Category: Authors

My favourite books read in 2021

29th December 2021 / / 8 Comments

Here we are again, approaching the end of another year. As usual, I’ve picked out my twelve favourite books that I read in 2021, regardless of when they were first published. I always find that doing this provides me with an interesting snapshot of my reading year as a whole. This year’s snapshot has given me cause to reflect – but more on that in another post. For now, here are my reading highlights of 2021:

12. Angélique Villeneuve, Winter Flowers (2014)
Translated from French by Adriana Hunter (2021)

A novel set in the aftermath of World War One, in which a woman tries to rebuild her relationship with her disfigured husband, while the community around comes to terms with its own traumas. Winter Flowers is one of those books that cuts through preconceived notions about its subject matter to capture raw feeling. 

11. Judith Bryan, Bernard and the Cloth Monkey (1998)

If it hadn’t been for the ‘Black Britain: Writing Back‘ series curated by Bernardine Evaristo, I might never have come across Bernard and the Cloth Monkey. I’m so glad I did. This tale of a young woman returning to her family home constantly shifts in register, creating a kaleidoscope of emotion in a seemingly ordinary setting. 

10. Adam Mars-Jones, Batlava Lake (2021)

I like stories that are shaped by a strong narrative voice, and that’s very much the case with Batlava Lake. Mars-Jones introduces us to Barry, a matey, chatty engineer who’s really not equipped to convey the brutality of war in Kosovo. But that very inadequacy is what makes the book work so well. 

9. Andrew Komarnyckyj, Ezra Slef, the Next Nobel Laureate in Literature (2021)

Of all the books I read in 2021, I think this was probably the most fun. It’s a spoof literary biography whose purported author talks more about himself than his subject, and deals with a Twitter troll by (inadvertently) making a deal with the Devil. Just thinking back to reading Ezra Slef makes me smile. 

8. Rebecca Watson, little scratch (2021)

little scratch was the least conventionally written novel that I read all year, with its words scattered in different patterns across the page. Those words are the thoughts of a young woman going about her day while something plays on her mind. It’s a technique that really brought me close to the narrator and the tension that grows throughout the book. 

7. Ivana Dobrakovová, Bellevue (2009)
Translated from Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood (2019)

This book was probably my biggest surprise of the reading year, in that I wasn’t prepared for the way it turns, so subtly and effectively. Its protagonist takes a summer job working with disabled people, but struggles to cope. Her mental health is affected, which we see entirely through changes in the shape of her narration – which is what makes the effect so powerful. 

6. Natasha Brown, Assembly (2021)

More shapeshifting prose here, but in this case the protagonist is finding her voice. A Black British woman working in the banking industry reflects on her situation, and asks herself how she really wants to be. The prose is constantly changing to match her thoughts as she assembles the pieces of her life, building to a crescendo for narrator and reader alike. 

5. Isabel Waidner, Sterling Karat Gold (2021)

A worthy winner of the Goldsmiths Prize, this novel strikes me as a carnival – in the sense of both an entertainment and a festival challenging social structures. Sterling and their friends face a nightmarish authoritarian world that works against them in ways they don’t understand. There are matadors, showtrials, time-travelling spaceships – and hope to be found in pushing back. 

4. Federico Falco, A Perfect Cemetery (2016)
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Croft (2021)

I love story collections that work as a whole, and this one certainly does. Falco’s protagonists are all facing pivotal moments of change in their lives, and his stories are suitably dynamic. There’s a great sense of place and character about these tales, and each one opens out memorably as it ends.

3. Claudia Piñeiro, Elena Knows (2007)
Translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle (2021)

Elena has Parkinsons, and this novel is structured around the ebb and flow of her energy levels. She’s forced to confront the limits of her knowledge about her daughter, which reflects the limits of what she can do during the day. With so many of the books on my list, the language brought me right into the protagonist’s world – perhaps none more so than Elena Knows.

