar to Hilary Mantel's short story 'Sorry to Disturb'). It's so straightforward that it should, by rights, be really boring, but I never felt that way about it.
So much about Where Love Begins is deliberately non-specific. The characters' names seem, for the most part, so un-German that I found myself constantly wondering whether they'd been changed for the English translation. I was particularly intrigued as to whether the name of the stalker - he is always referred to as 'Mister Pfister' - is the same in the original, and from what I can make out from the Goodreads reviews written in German, it is. (And isn't that a weirdly but generically evocative name? I had to google it to check it wasn't the name of a character from an old kids' TV show - I felt sure I remembered it from somewhere - but it isn't.) There is nothing at all to suggest where in the world the settings might be located; the characters live and work in nondescript new-build 'developments'.
Sometimes, stories come alive, and you feel sure the characters must be real people, out there somewhere long after you've finished reading. Where Love Begins is the opposite: I felt certain Stella and co had ceased to exist as soon as I closed the book. It's hard to say why I find this a positive rather than a negative, but I think it has something to do with the fact that the whole story feels a little unreal, as if the characters were all ghosts all along, and the idea that they would all vanish into thin air is just the perfect way to conclude it....more
I read A Little Lumpen Novelita in its entirety within an hour, and it's one of those novellas that makes you want to read nothing but novellas. The sI read A Little Lumpen Novelita in its entirety within an hour, and it's one of those novellas that makes you want to read nothing but novellas. The story of Bianca and her short-lived 'life of crime' is perfectly formed, breathless and wonderfully strange. She - the narrator - lives alone, orphaned, with her brother, scratching a living until the arrival of her brother's two friends, silent and oddly compliant men referred to only as 'the Bolognan' and 'the Libyan'. These two, both of whom become Bianca's lovers, draw Bianca and her brother into a plot which involves her seducing another man, Maciste, a blind ex-bodybuilder. She goes along with it - after all, she seems to see some sort of vaguely imagined 'crime' as an inevitability in her life.
"If you were a car, what kind of car would you be?" A Fiat of flesh. (Not a good answer. What I'd really like to be is a vintage car, a Lamborghini. And I'd only leave the garage two or three times a year. I'd also like to be a Los Angeles taxi, the seats stained with semen and blood. Actually, I don't know how to drive and I couldn't care less about cars.)
Scenes are often dark or hazy, either literally (as in the labyrinth that is Maciste's sprawling home) or because of the unspecific, shifting nature of Bianca's description. Bianca is a passive character, mostly indifferent, and yet she is sympathetic, even sometimes funny in a wry, dry sort of way. She seems to let things happen to her without caring much one way or the other, until the end when she seizes control in rather dramatic fashion - or does she? We are left to wonder what may have happened off the page, and although Bianca lets us know at the beginning she is now 'a mother and a married woman' and these events are all in the past, there is no hint of a bridge between the two Biancas. As short and enigmatic as the book is, it's so effective at crafting its characters and their surroundings that it leaves a strong, even haunting, impression. ...more
(Review originally published on my blog, February 2016) I hadn't planned for such a recent translation to be the first Modiano I read, but its appeara(Review originally published on my blog, February 2016) I hadn't planned for such a recent translation to be the first Modiano I read, but its appearance on my local library's 'New Books' shelf was irresistible. In the end, I consumed this brief, hallucinatory novel in one gulp.
Within its pages is an account of a journey: that of a writer named Jean, who wanders Paris in search of the truth about a woman he loved long ago. It's a mystery of sorts - the woman, Dannie, may or may not have done something terrible, and this is shrouded in secrecy, as is the exact nature of her relationship with a gang of shady criminals. But it's also a dreamy stream-of-consciousness that's at its strongest when ruminating on the power of memory, allowing the narrator to slip back and forth in time until the lines between present-day reality and echoes of the past become blurred. Memories merge with the act of remembering. Indeed, the story starts with the line: 'And yet, it was no dream'; Jean might be making a statement here, but he's just as likely to be trying to convince himself.
They were only a few centimetres away from me behind the window, and the second one, with his moonlike face and hard eyes, didn't notice me either. Perhaps the glass was opaque from inside, like a one-way mirror. Or else, very simply, dozens and dozens of years stood between us: they remained frozen in the past, in the middle of that hotel foyer, and we no longer lived, they and I, in the same space of time.
The key to Jean's search, and apparently the evidence that none of this was a dream, is his black notebook. He uses the notebook as a guide, trying to traverse the Paris of his past - but he's almost always thwarted, finding the city changed. The story frequently captures the mingled pleasure and pain of revisiting youthful haunts; somehow you expect magic, and get nothing but a vague, off-kilter familiarity and a sense of the inexorable passage of time.
