Author: David Hebblethwaite

Still: ‘Ten a Day’ by Jan Woolf

7th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a clock (showing five past ten) on a bare stone wall, off-centre as we view the image. Part of a blue board can be seen below the clock.

The story: a woman thinks about how much better life would be – how much more time there’d be – if the 24-hour clock were replaced with the decimal time used in the French Republic. What gives this story its edge is a clear sense that this is a false hope, and that the protagonist can’t move on in life because she won’t let go of the idea.

Links: Jan Woolf’s website / interview with Woolf about her story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Book notes: John Grant and Sam Hawken

5th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

John Grant, The Lonely Hunter (2012)

Full disclosure: John Grant is a friend – but I knew his fiction first of all, and this novella from PS Publishing is as good as ever. Our narrator is one Emil Martenson, a writer recalling how he first met his wife Natalie. At the time, she was married to Danny Lerner, a best-selling American novelist living in luxury in France. The much less successful Emil had taken on a commission to interview Lerner – which was interrupted by the latter’s untimely death. It wouldn’t be until many years later that Emil would meet Natalie again and discover the truth about the erratic shape of Lerner’s career; why he veered so dramatically between long periods of being withdrawn and bursts of passionate articulacy; and the real reason for Lerner’s death.

As a murder mystery, The Lonely Hunter plays the game with its red herrings and twists. But Grant’s novella is about more than that: Emil is open about the fact that he has changed some of the identifying details of his tale, and muses over the differences between real life and fiction. This is what I think is at the heart of The Lonely Hunter: individuals creating stories about themselves and others, to the extent that they become fictional characters, of a sort – and you’ll close the book wondering exactly where the boundaries between reality and fiction lie.

Sam Hawken, Tequila Sunset (2012)

At the start of Tequila Sunset, Flip Morales is released from prison and returns home to El Paso, Texas – but he can’t leave his gangland past behind.

Soon he is reluctantly caught up in one his gang’s drug trafficking operations while also acting as a police informant. Two further protagonists are police officers investigating the gang’s activities: Cristina Salas in El Paso, and Matías Segura over the Mexican border in Ciudad Juárez. As the big job goes down all three characters find their lives at risk and their close relationships tested to the limit.

Sam Hawken pitches the tone of his second novel just right: this is a book that deals with violent and brutal subject matter, but it never feels gratuitous or sensationalist. Each narrative thread is anchored in everyday concerns: Flip’s trying to make good in work and life; Cristina’s concern for her young son; Matías’s relationship with his wife.

The sense you get is of people doing what they can in the face of social issues almost too great to comprehend. Hawken makes the point that the gang is greater than its individual parts: that if someone’s removed there will always be another to take their place. Even as Tequila Sunset resolves, you know there’s more out there that we haven’t even seen, that the story Hawken tells is part of a much broader canvas of events. The novel is a thrilling ride, but it also makes you appreciate the seriousness behind it.

(This review also appears at We Love This Book.)

My Life in Books

4th November 2012 / / 2 Comments

Today, you’ll find me over at Stuck in a Book, taking part in today’s instalment of My Life in Books. This is a feature where Simon invites bloggers to talk about some of the books that represent important milestones in their lives. Besides me, you can also see what Frances from Nonsuch Book.(You might want to read my choices in conjunction with the Triple Choice Tuesday I did for Reading Matters last year, because I deliberately picked different titles this time.)

My ideas for a childhood favourite included You Tell Me by Roger McGough and Michael Rosen, and Word Box by Gyles Brandreth… but I went for something else in the end.

When it came to choosing one of the first ‘grown up’ books I enjoyed, there was only ever going to be one author. There were many possible books, but one stood out for the place it had in my life.

The book from early adulthood could easily have been The Prestige or Perdido Street Station… but I chose a different one.

My choice of favourite book from the last few years might have been The Rehearsal, or Skippy Dies, or Forgetting Zoe, or An A-Z of Possible Worlds, or so many others… but, as you’ll have gathered by now, it’s none of the above.

As for the book that might surprise people… you’ll just have to go and see.

I think it certainly surprised Frances. Simon gave us a list of each other’s choices (without revealing who we were or showing us what the other had said about their books) and asked us what we thought they said about the person choosing. I was interested to see Frances’s comments – I think she captures the essence of what I most like to read.

I really enjoyed taking part in this, and I’d like to thank Simon for inviting me. Do check out the My Life in Books archives, as it’s a fascinating feature.

Finally, should you now be visiting this blog for the first time – welcome, and I hope you find something of interest here.

Quiz: Name the Publisher

3rd November 2012 / / 1 Comment

Just for fun, here’s a bookish quiz. Below are 25 cryptic (or maybe not-so-cryptic) clues to the names of UK publishers, imprints, and small presses. How many can you guess?

1. Story title
2. NaCl
3. Travelling show in WC1?
4. Leads the Tour de France
5. On the Royal Mile
6. Choose an entrance?
7. Ficus
8. Freshwater nymph
9. Star (Cymraeg)
10. A cloak for Mr Creek?
11. Eaten by the Ouroboros
12. Punctuation mark
13. A job for the end of the working week?
14. The Hunter
15. Writer of Eugene Onegin
16. The exception that disproves the rule?
17. Queen of the Shades
18. A fine wine
19. Android in a huff
20. City of Lanark?
21. Early calculator
22. Sad elk?
23. Second-largest ocean
24. The Hay Wain and DCI Banks
25. There are more tales

If you get stuck, here are the answers.

