Tag: Granta

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Benjamin Markovits

30th July 2013 / / 1 Comment

Benjamin Markovits’s biographical note in the Granta anthology says that ‘You Don’t Have to Live Like This’ is excerpted from “his new novel about, about a group of university friends who get involved in a scheme to regenerate Detroit”. This particular excerpt focuses on their time at university, so we don’t seem to get much of a sense form it of where the novel will ultimately go.

Two characters in particular strand out to me from the extract: the narrator, Greg Marnier, an ordinary kid from Baton Rouge who doesn’t seem to have been too lucky in love; and his college friend Robert James, a more privileged type who seems set to go places. These characters could be the foundation for an interesting novel, but Markovits’s piece does feel very much like a beginning, and I am undecided as to whether I’d want to read the novel on the basis of this extract alone.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Adam Foulds

29th July 2013 / / 2 Comments

In Adam Foulds’s ‘A World Intact’, Will returns from military training in London to his family home in the rural heart of England, for a short stay before he embarks on his posting in Field Security Services. It’s not quite the commission he wanted, especially as he hoped to follow in the footsteps his late father, who was awarded the Victoria Cross during the Great War.

This extract from a forthcoming novel sets up themes of romantic heroism versus the horror of war (there’s the suggestion that Will’s father may not have been as pleased as his son thinks to know that his Will is off to fight), and personal fulfilment (Will’s rural home is the ‘world intact’, yet it is still not quite enough for him). The piece is perhaps too short to satisfy by itself; but it’s a promising foundation for Foulds’s novel.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Steven Hall

28th July 2013 / / 1 Comment

I didn’t plan it this way, but it has been a few months since my last blog on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 4 anthology. Now I’m back to it, and up to Steven Hall, whose The Raw Shark Texts I reviewed back in the pre-blog days of 2006 for Laurs Hird’s New Review website.

Hall’s upcoming second novel is titled The End of Endings, and the Granta volume has a couple of excerpts. One of these, Autumn’ is set in the UK of 2014: its narrator, Philip Quinn, tells of speaking to his wife on the phone while he (and the rest of the world) watches a webcam feed of her sleeping; talks a bit about entropy and how it applies to his kitchen; and describes receiving a photograph of a mysterious black sphere from a friend (whom he’s already told us died soon after) .

Turn the volume upside-down, and there is ‘Spring’, printed on alternate pages (white text on a black background) and set in the US of 1854. A writer is commissioned by the New York Tribune to write a story on a spiritualist who claims to have invented an engine powered by prayer; just as he decided to accept the assignment, Hall’s piece ends.

Perhaps inevitably, ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’ serve more to whet one’s appetite for the novel than as complete pieces in their own right. But what intriguing tasters they are: evidently these two rather different storylines are going to connect somehow; and it sounds as though there’s going to be an interesting subtext too. I look forward to reading the novel to see how everything plays out.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Adam Thirlwell

24th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Adam Thirlwell, one of two writers from Granta’s 2003 list to appear again in the 2013 selection, contributes ‘Slow Motion’, whose protagonist, Edison Lo, who wakes up in a motel room next to a girl he’s picked up, and returns later that day to find her dead. I didn’t check the biographical note until after I’d finished reading Thirlwell’s piece, and so was not aware that ‘Slow Motion’ was a novel extract. It actually works quite well as a discrete piece, though I’m not sure how well Edison’s narrative voice – dense, but woven from banalities and pop-culture imagery – would fare at novel-length. It’s just fine for these twenty pages, though.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Taiye Selasi

22nd May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Taiye Selasi is the newest novelist on the Granta list, with her debut, Ghana Must Go, published only last month. I’m interested to read it, because there’s something about her story in the anthology. ‘Driver’ is narrated by Webster, an industrialist’s chauffeur whose job is to see nothing, even though he can’t help but look. There’s a subtle rhythm to Selasi’s prose, which I like; and she examines a number of tensions – between different cultures and individual outlooks, education and wealth, principles and desires. It’s a promising taster for Selasi’s work.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Evie Wyld

14th May 2013 / / 2 Comments

Evie Wyld’s After the Fire, a Still Small Voice was one of my favourite reads of 2009; so naturally I’ve been looking forward to her second novel, All the Birds, Singing (published in June). Her Granta piece, ‘After the Hedland’, is taken from that novel. We meet Jake, a woman on a sheep station somewhere in Australia; she’s on the run, but her past is about to catch up with her.

