2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, Adrian Duncan, Author, Book review, Fiction, Ireland, literary fiction, Literary prizes, Publisher, Setting, Tuskar Rock Press

‘The Geometer Lobachevsky’ by Adrian Duncan

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Fiction – Kindle edition; Tuskar Rock; 166 pages; 2022.

When I was sent by the Soviet state to London to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would never become a great mathematician, I strayed instead into the foothills of anthropology.

It’s not every day you read a novel that is about surveying, peat extraction, electricity generation and exile — so full points to Berlin-based Irish writer Adrian Duncan for originality!

A Russian emigré in Ireland

The Geometer Lobachevsky, which has been shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize and the 2023 Kerry Group Novel of the Year, is a unique story about a Russian man, Nikolai Lobachevsky, who finds himself in Ireland helping survey a peatland bog in the Midlands.

It is 1950, and Ireland is embarking on a new era of state-powered electricity generation inspired by the Soviet’s expertise in this subject area.

I am standing on the edge of a bog. There is wind. And sky meeting arm-opening land.

But Nikolai finds the work challenging, not because he can’t do it, but because his Irish counterparts don’t seem to understand the fundamental problems associated with measuring a landscape that moves and swells depending on its ever-changing water content.

His attempts to add rigour and mathematical accuracy to the process are viewed as comical and at odds with normal Irish conventions which is to just get things done with as little effort as possible (hence the quote above which refers to “anthropology”).

Exiled on an island

Not that it matters much in the long run, for Nikolai goes into hiding when he receives a letter calling him back to Leningrad to take up a “special appointment”.

In the pit of my stomach bubbles a pool of bile; I want to take a match to this pool, light it and burn it way, then take the match to what remains.

He reinvents himself as a Polish ex-POW who has discovered God and moves to an island on the Shannon estuary. Here he falls in with four devoutly Catholic Irish families and immerses themselves in their lives.

I live on the northern edge of this island of barely 300 acres, amid the hedges and pastures, in a gatehouse once owned by a member of what they call ‘the landed gentry’.

Eventually, the pull of his family back home, and the desire to see their faces for one last time, has him return to Russia — against his better judgement.

Strange and evocative tale

The Geometer Lobachevsky is an extraordinarily strange yet eerily evocative novel. The descriptions of landscapes and places are lush and cinematic.

References to mathematics infuse the text to remind us that Nikolai — the fictional grandson of the famous 19th-century Russian mathematician of the same name — is a geometer who sees everything around him through the lens of shapes and angles and numbers. It’s a neat touch.

But for all the descriptive language, and even the political commentary (which seems to suggest there was incompetency, corruption and violence within Ireland’s electricity industry as it was being set up), the narrative lacks propulsion. I kept wondering where the story was headed and didn’t much care in the end whether Nikolai lived or died.

It’s a book of moods, intrigue and vivid imagery. But I need more than that to truly fall in love with a story.

This is my fourth book from the 2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year shortlist. I am trying to read them all (there are five) before the winner is named at the end of May.

Author, Book review, Books in translation, crime/thriller, Fiction, France, literary fiction, Maclehose Press, Paris, Patrick Modiano, Publisher, Setting

‘The Black Notebook’ by Patrick Modiano (translated by Mark Polizzotti)

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Fiction – hardcover; MacLehose Press; 160 pages; 2016. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti.

This is my third review of Patrick Modiano’s work this year, for which I make no apologies. He’s fast becoming a new favourite writer.

The Black Notebook, first published in the French language as L’herbe des nuits in 2012, bears striking similarities to an earlier 1992 novel, After the Circus, which was the first Modiano book I had ever read and reviewed.

In that novel, the narrator, Jean, reveals that as an 18-year-old he was interrogated by police about a man and a woman he claimed not to know. He also tells us about a woman named Gisèle who he met and fell in love with, but she had many closely guarded secrets and lured him into a world beset by dangerous unseen forces.

In The Black Notebook, the narrator, who is also called Jean (although whether it’s the same Jean isn’t made clear and probably isn’t important), explains that about 20 years earlier he was interrogated by police about his involvement with a woman called Dannie, who had a dubious past and was wanted for a homicide committed three months before they met.