Could I possibly have left behind a double, someone who would repeat each of my former movements, follow in my old footsteps, for all eternity? No, nothing remained of us here. Time had wiped the slate clean. The area was brand-new, sanitised, as if it had been rebuilt on the site of a condemned block. And even though most of the buildings were still the same, they made you feel as if you were looking at a taxidermied dog, a dog you had once owned, that you had loved when it was alive.
Some of the locations Jean frequented as a young man, such as the country house he and Dannie visited, seem not to exist - did they ever? Then there's the places and people he knew only by code names to begin with. Everything is elusive; even Paris itself is amorphous. Some of the story is told through the medium of Jean's interrogation by a detective; yet another man chasing the truth about Dannie. That idea of the one-way mirror will keep recurring, the image of the present and the past standing on opposite sides of a sheet of glass, close enough to touch. So it is that in dreams you watch others live through the uncertainties of the present, while you know the future.
The Black Notebook is like a Parisian parallel to Tomás Eloy Martínez's The Tango Singer in its vivid portrayal of a city and the pursuit of a shadowy, shifting figure; it also reminded me of First Execution by Domenico Starnone - it's not as explicitly metafictional, but the books share a sense that the story could go anywhere, that memories are malleable and events already long in the past have a multitude of possible outcomes. It might be a quick read, but its depths seem fathomless. I'll certainly be seeking out more Modiano....more
Odd and fairytale-like, The Children's Home is a strange dream of a story. So many things about it are non-specific: the country and time period it's Odd and fairytale-like, The Children's Home is a strange dream of a story. So many things about it are non-specific: the country and time period it's set in always remain blurry; there is little context to anything; the characters accept peculiar and fantastical events with barely a flinch. In the most simple terms it's about a man called Morgan, who lives a cloistered life in his vast, walled manor; having been disfigured in an accident, the circumstances of which are not immediately made clear, he no longer ventures into the outside world, which is in any case described as war-torn and ravaged. One day, children start to appear on his estate. And they keep appearing, until there is a whole group of them - precocious, enigmatic, and with the apparent ability to disappear back into thin air whenever they need to.
Morgan cares for the children along with his housekeeper, Engel (another person who mysteriously appeared at the house one day and simply stayed there), and his doctor, Doctor Crane. There's no question of them leaving, no possibility that Morgan will hand them over to the government officials who conduct occasional inspections. Meanwhile, a boy named David emerges as their leader, commanding authority over not only the other children but Morgan too. As the story progresses, it edges further into the realm of fantasy and fable; I would be reluctant to actually describe it as horror, but there is certainly a hint of that too, especially in the climactic scenes. Macabre details - for example an intricate model of a pregnant woman which can be 'opened' to see the baby inside the womb - make certain parts of the story particularly eerie and therefore memorable.
The Children's Home has an unusually low average rating on Goodreads; it seems the lack of explanation and vagueness of the whole story have ruined it for many readers, and I can understand that - it does rather fall apart, as both fantasy and allegory, if you think about it too much. I'm not sure why that didn't bother me. All I can say is that I found the story enchanting enough that I was happy to fall under its spell and accept all its oddness....more
Beautifully written, lots of amazing sentences, but so stylised and mannered and empty. I didn't hate the characters - I found them so unreal that I cBeautifully written, lots of amazing sentences, but so stylised and mannered and empty. I didn't hate the characters - I found them so unreal that I couldn't even think of them in terms of whether I liked them. I couldn't see Paulina and Fran as actual people, their friendships or relationships as something that would ever exist outside the pages of a novel. I didn't believe in their connection for one second. Paulina's success with her hair products brand felt like something a 12-year-old would make up about their future dream career. It all reminded me of a book version of Mistress America, about which I had similar reservations. The (ahem) climax of the protagonists' college relationship was just so lazy, too easy, but like everything in this story, it seemed more symbolic than anything else.
I did warm to Paulina at points like this (and wish there had been more of these moments of humour):
p102: The dance floor was barbaric and free. Mystic shined a flashlight over the dancers. Paulina closed her eyes and replayed the compliments she'd received about her hair. She opened her eyes and saw Sadie dancing with Fran. Sadie's hand caressed Fran's curls and they danced, flitting around each other like preteens. Paulina raged inside herself. Why couldn't people stay where she put them? They were always pairing up to destroy her! "Babe, meet Darlene," Mystic said. "She's an art history major too." Paulina glanced at the slight redhead before her. She had the figure of a pencil. "Art history is dead," Paulina said and stormed off to find drugs.
p114: As she approached campus, she passed huddled groups of her classmates and paid them no mind. What the fuck were they whispering about? Her? Art students are so dramatic, she thought, weaving around them. She wasn't like them. She was a scholar. God, no, scholar sounded so stuffy and tweed and blah. She was one of the great thinkers of her time.