Still: ‘Waiting’ by Justin Hill

2nd November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a view of a derelict work-room or store-room, with peeling walls and debris piled on surfaces.

The story: a well-constructed mosaic of events from Justin Hill’s life, with recurring themes of memory and going through doors – and the melancholy undercurrent of knowing that, once you’ve gone through a door in life, you can’t go back.

Links: Justin Hill’s website / interview with Hill on his story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Still: ‘Morayo’ by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

1st November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: rows of empty bookshelves.

The story: Morayo, an old woman about to move into a nursing home, thinks about her beloved books, which are shortly to join her – but Tom, the social worker set to bring them over can see only a messy pile that needs to be disposed of as efficiently as possible. This piece is both a portrait of the emotional value that books can have to someone; but it’s also a poignant tale of loss – with Tom”s failure to recognise or consider which books matter most to Morayo acting as an indication that the person she has been is becoming lost.

Links: Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s website / interview with Ladipo Manyika about her story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

October wrap-up

31st October 2012 / / 0 Comments

The best book that I read in October was Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt (the latest title from And Other Stories, publishers of Deborah Levy’s Booker-shortlisted Swimming Home). It’s a disturbing but superbly realised study of how language and thought can be manipulated to make something abhorrent start to seem reasonable.

Harry Karlinsky’s debut novel, The Evolution of Inanimate Objects, is a biography of a fictitious historical character — Thomas Darwin, youngest child of Charles, who thought he could apply his father’s theories to artefacts. It’s a playful mixture of fact and fiction, a poignant character study, and a reflection on science. I reviewed it for Strange Horizons.

More reviews from October:

…and I continued my story-by-story review of Roelof Bakker’s anthology Still.

In features:

Still: ‘Sere’ by David Rose

30th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the corner of a room, with a flyer for an old amateur operatic performance lying among the dust and flakes of wallpaper.

The story: the word ‘sere’ means ‘dry’ or ‘withered’, and the old narrator of this piece is feeling that way in relation to the modern world. Rose captures a certain stiff formality in the voice of his protagonist; and the range of details focused on creates an effective sense of diffuseness.

Links: David Rose’s website / interview with Rose on his story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

Book notes: debuts by Martine McDonagh and Caroline Cass

28th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

Martine McDonagh, I have waited, and you have come (2006/12)

Thirty years hence, when climate change has worn away most of the society we know, Rachel lives alone in an old mill in Cheshire. She has little desire for human contact, avoiding the nearby communes, but does make the odd trip to the market for supplies. It’s there where Noah, a trader, invites Rachel to meet up later (it seems to hesitant to be called a ‘date’). She agrees, but finds not Noah waiting for her at the local pub, but a man named Jez White, who claims to be a friend of Noah’s. White appears more and more in Rachel’s life, and we see from pages of his journal that he’s had an eye on her for some time – but Rachel is on her own search for the truth about Jez White.

I have waited, and you have come is rather subdued in tone, as befits a novel narrated by such an insular character as Rachel. Her narrative voice is largely focused on process and physical detail, which works well for the book in a number of ways. It brings to life the grey dampness of the landscape, and its uncertainty – familiar place names and institutions, but no longer as tightly bound into a society. It also makes it harder to anticipate Rachel’s ultimate intention, leading to an effectively understated ending.

Links: Martine McDonagh’s website / Myriad Editions, the publisher

Caroline Cass, The Plant Hunter’s Tale (2012)

In Victorian England, Rullie Montrose is a plant hunter, who travels the world in search of newplant specimens to bring back to Kew or his own garden. In this short novel by Caroline Cass, he heads to the Himalayan kingdom of Hunza, said to be the home of one of the rarest of all flowering plants. When Rullie reaches his destinations, he learns from Hunza’s ruler, Zafran Khan, that the kingdom has no such plant. But it does have delicious apricot trees, a few seedlings of which Khan is prepared to give Rullie – in exchange for all his gold. Rullie returns to Hunza several times over the next few years – for more apricots, yes, but he has also taken a shine to Zafran Khan’s young daughter.

The Plant Hunter’s Tale is a story of obsession – a portrait of man clearly more at home on his search than staying with his wife Charlotte in the English countryside. Cass conveys Rullie’s restlessness well, though I found some of the secondary characters less successful (Zafran Khan’s daughter in particular tends to come across as a cipher). But there’s an effective melancholy to the ending, where the novel takes on more of a folktale shape – and we see the inevitable coming just before it happens.

Link: Quartet Books, the publisher

Still: ‘A Job Worth Doing’ by S.J. Butler

27th October 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: an old telephone, with its handset off the cradle, sitting on a large wooden meeting-room table.

The story: a cleaner goes to do one last shift at the defunct and empty town hall. This story recalls (coincidentally) the first entry in Still, ‘Midnight Hollow’, which takes a very similar premise. Butler’s story is as evocative as Piggott’s, but the tone is warmer, less melancholic. If ‘Midnight Hollow’ is a story of loss, ‘A Job Worth Doing’ is more a celebration of what has passed.

Links: S.J. Butler’s website / interview with Butler about her story

This is one of a series of posts on the anthology Still. Click here to read the rest.

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