His relationship with her years earlier had unwittingly drawn him into a world of dangerous men where the threat of violence ran like an undercurrent beneath their loose acquaintanceships. He had never truly known who they were or what they did, but he would meet them at the Unic Hôtel, the Cité Universitaire cafeteria or empty cafés for drinks and conversation.

Exploring the streets of Paris

Fast forward 40 years and Jean is now a middle-aged man and a successful writer. He acts like a flâneur, wandering the streets of the Montparnasse district of Paris, but he has a goal in mind. Using his notebook from his youth as an aide–mémoire, he wants to piece together clues about who Dannie was, what crime she had committed and how he truly felt about her.

The notebook includes “as many small details as possible concerning this short, turbulent period of my life” but often lacks context or explanation. It’s all snippets of information to jog the memory, which he describes as akin to a train rushing by

… too fast for you to read the name of the town. And so, with your forehead pressed against the window, you note down other details: a passing river, the village bell tower, a black cow ruminating beneath a tree, removed from the herd. You hope that at the next station, you’ll be able to read the name and find out what region you’re in.

The narrative, told in a simple, straightforward style, explores notions of memory and time — “For me, there has never been a present or a past” — and seamlessly blends Jean’s recollections of the past with his present experiences.

Through the looking glass

There are recurring motifs — a red car, a camel-coloured overcoat, a black briefcase, various train station platforms and lights left on in rooms — throughout the text, while multiple references to glass — in windows, mirrors, windscreens and even aquariums — are used as a metaphor for a barrier, a place to look at the world but remain separate from it.

This is how he describes seeing the gang of men, for instance, as he stands on the pavement and watches them through the hotel window:

They were only a few centimetres from me behind the window, and the second one, with his moonlike face and hard eyes, didn’t notice me either. Perhaps the glass was opaque from the inside, like a one-way mirror. Or else, very simply, dozens and dozens of years stood between us: they remained frozen in the past, in the middle of the hotel foyer, and we no longer lived, they and I, in the same space of time.

Towards the end of Jean’s stroll, he runs into Langlais, the police officer, now retired, who interrogated him all those years ago, and they sit in a cafe and enjoy a coffee together. And that’s when Langlais offers to share the case file he filched as a “souvenir” of his retirement and which offers up most of the answers Jean has been looking for.

The Black Notebook is a thrilling and tense read, but it’s also a hypnotic one.

Patrick Modiano was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014 and has more than 40 books to his name.

2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, Aingeala Flannery, Book review, Fiction, Ireland, literary fiction, Literary prizes, Penguin, Publisher, Setting, short stories

‘The Amusements’ by Aingeala Flannery

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Fiction – Kindle edition; Penguin; 223 pages; 2022.

Aingeala Flannery’s The Amusements is a collection of loosely connected short stories set in Tramore, a traditional seaside town in County Waterford, on the southeast coast of Ireland, famed for its fairground and long beach.

There’s a distinct William Trevor “vibe” about the tales of small-town lives depicted here, so I felt validated to discover, via the author’s Acknowledgements, that she was inspired by Trevor’s work, explaining that his story Honeymoon in Tramore “set me off on a flight of fancy”.

The way Flannery explores the interconnectedness of people living in the same small community, where everyone knows everyone else, where people bear grudges and are suspicious of “blow-ins”, comes right out of Trevor’s “school of writing”. Even her characters — life-like, flawed and shaped by their local community — could have stepped out of his pages.

But that’s not to say her work is derivative; it’s not. The Amusements is a highly original, closely observed portrait of a town and its residents, both permanent and fleeting, and the ways in which their lives intersect over the course of 30 or so years.

Interconnected stories

There are 16 stories in total and most are framed around the Swaine family headed by bitter matriarch Nancy who never has a nice word to say about anyone.

My sister says our mother is ‘spitting venom’. I can’t tell any more if Tish is trying to warn me, or to guilt me. Seems to me Nancy always spat venom, was always out with somebody: Auntie Stasia, the next-door neighbour, my brother Michael and his ‘appalling’ wife. It’s not easy to stay in with a person whose default position is disapproval.