I didn't much like the whole but I loved certain details. This was incidentally similar to the last book I read - Yelena Moskovich's The Natashas - in that it's filled with brilliant similes and creative descriptions of people and things (it's fittingly arty throughout), but the characters feel forgotten about in comparison, and lack depth. I just wish Glaser had applied her sparkling style to something more interesting than a bunch of students sleeping with each other. (Maybe you need to be the same age as Paulina and Fran, or younger and in awe of the type of lives they lead, to really enjoy their story. And to be fair, I'd heard a lot about this and never intended to read it - I only changed my mind because I found it at the library.)...more
Look at Me is part family drama, part psychological suspense. The family - narrator Lizzy, her brother Ig and father Julian - are an intriguing lot, tLook at Me is part family drama, part psychological suspense. The family - narrator Lizzy, her brother Ig and father Julian - are an intriguing lot, to say the least: wealthy but bohemian, determinedly artistic and louche. Lizzy is a jobbing actress; Ig a Reiki teacher. Julian, who runs a wine business, is a charming womaniser who refuses to give up on the idea of being a free spirit. Lizzy and Ig, both nearing thirty, still live with Julian - albeit in studio flats built for them as annexes to the family home - and have little intention of leaving. Above all, the whole family reveres the memory of Lizzy and Ig's late mother, Margaret. Following her death a couple of years earlier, they are still in mourning; their easygoing behaviour belies how carefully they are controlling the tumult of emotions bubbling away under the surface, and Lizzy's grief in particular is a defining force in the novel.
Into this precariously balanced existence comes a woman claiming she is also Julian's daughter, the long-lost result of an affair while he was still married to Margaret. Married at 23, working as manager of her mother-in-law's gift shop, Eunice is the antithesis of the Knight family: fussy and conventional, with hopelessly unfashionable taste in ornaments. Lizzy rebels against Julian and Ig and impulsively makes contact with her newly-discovered half-sister, but it isn't long before Eunice worms her way into the Knights' home, making changes that become increasingly insidious and worrying.
Sarah Duguid really gets to the heart of how this sort of thing feels, and it's largely because of this - the intense evocation of all the layers of Lizzy's anxiety, such a strong sense of how closely she associates her home and its contents with memories of her mother - that the story works, that your sympathies remain with Lizzy. But then, at some points, I felt myself standing firmly in Eunice's shoes. The provincial ingénue thrown into this gang of upper-middle-class hippies, people who find it unbelievable - even suspicious - that a mere 'shop girl' would be able to spell out the word 'saturnine' during a game of Scrabble. Sometimes Duguid illuminates Lizzy's snobbery and selfishness, and just for a second we see her cast in a very unflattering light. Those pivotal words, 'look at me', are spoken by both Lizzy and Eunice; perhaps they're more alike than Lizzy would ever want to believe.
The thought of what Eunice might be planning filled me with a kind of animal fear. I feared she might be the sort of insecure woman who could only tolerate primacy. To that end, she'd work on my father, persuade him that it was right, it was time, for me to be forced to give up my studio to her. She'd do it behind my back, all the time smiling to my face. But she wouldn't see herself as cold or spiteful or envious, she'd see herself as a victim. She'd believe she had finally received what was rightfully hers. The thing I feared most was her lack of empathy, her hysterical self-absorption. I feared her absolute, demonic, all-consuming belief in the supremacy of her own needs. If she caused me pain, it wouldn't bother her. In fact, it might even give her pleasure. If she took what was mine, it wouldn't occur to her that I might miss it. I wouldn't even have the slight consolation of knowing that she understood what she had done, because the part of her brain that should be able to imagine how others felt appeared to be malfunctioning. I'd just be collateral damage, and she'd just be pleased that she had what she wanted. I feared that she was nothing more than a proper little manipulator, disguised in pink kitten heels, putting everyone off the scent with her tears while she told people she loved me like a sister. 'Do you think I could be an actress?' Eunice said.
This passage is a perfect encapsulation of the raw, honest way characters' emotions are portrayed in this book. Lizzy's fear that Eunice will literally force her out of her studio is, objectively, ridiculous, a thing blown out of all proportion by her profound unease, and her sneery attitude to Eunice ('the sort of insecure woman...') comes off terribly. But her assessment of Eunice's motives (and methods of self-justification) doesn't seem, in the end, to be all that wide of the mark. That those two paragraphs of Lizzy's spiralling horror are capped off with Eunice's 'Do you think I could be an actress?' is a tiny stroke of genius.