‘After the Hedland’ is perhaps best seen as a portrait of a period in Jake’s life. Wyld captures the rough edges and physicality of Jake’s work and lifestyle. Jake herself proves to be an intriguing character: I ended up wanting to know more about where she’d come from and where she was going – which takes me back to anticipating the novel once more.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Update, 11/08/13

I’ve now read All the Birds, Singing, and you’ll find my review here. Doing that has certainly changed the context of ‘After the Hedland’ – I don’t think I twigged that its three sections were arranged in reverse chronological order, for one thing. And my comment about wanting to know more about where Jake had come from and where she was going makes me smile now I’ve read the book; unwittingly, I was closer to it than I could have imagined.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: David Szalay

12th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Beyond seeing a couple of his novels in the shops, I had no prior knowledge of David Szalay’s work. In all honesty, his Granta piece, ‘Europa’, did nothing for me. It tells of three people who travel from Hungary to London for a job which remains unspecified, at least at first – but the strong sense is that it’s not going to be something of which the mother we meet in the opening scene would approve. I don’t really know what else to say, because I never felt as though I got any purchase on ‘Europa’. Maybe it will fare better in the context of an entire work, but it doesn’t seem to stand alone well.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Nadifa Mohamed

10th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Now we come to the first author in the Granta anthology whom I’ve previously reviewed on this blog – twice, in fact. A few years ago, I enjoyed both Nadifa Mohamed’s debut novel, Black Mamba Boy, and her short story ‘Summer in the City’. Now we have ‘Filsan’, a piece taken from Mohamed’s forthcoming second book. The title character is a young soldier sent from Hargeisa in northern Somalia on a mission to three border villages which are sheltering rebels. I think ‘Filsan’ works better as a series of snapshots than as a complete piece, but it has some strong moments. Especially powerful for me is the moment when, on being startled by a village elder, Filsan reflexively squeezes her gun’s trigger – and simply cannot process the fact that she has caused someone’s death. I’ll look forward to reading that new novel.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Naomi Alderman

9th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

I heard Naomi Alderman read from her novel The Liars’ Gospel at an event in 2012. It is a mystery to me why I’ve not yet got around to reading the book, because I thought Alderman’s excerpt was superb – visceral (literally so, as it described the ritual sacrifice of a lamb) and evocative. Her story in the Granta anthology, ‘Soon and In Our Days’, is very different, but just as good.

We join the Rosenbaum family at their home in Hendon for Passover. As the father of the household recites the verses that call forth the Prophet Elijah, down comes Elijah, fiery chariot and all, saying, ‘Happy Passover to you. Have I missed much?’ What follows is a comedy of misunderstanding (‘What is “Yogacizing”? And “The 30-day Body Cleanse?” Some sort of ritual bath?’) and situation (how are the Rosenbaums going to look after those fiery horses?) that made me laugh out loud. Alderman’s straight-faced tone makes the story, but she also captures how the locals’ rather English reserve rubs up against Elijah’s directness. Great stuff, which further underlines that I ought to read more of Alderman’s work.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Tahmima Anam

7th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

‘Anwar Gets Everything’ is taken from the forthcoming third part of Tahmima Anam’s Bengal Trilogy. Clearly I’m going to have to go and read the whole series, because I really liked this extract. It’s narrated by a builder whose life ends up changed after a new boy starts on the site. The gruff narrative voice is so strong, and Anam has an eye for a vivid detail (her description of the workers’ bunk beds, whose rails become too hot to touch, stood out especially to me). I’ll be reading more of Anam’s work, that’s for sure.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

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