We first meet Nancy in “Star of the Sea” when she’s a widowed mother who breaks up her teenage daughter Stella’s close friendship with budding photographer Helen Grant. She appears again in “Making Friends” when she has a serious falling out with her new neighbour Vonnie Jacob. Later, in “Home” Nancy is residing in an aged-care facility and her now-adult daughter Stella —who has moved to London via New York —  returns to Tramore on a flying visit to see her. In “The Reason I’m Calling” she is dying, aged 68, and by “Woodbine” she has passed away.

Her children, Tish and Stella, star in separate stories: Tish is married to a “good husband” and has a young daughter, Evie, but seems harassed and discontent with her lot; Stella, who moved away to become an artist, lives an unconventional life and hates returning home to Tramore because it just reminds her of all the reasons she fled in the first place.

Brilliant characters

Other subsidiary characters from the town — such as the butcher Thaddeus Burke, the public health nurse Jenny Supple and the bed-and-breakfast landlady Muriel Power — are also featured. Many of these characters move from one tale to another, and events which happen in one story are concluded, or referenced, in the next. But there are also a few that end abruptly and don’t seem to add much to the overarching narrative, and I would question their inclusion.

Tramore is also a character in its own right, a place that comes alive in summer as a bustling tourist hot spot, but dies down in winter when the amusement arcades close and the fairground rides shut down.

But regardless of the season, idle gossip, reputational crises and personal struggles abound. Anyone who has lived in a small town or close-knit community will recognise the people in these pages.

The Amusements is a terrifically entertaining read, brimming with life in all its messy, chaotic complexity. It has been shortlisted for this year’s Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.

This is my third book from the 2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year shortlist. I am trying to read them all (there are five) before the winner is named at the end of May.

2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, Anya Bergman, Author, Book review, Fiction, historical fiction, Literary prizes, Manilla Press, Norway, Publisher, Setting

‘The Witches of Vardø’ by Anya Bergman

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Fiction – paperback; Manilla Press; 385 pages; 2023.

In the winter of 1662-63, a total of 20 women died during the witch trials which took place on the island of Vardø, located in the extreme northeastern part of Norway, far above the Arctic Circle. The women had been put on trial for “making pacts with the devil”. Eighteen of them were burnt at the stake and two were tortured to death.

Anya Begman’s novel The Witches of Vardø is a fictionalised account of what happened. The characters are inspired by real people whose experiences are documented in court testimonies.

In writing the book, the author, who lived in Norway for a time, says her purpose was to “raise the lost voices of the women accused of witchcraft with tenderness while invigorating their seventeenth-century history with contemporary resonance”.

Dual storyline

I don’t tend to read historical fiction set earlier than the 19th century, so this novel took me right out of my comfort zone. It reads very much like a fable or old-fashioned tale, with lots of tell and not a huge amount of show, but once I got into the rhythm of the story (it’s a slow burn), I quite enjoyed it.

The narrative comprises two storylines told in alternate chapters from two different points of view. Both highlight the very real dangers of being female in a patriarchal society where men controlled every facet of a woman’s life, restricting them to domestic (and sexual) servitude.

Anna Rhodius, the daughter of a physician and a talented healer herself, was once the King of Denmark’s mistress. She has been banished to Vardø but she’s eager to return to her life of privilege and will do almost anything she can to go back to it, even if that means helping to prosecute other women for witchcraft.

Ingeborg Sigvaldsdatter is the teenage daughter of Zigri, a woman accused of witchcraft when her affair with a local merchant is discovered. Accompanied by Maren, another teenager whose mother has already been condemned as a witch, Ingeborg makes a long and treacherous journey to Vardø to try to rescue her mother who has been locked up in the governor’s fortress.

Anna’s story is told in the first person in a series of letters she addresses to the King, pleading to be reinstated in his eyes; Ingeborg’s is in the third person and takes a wider view, showing how her life was forever altered when her fisherman father and brother were lost at sea, leaving behind a wife and two daughters who were plunged into grief and struggled to find enough to eat.

Their stories are interleaved with folktales, including those of the Sámi people, and the mysterious appearance of a lynx with golden eyes.

Plot-driven story

The Witches of Vardø is a largely plot-driven novel that charts events leading up to and including Zigri’s trial.

It moves at a relatively slow pace and there’s a lot of detail (about Ingeborg’s journey and Anna’s past affair), which sometimes feels laboured. But the writing is atmospheric, chilly and Gothic by turn. The depictions of romantic love and the betrayals that can sometimes come with it are beautifully evoked.