The whole story has a timeless feel about it - only a couple of details give away the fact that it's taking place in the present day; otherwise it could be set in almost any decade of the 20th century - and Duguid's intelligent, economical style works wonders on her characters. Look at Me blends a candid portrait of a family with the tension of a thriller, and the combination makes for a taut yet elegant novel....more
(Review originally published on my blog, February 2016)
Béatrice, a solitary young jazz singer from a genteel Parisian suburb, meets a mysterious woman
(Review originally published on my blog, February 2016)
Béatrice, a solitary young jazz singer from a genteel Parisian suburb, meets a mysterious woman named Polina. Polina visits her at night and whispers in her ear: 'There are people who leave their bodies and their bodies go on living without them. These people are named Natasha.' César, a lonely Mexican actor working in a call centre, receives the opportunity of a lifetime: a role as a serial killer on a French TV series. But as he prepares for the audition, he starts falling in love with the psychopath he is to play. Béatrice and César are drawn deeper into a city populated with visions and warnings, taunted by the chorusing of a group of young women, trapped in a windowless room, who all share the same name... Natasha.
This was a case of a book bearing little resemblance to the expectations I formed after reading the blurb - but then, it's fair to say The Natashas is nothing much like any other book. I made the mistake of taking that line about 'people who leave their bodies' literally, imagining the Natashas as a group of powerful, magical women, like something out of a myth. I was surprised to find they're actually a group of very young girls implied to be victims of a sex-trafficking operation; they're in that 'windowless room' because they are kept there by their captors. Incidental to the main body of the story, they only appear in occasional chapters, have no real arc, and don't get involved with the actual main characters, Béatrice and César. There's no better way to describe them than Kirsty Logan's observation, in her Guardian review of the book, that they function as a Greek chorus, introducing and commenting on the themes of the novel.
Yet this story is suffused with magical realism; it appears in the most unexpected of places, leading the reader, like the characters, down strange and winding paths. The story's most surreal moments - for example, César's conversation with a dead woman, who morphs into the ghost of someone else and signs off with 'I'll email you' - are its strongest. There's a cinematic quality to The Natashas that makes the visual comparisons its blurb draws - to the films of David Lynch and the photographs of Cindy Sherman - seem a better fit than the cited literary similarities (for the record, those are Angela Carter and Haruki Murakami, though Moskovich's writing reminded me most of Helen Oyeyemi).
Moskovich is a writer and producer of plays who was born in the Ukraine, educated in the USA and France, and now lives in Paris. I can't help but think her background has influenced her writing style, which is luminous, amusing and creative. Her similes and brief descriptions of people are odd but beautiful, attention-grabbing simply because they are so unusual and because they instantly conjure up an image. Here are just a few I made a note of while reading the book:
Béatrice thought about his question. It felt like a room full of empty shoes.
The woman's cheekbones sloped in a way that made Béatrice think that she had lost her watch or that she couldn't have children.
"Sorry, Pardohen," an American-looking girl said as she pulled her rolling suitcase after her. César got a glimpse of her face. She must have played the clarinet as a child and sided with her dad during the divorce.
As strange as it is, The Natashas also has a distinctive sense of humour, something which works as a welcome antidote to its darker moments. The scene in which César works himself into a frenzy of anxiety over turning down a terrible-sounding role, convincing himself it was actually the chance of a lifetime, is particularly funny. Of the two protagonists, he is by far the most successful, seeming both more real and more fanciful a character than Béatrice. He works in a call centre to make ends meet and stares at the phone in hope of good news from his agent, but there's also his split-personality identity as Manny; the surreal episode of his relationship with Stefan; the aforementioned conversation with a ghost.
This brings me to the downside of The Natashas' unreality: while César feels complete, some of the other characters are one-dimensional, and Béatrice is the prime example. Her shallowness is unfortunate considering that she's the ostensible heroine - but it wasn't lost on me that my reaction to Béatrice was designed to match the character's own frustration, as well as the flimsiness of her image in the eyes of others, as nothing more than a beautiful object, an empty vessel for their desires. In this way, The Natashas is a hall of mirrors.
