Category: Authors

Still: ‘The Owl at the Gate’ by Nicholas Hogg

14th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: the decoration of an owl on top of a wrought-iron gate.

The story: with his mother dead and father away at war, the protagonist lives with his bullying cousin Maria. Escaping the house one day, he runs into a local man who’s as happy as Maria to take advantage of the boy’s timidity – but help is at hand from an unexpected source. I like the ambiguity in the ending of this piece, and especially how it illuminates the narrator’s character.

Link: Nicholas Hogg’s website

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

Still: ‘In the Dressing Room Mirror’ by Claire Massey

12th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a shabby, utilitarian dressing room, with a row of plain square mirrors and the overhead lamps that would have illuminated them.

The story: a woman describes the envy she had as a child for another girl who was a much more natural dancer than she – and the repercussions that still affect her to this day. Its supernatural twist gives this tale a very effective chill.

Links: Claire Massey’s website / interview with Massey on her story

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

Still: ‘Opportunity’ by Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

10th November 2012 / / 1 Comment

The photograph: a poster in a maintenance room, advertising repair of electric motors.

The story: it starts with a power cut – something the protagonist and her daughter Thembi are used to. Mhangami-Ruwende explores the difficulties faced by her characters as they try to get on with their lives in contemporary Zimbabwe. In particular, Thembi wants to get an education in order to have more options – but, just like the light she needs to study by, her way forward may be precarious. ‘Opportunity’ provides an elegant and broad examination of its issues.

Links: Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende / interview with Mhangami-Ruwende about her story

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

Book notes: a debut novel and an artist’s memoirs

8th November 2012 / / 2 Comments

Wayne Macauley, The Cook (2011)

Zac is a young offender whose rehabilitation is to be sent to a rural cookery school run by a famous chef.

Here Zac finds his calling when he discovers the world of fine food. While others on the scheme fall by the wayside, Zac diligently pursues his craft, studying classical French cookery books; breeding his own lambs for his dishes. After leaving the school he is given a job as the private chef to a wealthy Melbourne family. Zac sees this as good practice for his dream of opening a high-end restaurant – but not everyone in the household is happy with the ethics of employing him.

The Cook is an interesting examination of class issues – Zac’s job might be seen as archaic servitude (he has to call his employers ‘Mistress’ and ‘Master’) but he thinks he can better himself with it. Wayne Macauley doesn’t give simple answers, but his debut novel is also a brilliant example of voice and viewpoint. You hear Zac’s comma-free gabble in your head and become so absorbed in his perspective that you start to lose sight of what’s happening around him. That is, until the ending, when the full implications of this partial viewpoint are revealed. The Cook has one of the most shocking and surprising endings I have read in quite some time. It puts the cap on a fine novel, and helps mark out Macauley as a writer worth following.

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

Antonia Gialerakis (ed.), An Unquiet Spirit (2012)

An Unquiet Spirit collects together the autobiographical writings of Antonia Gialerakis’s mother Hilary, an artist. I hadn’t heard of Hilary Gialerakis before reading this book, but her story as revealed in these memoirs is a compelling one.

Hilary Carter was born in Dorset in 1924; the first part of her writings, headed ‘Memories’, runs from then through to 1959. Hilary’s telling of her life begins in piecemeal fashion, a new event in almost every paragraph. Though the book soon becomes less episodic, we never lose the sense that these are recollections – there are gaps in Hilary’s memory, and there’s a certain impressionistic quality to the way she depicts the world.

As she tells it, Hilary’s life falls into a number of broad patterns: a peripatetic existence, moving between England and Switzerland (in childhood) or South Africa (in adulthood). A series of turbulent relationships with men who tend to remain on the fringes of Hilary’s life. Bouts of illness, periods spent in mental hospitals, visits to doctors and psychiatrists – but no firm diagnosis. Running throughout is a sense of restlessness (mirrored by the tone of the writing), and of art as Hilary’s anchor and refuge.

In the 1950s, Hilary meets Andre Gialerakis, the man with whom she’ll start a family. By 1974 (the time of the second, much shorter, ‘Diary’ part), she has given birth to Antonia, and the family have settled in Durban. In this section, Hilary expresses more concern over the effect of her behaviour and personality on those closest to her, and seems ever more determined to deal with her problems. By the end of her diary, it feels as though she’s taken firm steps towards doing that. It’s an optimistic end to a powerful life story.

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.)

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.

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

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