Unsurprisingly, the witch trial that forms the climax of the novel is powerful and violent, but the aftermath, in which Maren and Ingeborg escape to lead lives of their own feels redemptive — and hopeful.

For another take on this novel, please see this review at Theresa Smith Writes.

A lasting memorial

By Stylegar – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47091822

Just to hammer home the point that the witch trials were a real thing, these photographs show the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, which commemorates the 91 victims who were convicted of witchcraft and executed in Finnmark in the 17th century. A collaboration between the artist Louise Bourgeois and the architect Peter Zumthor, it comprises a 125m memorial hall (above) and a burning chair (below).

You can read more about the memorial at this Norwegian tourist website (note, it’s in Norwegian but you can translate it) or via this Wikipedia page.

By Bjarne Riesto – https://www.flickr.com/photos/eager/13571909504, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48501399

This is my second book from the 2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year shortlist. I am trying to read them all (there are five) before the winner is named at the end of May.

Book lists

10 years of favourite reads from the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year shortlists

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At the end of this month, the winner of the 2023 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year will be named at Listowel Writers’ Week.

This annual award for Irish writers of fiction was established in 1995 — and the list of alumni reads like a roll call of Ireland’s best contemporary writers, including everyone from Deidre Madden to John Banville. (You can see the list of winners on this Wikipedia page.)

I’ve been following the prize closely since 2017, but I was first made aware of it in 2012 when I read the winner, Christine Dwyer Hickey’s exceedingly good The Cold Eye of Heaven. In fact, I read three other books from that year’s shortlist — Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz, Carlo Gebler’s The Dead Eight and Belinda McKeon’s Solace — and loved them all.

Over the years, the shortlists have provided me with rich pickings and acted as a faithful guide to the best crop of Irish novels released in a particular year. I thought it might be useful to put together a list of my favourites from the past decade.

If you’re not sure where to start with Irish literature or just want to read something entertaining and well-written, this list of 18 novels should provide inspiration. It has been arranged in alphabetical order by author’s surname. Click on the book’s title to read my review in full.

‘The Blue Guitar’ by John Banville (shortlisted in 2016)

A pompous, self-obsessed Irish artist looks back — in forensic detail — on the love affair he carried out with his best friend’s wife. Richly immersive.

Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

‘Beatlebone’ by Kevin Barry (shortlisted in 2016)

A Liverpudlian named John goes on a riotous adventure to the uninhabited Irish island he bought years ago but has never visited. A riotous romp full of unexpected surprises.

‘Night Boat to Tangier’ by Kevin Barry (shortlisted 2020)

Two Irish gangsters reminisce about their topsy-turvy lives as drug dealers while they wait for someone to get off the night boat at the Spanish port of Algeciras. Blackly comic.

‘A Ladder to the Sky’ by John Boyne (shortlisted 2019)

A would-be writer hellbent on topping the bestseller lists resorts to criminality in the pursuit of fame and glory. Riotously good fun.

My Name is Leon

‘My Name is Leon’ by Kit de Waal (winner 2017)

A mixed-race nine-year-old boy is separated from his younger brother when he is taken into foster care. Bittersweet and heartbreaking.

‘Bright Burning Things’ by Lisa Harding (shortlisted 2022)

A former stage actress with a young son begins to hear paranoid voices in her head that she can only alleviate with alcohol. Tense and compelling with a truly distinctive voice.

‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan (winner 2022)

Hard-working coal merchant Bill Furlong uncovers a disturbing secret at the local convent run by the Good Shepherd nuns. A short, powerful read.

The Devil I Know by Claire Kilroy

‘The Devil I Know’ by Claire Kilroy (shortlisted 2013)

Tristram St Lawrence, 13th Earl of Howth, gives evidence at a public inquiry into the collapse of the Irish economy. Darkly comic morality tale.

‘Time Present and Time Past’ by Deirdre Madden (shortlisted 2014)

A pair of 40-something siblings negotiate complicated family histories. Understated and hugely enjoyable.

‘A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing’ by Eimear McBride (winner 2014)

A young woman explores her relationship with an older brother, who suffers a brain tumour in childhood that later returns when he is a young man. Devastating and unique.