2. Jon McGregor, Lean Fall Stand (2021)

I was intrigued at the prospect of a Jon McGregor novel set partly in the Antarctic. In the end, I experienced Lean Fall Stand as viscerally as any of his others. A polar guide tries to rebuild his life and self after a stroke. McGregor explores how language breaks down and re-forms around this event, in a dizzying rush of a novel. 

1. Paul Griffiths, The Tomb Guardians (2021)

The single most powerful reading experience I had in 2021 was this slim novel interweaving conversations between the guardians of Christ’s tomb and a present-day lecturer examining 16th-century depictions of them. The book hovers on the knife-edge of uncertainty, and rivals Convenience Store Woman for the sudden power of its ending. This is why I’m reading fiction in the first place.

***

There we go. I hope you’ve found some books in 2021 that you enjoyed as much as I did these. If you’d like to see my selections from previous years, you can find them here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. As ever, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next year – you can also catch me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Haus Publishing: Land of Cockaigne by Jeffrey Lewis

23rd December 2021 / / 2 Comments

Jeffrey Lewis is an American novelist who has also written for television (including Hill Street Blues). His latest novel takes us to the small town of Sneeds Harbor on the coast of Maine. Walter and Charley Rath came to Sneeds twenty years ago with money, which they used to buy their house, and a disused summer camp for Charley’s art studio.

All this changes when their son Stephen dies in a carjacking in the Bronx. He worked with young people, aiming to keep them out of prison. His dream was to set up a programme on which Bronx kids could experience a different way of life by spending a couple of weeks in Sneeds Harbor.

Walter and Charley decide to honour Stephen’s memory by giving over their home to his dream project. Walter describes this as the Land of Cockaigne, referring to a mythical land of plenty from the Middle Ages. The Raths’ idea is not totally welcomed in Sneeds Harbor, but change is on its way regardless…

One of my favourite things about Land of Cockaigne is its style, which I would describe as nervy and on-edge:

Back in Sneeds the Raths did the things that were done by people in their situation, including not knowing what to call their situation so that they wouldn’t be hurt further either by too much honesty or too many lies, the middle way of grief.

There’s something in the shape of the sentences that means they don’t quite run smoothly. This really suits a novel about a community going through intense social change, and makes for striking reading.

Published by Haus Publishing.

Prototype Publishing: The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven

10th December 2021 / / 0 Comments

Somewhere in Europe, a young woman arrives in a secluded mountain town to work as apprentice to the pharmacist, August Malone (symbolically, we know his name but not hers). Malone believes in finding out and anticipating his customers’ needs and wants to an extreme extent – so much so that they will happily reveal all sorts of information about themselves. This information is useful for Malone (albeit not ethical) when he runs for Mayor.

In the meantime, the narrator finds her personality and sense of self dissipating in the force of Malone’s presence and the flow of customers’ stories. There’s a hazy quality to the prose that really works to convey this feeling. The town itself also feels slightly out of time, despite having modern technology – not antiquated, but perhaps somewhere whose essence remains the same whatever happens in the world. It’s the sort of place where one can imagine a life becoming static and fraying at the edges.

The Weak Spot is Lucie Elven’s debut, and she’s clearly someone I will want to read again. The atmosphere of the novel is so vivid, and it’s what lingered most for me after the last page.

Published by Prototype.

Salt Publishing: The Retreat by Alison Moore

3rd December 2021 / / 0 Comments

This new novel by Alison Moore (probably best known for The Lighthouse) is typically unnerving – and it’s my favourite one of hers yet. In the 1990s, fortysomething Sandra joins an artists’ retreat on a private island, hoping to rekindle her interest in painting. She’s also been fascinated with the island since childhood, as it belonged to a reclusive silent movie star. 

The retreat does not go as Sandra had hoped. The other guests are standoffish, excluding her from their conversations and activities. (My favourite telling detail in the book is that the other group members tend to fob Sandra off with a cheese salad when making dinner, as she’s the only vegetarian in the group.) Her work is defaced, her things go missing… There’s a sense that something supernatural may be menacing Sandra, not just her fellow guests. 

