What’s teetering on the bedside bookstack this January.
no one is talking about this by Patricia Lockwood, Bloomsbury Circus, 2021
Hear ye! Hear ye!
That’s me ringing the bell in the town square while I hold up this book for the villagers to see.
Behold something new!!
Patricia Lockwood (of Priestdaddy fame) has created something completely unique in this book. Equal parts profound and profane it slips from satire into something heartbreakingly earnest.
The narrator is increasingly living her life through ‘the portal’. She went viral asking “Can a dog be twins?” and appears around the world discussing everything portal-related. Our online lives squirm under the scrutiny and she’s writing in a connected/disconnected stream-of-consciousness that mirrors the online rabbit holes you can fall down.
The second half of the book changes tack, with the sickness of the narrator’s niece. Life is lived offline and measured out in hospital halls and hushed tones instead. This book is quite a ride, very clever and something I’m still thinking about.
Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor, Daunt Books Originals, 2021
I have a particular weakness for collections of linked short stories but these tales get my love for more than their connection and continuation of a narrative. He is a master of the form.
Oh, he’s just done that has he? He’s just perfectly captured intimate moments of vulnerability or repeated habits of pain or the cruel spar between hurt partners? Why, yes. Yes, he has and he’s done it seamlessly across gender and race and sexuality.
The cruel machismo between brothers, friends and lovers sometimes scared me because it was hard to disbelieve in its perfect delivery. And I ached at the sense of acceptance and exile these characters felt from themselves and the people who were supposed to love them.
Signs and Wonders by Delia Falconer,Scribner, 2021
The sub-heading on the cover of this book of essays is perfect – Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss.
I’ve loved Delia Falconer ever since my first year of university when we studied her essay Colombus’ Blindness. Look it up if you can. It’s more than 20 years old now, but even back then, her writing mixed poetic eloquence with intelligent observation and meticulous research.
I’ve only just started reading the essays in Signs and Wonders but thus far they have that same beauty and elegance combined with a curiosity that stretches from literature to archaeology, geology, ornithology and beyond.
And if you think these are a gorgeous (and yes, sobering) read, then try her exquisite fiction The service of the clouds and The lost thoughts of soldiers.
Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout, Viking, 2021
Have you ever read Elizabeth Strout? She’s built a career writing beautifully about ordinary people in vignettes or interlinked short stories that combine to form much more than the sum of their parts. Writers are warned against this – both the short stories and the quiet lives. They’re told no one will publish or read them.
I have to admit that I’m only talking about Oh William!, My name is Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge and Olive Again. I haven’t read her other books but what I love about these two sets is that they’re also interlinked (and you know I love em’ linked). She writes the literary version of a spin-off series.
But I digress. Oh William! comes after My name is Lucy Barton. William is Lucy Barton’s ex-husband and as usual, the recollection of someone else’s life always tells us more about the character reminiscing than they’d like to think.
The Last Woman in the World by Inga Simpson, Hachette, 2021
Rachel is a glass artist who has chosen isolation. She lives remote and off the grid, just the way she likes it. Outside world necessities are only delivered through her sister Monique or friend Mia. The same week that Mia doesn’t turn up, a young woman and her sick baby arrive on Rachel’s doorstep with news of a shadowy menace.
They are a charged presence that feed on fear and have killed off the population. First it was only happening far away but now they are here and Rachel needs to leave her sanctuary to find her sister get help for the woman and baby.
Perhaps we can only process climate destruction as a story but the burning fires, vast destruction and consumptive lifestyles of this novel are real. A prescient read about art, the environment, pandemics and our internal fears.
The Safe Place by Anna Downes, Affirm Press, 2020
Emily is an aspiring actor but her auditions aren’t leading to any work and she’s just been fired from her temp job. When she’s offered an au-pair-ish role by her ex-boss on a coastal property in France, it seems like the life line she needs.
The days are sunny, the landscape is gorgeous and the work is satisfying but some things feel a bit off. The husband is absent and cagey, the wife is friendly but unpredictable and the silent daughter’s unspecific health issues just don’t add up. This is the perfect summer page-turner.
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny, 4th Estate, 2021
Jane is in love with Duncan and Duncan is ‘with’ Jane but in the extra decade and a half he has on her, he was also ‘with’ most of Boyne City.
Having Duncan in your life also means you have his ex-wife Aggie and his co-worker Jimmy. One night, an accident changes everything and the disparate sum of these people equals a new kind of family.
Written with her usual talent for getting human interaction just right, this doesn’t play for laughs as much as her earlier book Standard Deviation (which I love, love, loved) but the wit is still there and I think this one has more heart.
First Love by Gwendoline Riley, Granta, 2017
After reading and love, love loving Gwendoline Riley’s My Phantoms, I rushed to read something else by her. At first, I thought I’d picked up the same book. Here was the same bully of a father, the narcissistic mother, the narrator, Neve, trying to distance herself from a traumatic childhood in Northern England. But in place of a supportive and stable long-term partner for our narrator there is a totally toxic and abusive husband. His emotional and verbal blows are relentless and it’s lucky Riley writes short novels because it would be difficult to read much more of Neve absorbing and accommodating his tirades.
the family next door by Sally Hepworth, Pan Macmillan, 2018
This was a slow burn for me. Initially, the set-up of three neighbouring mums with their own secret felt a bit too staged but as other characters were added, the narrative found its way. There’s a lot about the tiredness and chaos of having young kids. I can certainly attest to the truth of it but this is just a warning, in case that’s not what you feel like picking up in your down time.
The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2021
Marco Carrera is ‘the Hummingbird’. He is an ophthalmologist in Florence. This is the story of his life as told through letters, phone conversations with therapists, emails, conversations and good old-fashioned prose narrative.
There are a lot of accolades on the cover of this one, so my expectations were sky high. Alas, as a reader, it wasn’t for me. I gave it a good go but the lists, digressions and detail about mid-century furniture and Italian architecture in the 70s weren’t for me. I wonder what it would’ve read like in the original Italian and if it lost anything in translation.
As a writer though, it was an interesting example of non-linear narrative using multiple forms.
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Nina Cullen 