‘TransAtlantic’ by Colum McCann (shortlisted 2014)

One-hundred and fifty years of Irish history explored through a handful of seminal real-life characters — British aviators, an abolitionist and an American politician — together with three generations of fictional women from the same family. Bold and ambitious.

Solar Bones

‘Solar Bones’ by Mike McCormack (shortlisted 2017)

Civil engineer Marcus Conway stands in his kitchen and thinks about his life and what it is to be a good man. Audacious and unforgettable.

‘Midwinter Break’ by Bernard McLaverty (shortlisted 2018)

Gerry and Stella’s long marriage begins to unravel on a long weekend trip to Amsterdam. Intimate and moving.

‘The Closet Of Savage Mementos’ by Nuala Ní Chonchúir (shortlisted 2015)

A woman looks back on the time she took a summer job in Scotland and fell in love with a much older man who changed her life forever. Evocative and emotional.

‘Shadowplay’ by Joseph O’Connor (shortlisted 2020)

Struggling writer Bram Stoker runs the Lyceum Theatre in 1870s London, where he joins forces with theatre director Henry Irving and leading actress Ellen Terry, and marries a renowned English beauty Florence Balcombe. Full of Gothic atmosphere.

‘Nora’ by Nuala O’Connor (shortlisted 2022)

Nora Barnacle falls in love with writer James Joyce, becomes his muse and flees Ireland with him. Bold and bawdy.

Travelling in a strange land

‘Travelling in a Strange Land’ by David Park (winner 2019)

A newly bereaved parent drives across England in a snowstorm to collect his sole surviving son from university to bring him home to Belfast. Contemplative and beautiful.

‘Bina’ by Anakana Schofield (winner 2021)

An elderly Irish woman gives shelter to a man who refuses to leave. Completely bonkers and bitterly funny.

Have you read any of these books? Or have any piqued your interest?

Author, Book review, Books in translation, Cesare Pavese, Fiction, Italy, literary fiction, Penguin Classic, Publisher, Setting, war

‘The House on the Hill’ by Cesare Pavese (translated by Tim Parks)

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Fiction – paperback; Penguin Classics; 176 pages; 2021. Translated from the Italian by Tim Parks.

First published in 1948, Cesare Pavese’s novella The House on the Hill, which is set in Italy during the Second World War, makes a perfect companion read to Dominic Smith’s Return to Valetto.

Said to be based on the author’s own wartime experiences, it recounts the tale of a school teacher who falls in with a group of anti-fascists but can’t quite commit to their cause because he’d rather lead a quiet life.

The book explores notions of self-preservation versus altruism and examines the concept of collective moral responsibility in the face of war.

Safe on the hill

Set in and around Turin, in 1943, during a time of immense political upheaval, it shows how the Italian people, living under a Fascist regime aligned with Nazi Germany, tried to continue their normal day-to-day activities while their evenings were beset by the terror of bombs and fires.

It is against this backdrop that Corrado, a young unmarried man, lives his life, teaching in a school by day and escaping to a house on the hill at night. He rents a room in the house, occupied by two live-in landladies and their dog, and occasionally feels guilty for “escaping the sirens every evening, hiding away in a cool room, stretched out on my bed in safety”.

When he returns to the unscathed school every morning, he is never sure which children will have died in the night-time air raids, but seems immune to their plight, dismissing it as just another symptom of war:

We’d all become inured to terrible events, found them banal, ordinary, disagreeable. Those who took them seriously and said, ‘That’s war,’ were even worse, dreamers, morons.

Meeting the partisans

It is from the vantage point on the hill that he can often hear laughter and frivolity rising up from the valley, and when he traces those sounds he comes across a group of local partisans, who gather to drink and sing in a house-turned-tavern every night.

He joins them socially when he realises an old flame, Cate, is part of the group but stops short of signing up to their movement.

She [Cate] walked a few steps with me, then stopped.
‘You’re not a Fascist, I hope?’
She was serious and laughed. I took her hand and protested. ‘We’re all Fascists, Cate dear,’ I said softly. ‘If we weren’t, we’d be rebelling, chucking grenades, risking our necks. Anyone who lets be and puts up with it is a Fascist.’
‘Not true,’ she said. ‘We’re waiting for the right moment. When the war is over.’