A second strand of The Retreat is set in the present or near future. Carol retreats to the island to work on a novel, but she’s by herself – and going there by private arrangement, rather than in response to a public advertisement. Ghosts interfere with Carol’s stay, too but the tone is lighter – or at least, that’s the way Carol reacts. 

Tension builds gradually in The Retreat, as it moves from the interpersonal to overtones of the supernatural. But, look, the highest compliment I can pay this novel is that I just wanted to keep on reading it. I don’t generally say that I couldn’t put a book down, but certainly I was always impatient to pick The Retreat up again. If you’re in the mood for a ghostly tale, give this a go. 

Published by Salt.

World Editions: New Year by Juli Zeh (tr. Alta L. Price)

25th November 2021 / / 5 Comments

Life has scuppered several plans I had this month, including taking part in German Literature Month. Still, I’ve managed to read this, the latest novel by Juli Zeh. I have read Zeh once before, when I reviewed Decompression for Shiny New Books. Like that novel, New Year is set in Lanzarote – and it’s an interesting character portrait. 

Henning has taken his young family to Lanzarote for a surprise Christmas break. He might have been hoping to get away from life’s problems, but the trip soon creates issues of its own, such as another man flirting with Henning’s wife Theresa. 

On New Year’s Day, Henning resolves to make a new start, and cycles up into the mountains. The first part of the novel alternates between Henning’s bike ride and his reflections on the current holiday and his life. There’s a real sense here of the environment and Henning’s state of mind. 

We learn that Henning has panic attacks, caused by something buried in the past. When he reaches the summit of his ride, something about the place doesn’t feel quite right. A memory stirs – and, for the rest of the book, we see what happened in Henning’s childhood. In effect, New Year is structured like Henning’s bike ride: the journey to the top that maps out Henning’s present and recent past; and the exhilarating ride down again, as we discover just why Henning is the way he is. 

Published by World Editions. 

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (tr. Frances Riddle): Shiny New Books review

23rd November 2021 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I had a review elsewhere, but there’s a new one up now at Shiny New Books. This time it’s a book from Charco Press: Elena Knows by the Argentinian author Claudia Piñeiro (translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle. Elena is an old woman with Parkinson’s, whose daughter Rita has been found hanging in the church belfry. Elena is convinced that this must be murder, and she’s travelling across the city to see someone who may be able to help her learn more.

Of all the Charco books I’ve read, I think this may be my favourite. It explores themes of identity and motherhood, and the limits of what we can know about other people – and it conveys vividly how Elena’s life is structured around her condition.

Click here to read my review of Elena Knows in full.

Inkandescent: Address Book by Neil Bartlett

8th November 2021 / / 1 Comment

My post today is part of a blog tour for Address Book, the latest title by Neil Bartlett, published by Inkandescent. Address Book is a cycle of seven stories, each inspired by an address at which the author has lived. 

My favourite stories are at the beginning and end. In the first piece, ’14 Yeomans Mews’, hospital doctor Andrew takes us back to when he was fifteen in 1974, and met an older man, John, at a railway station. Andrew was powerfully attracted to him, as he had been to others – but there was something different this time: “None of the other men I’ve ever met has made me admit that the boy doing the staring and the boy with my name are the same person.”

John invites Andrew to visit his home, which changes everything. Bartlett brilliantly evokes the combination of desire, joy and trepidation that Andrew feels. It becomes clear that this is not just a question of love or sexual attraction: John also represents an aspirational lifestyle – a secure life – that’s beyond anything the young Andrew knows. This is a story of powerful emotions, not least the poignant ending. 

At the other end of the book is ’40 Marine Parade’. After almost thirty years together, Roger and Todd left London to settle down by the sea. But life took a tragic turn just seven years later, as Bartlett (in Roger’s voice) conveys in stark terms: “one cold Wednesday afternoon in March, Todd just wasn’t there any more. He wasn’t on the stairs; he wasn’t in the kitchen, and he wasn’t in the bed.”