The novel touches on themes of beauty, sexuality, self-actualisation and the escape to be found in becoming someone else, but it doesn't resolve any of these into a decisive ending or message, remaining inscrutable to the last. It works best when it glories in its oddness, and personally, I was relieved it didn't attempt to say something about objectification or the sex trade. The resolution of the novel - inasmuch as there is a resolution - is woozy and nonsensical. People split in two; Béatrice leaves a room while she's simultaneously up on stage, singing. The narrative, which is made up of numbered sections of various lengths all the way through, breaks down to mere sentences. It leaves an impression of glimpsed scenes, haunting fragments of dreams. The Natashas, though, stay in their windowless room....more
Serviceable mystery, read in a couple of hours. Might have been 3 stars if there hadn't been a couple of completely inexplicable chapters which, even Serviceable mystery, read in a couple of hours. Might have been 3 stars if there hadn't been a couple of completely inexplicable chapters which, even after finishing it, I can't link to the main narrative in any way. I liked the setting and was pleased the author didn't try and shoehorn some stupid romance into the plot, as so often happens with these books: it was a straightforward thriller. I also liked the detail of the online forum (which was what made me interested in this book in the first place). But it's not enormously well written (or edited), and the 'shock twist' of the culprit's identity I had guessed within the first few chapters - I know it sounds unbearably smug when people say that, but it really is obvious in this one. Definitely not the worst example of this genre, but far from the best. ...more
I only took this out of the library because I've heard several times that it's absolutely terrible, and I was curious. I quite like Alexa Chung, largeI only took this out of the library because I've heard several times that it's absolutely terrible, and I was curious. I quite like Alexa Chung, largely based on her style - I don't think I've ever seen her presenting anything - but that's probably the way most people think about her, hence the publication of this scrapbook-cum-style-guide rather than an autobiography. It is a combination of irreverent commentary, fashion advice, photography and illustrations, mixed with autobiographical anecdotes. And... it's quite a nice, enjoyable, amusing book. I don't know exactly what it is people were expecting that's made so many so irritated with this - did they think Chung was going to write a detailed step-by-step guide on how to replicate her life and wardrobe? It's exactly what I would have expected it to be, and although it is a very quick read and probably more something you'd buy as a gift than get yourself, I didn't think it was disappointing (although, to be fair, my expectations were low). It may indeed be quite pointless, but there's nothing wrong with that now and again, and if I'm reading a style book by a celebrity then I don't want it to be challenging anyway....more
Over the course of just three books, Essie Fox has established herself as an author I am keen to follow and can rely on to produce atmospheric, compelOver the course of just three books, Essie Fox has established herself as an author I am keen to follow and can rely on to produce atmospheric, compelling historical fiction. The Goddess and the Thief, which boasts a particularly gorgeous cover, follows a similar template to The Somnambulist and Elijah's Mermaid: inspired by Victorian gothic and aspiring to Sarah Waters levels of torment and unpredictability, it involves an orphan girl who is uprooted from her home and forced to live with an unwelcoming relative in London. Alice Willoughby, raised in India, resigns herself to a life aiding the parlour tricks of her aunt Mercy, a spiritualist medium, until a louche, scheming character by the name of Lucian Tilsbury enters their lives. Drawn back repeatedly to reminders of her upbringing in India - Hindu icons frequently feature in the narrative - Alice finds herself irrevocably bound to Tilsbury, and becomes part of a plot to steal the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the Queen.
This novel started wonderfully: in the first few chapters, the narrative paints a picture of India that is vivid, evocative and hugely beguiling. I was engaged by the story, which has as many twists, turns and dead ends as you'd expect, but I have to admit that at times Alice really got on my nerves. I know it was meant to be part of her character, but she was often a bit too hysterical to be likeable, as well as unbelievably naive, and her fickle switching on and off affection for certain male characters was taken to extremes I found almost comical. There were occasions when I rather felt that I agreed with Mercy about her, instead of sympathising with Alice herself. Another problem was that I found the Queen Victoria scenes unrealistic - nobody seemed to behave with the reverence and decorum I would have expected, instead taking it all in their stride, which didn't ring true.
I enjoyed Elijah's Mermaid a lot more than The Somnambulist, and I hoped The Goddess and the Thief would be another improvement, but I'm afraid I found it all rather dreary and was getting bored towards the end. I was disappointed that Fox chose to set so much of the story in London rather than having Alice return to India, since the beginning, which focused on this location, was so strong. Fox is a talented historical novelist and her work touches on a great number of interesting themes: in this book, the relationship between the British Empire and India is explored in a manner that seems believable but is also sensitive to the racial and cultural issues involved. However, without a more sympathetic protagonist and/or more inspiring plot, I struggled to connect properly with the story. I'm still interested in Fox's writing, but this, sadly, wasn't her best....more
Loading...