The story depicts Roger working through his grief dynamically, represented by him exploring a run-down old house. Eventually he meets someone new, which makes this piece something of a mirror to the first one, looking hopefully to the future, as Andrew looked back on the past. 

The seven stories of Address Book range through time and perspective. For example, ‘203 Camden Road’ is set in the 1960s, where a pregnant woman gets to know her gay neighbour. ’72 Seaton Point’ is narrated by a gay man who attends his friends’ civil partnership ceremony, and reflects on how times have changed. I really enjoyed Address Book, and I’ll be looking out for more of Neil Bartlett’s work in the future. 

#GoldsmithsPrize2021: little scratch by Rebecca Watson

2nd November 2021 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes you have to start reading a novel before you realise what makes it unconventional. Then there are books like little scratch that just look unconventional on the page. To see what I mean, look at the sample page in this review at the Glasgow Guardian.

The words scattered across the pages of little scratch are the thoughts of a young woman who works as an assistant at a news organisation. The novel takes place over one day: the narrator gets up, goes to work, spends the evening with her partner (“my him”) at a poetry reading. Ordinary enough, perhaps – but the telling makes all the difference. 

Rebecca Watson’s writing places the reader right into the ebb and flow of her protagonist’s thoughts. A conventional paragraph may give way to two columns of prose (external dialogue on one side, internal thoughts on the other), to a swarm of words, to any number of patterns… This woman’s mind is restless, and we feel that. 

Among all the protagonist’s thoughts, it’s clear that she dwells on something in particular – the itch that she longs to scratch. There are glimpses of this in the way she’s wary around men: for example, in one scene the woman is walking to the train station, and the prose becomes a grid of the word ‘walking’, apart from a few words that reflect what she sees from the corner of her eyes. A man is driving up: “is he going to say something?” There is a real sense of dread here. 

The woman’s inner turmoil grows throughout the day. She wants to be able to say out loud what happened to her, but she can only say it internally. Watson keeps the tension up to the very end. little scratch is her debut novel, and it leaves me intrigued to see where she goes next. 

Published by Faber & Faber.

Click here to read my other reviews of the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize shortlist.

Broken Sleep Books: Slaughter by Rosanna Hildyard

22nd October 2021 / / 0 Comments

The book I’m looking at today is a collection of three stories by Rosanna Hildyard, which was longlisted for this year’s Edge Hill Prize. It’s published by Broken Sleep Books, who specialise in pamphlets; Slaughter is one of their first fiction titles. 

Hildyard’s stories are all set among the farms of the Pennine Hills in Yorkshire. Each revolves around a different couple, all facing conflict in their relationship with one another and the natural world. 

The narrator of ‘Offcomers’ met her husband, an older farmer, by chance. She might have loved him at first sight, but now he’s abusive. He grumbles about tourists, by which he means farmers down in the valley. She, on the other hand, appreciates that all humans, including her husband, are outsiders to this landscape. The foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001 brings change, and perhaps a chance of escape.

The farming couple in ‘Outside Are the Dogs’ are of a similar age, but they’re still mismatched. She’s a local girl who has lived around the world and has an air of sophistication that intimidates him, “a man of hands, not words”. As time goes on, cracks appear in their relationship. They buy a puppy, hoping that it might bring them closer together, but things don’t quite turn out as planned. 

In ‘Cull Yaw’, Star has known her partner since school – but she’s vegetarian, and he raises livestock for meat. There are problems on the farm, while Star struggles to relate to her ailing mother. 

Throughout the book, Hildyard’s prose evokes the stark realities of farm life. There’s always a tension between the different strands of her stories, and I really appreciate the way she brings them together. I like it when a story collection feels like a cohesive whole, and Slaughter is a fine example of that. 

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