Later, when Fascist leader Benito Mussolini is disposed and imprisoned and the Germans begin occupying Italian territory, a new era of violence is ushered in. Corrado must make an important decision: should he take up arms and join the partisans, or keep his head below the parapet and continue living his relatively stable and uninterrupted life where he has a roof over his head and food on the table every day?

The book charts what happens next, and it’s not quite as straightforward as Corrado might have imagined.

Countryside charm

Alongside this exploration of human weakness and raw doubt, all beautifully translated by Tim Parks, Pavese uses the Italian countryside as a metaphor for life continuing on regardless of human history. His descriptions of the timeless landscape, its plants and the changing seasons are vivid and cinematic.

I walked in the sunshine, on the wooded slopes. Behind le Fontaine there were vineyards and fields with crops, and I were there often, to gather herbs and mosses in sheltered little glades, an old hobby from when I’d studied natural sciences. I always preferred ploughed fields to houses and gardens, and the edges of the fields where the wild takes over.

Told in a self-reflective, self-aware and often resigned voice, The House on the Hill gives us a glimpse of one man’s moral uncertainty and indecision at a time of great violence and political uncertainty.

The way Corrado rationalises his choices and tries to remain uninvolved is honest and insightful. Until we are put in those same situations, how does anyone know how they will react?

This is a real literary gem, and one I am pleased to have discovered.

Finally, the beautiful cover image of this Penguin Classic edition of the book is by Italian artist Mario Borgoni (1869-1936) from a 1927 travel and advertising poster of Merano.

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Faber and Faber, Fiction, Ireland, John Banville, Publisher, Setting

‘The Lock-Up’ by John Banville

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Fiction – paperback; Faber & Faber; 352 pages; 2023.

I was looking forward to John Banville’s latest historical crime novel, The Lock-Up, and did a little jump for joy when I saw it on the shelves of my local independent bookstore where I purchased it last weekend.

I adored the first two in the series — Snow (2020) and April in Spain (2021) — because Banville so expertly marries historical fiction with a dash of crime and loads of literary flair. The result? Intriguing atmospheric tales that are primarily character-driven (rather than plot-driven) and hugely fun to read.

Set in Dublin in the 1950s, the series — billed as “a Strafford and Quirke mystery” — stars Detective Inspector St. John Strafford and the Dublin-based pathologist Quirke. (Banville aficionados will know that Quirke has his own series, penned under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, which began with Christine Falls in 2006.)

Putting these two characters together in the same series is a feat of genius because the tension between them allows Banville to explore the prejudices in Irish society at the time (Quirke is Catholic; Strafford is Protestant). He can also use their different professional skills to build a crime-fighting duo akin to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.

Six months after Spain

In this story, set six months after the last book, a young Jewish woman, Rosa Jacobs, is found gassed in her car, which is kept in a local lock-up (hence the book’s title). Everyone assumes she has killed herself, but when Quirke discovers evidence she was gagged, a murder investigation is set in motion.

This investigation, led by Strafford under the direction of his soon-to-be-retired Chief Inspector Hackett, struggles to uncover any immediate leads. Yet Rosa was outspoken and campaigned for contraception and abortion so it’s likely someone wanted to keep her quiet, but who?

The plot focuses mainly on Rosa’s links with Kesler, a wealthy German industrialist, who trains racehorses in County Wicklow, and his son. Kesler has business dealings in Israel and a journalist he knew there had recently been killed in a hit-and-run. Is this death connected to Rosa’s? And if so, how?

Not just crime 

The Lock-Up isn’t strictly a police procedural, and the crime, especially the way it is linked to other events, stretches credulity a little. As ironic as it sounds, I’ve come to realise you don’t read Banville’s crime books for the crime component. You read them for the lush prose, his brilliant similies and his scene-setting. He’s especially adept at writing about weather, for instance, and in this book, set on the cusp of autumn, it is blowing a gale throughout.

Rather than focus primarily on the plot, Banville is more interested in fleshing out his characters, exploring the complexities of their lives and highlighting how the often unseen forces of religion and politics shape decisions and outcomes.

The historical elements are nicely done. The story is set in 1957 at a time when the Catholic Church ruled almost every facet of Irish life and where a phone call from the Bishop could end a career — or put paid to a well-earned police pension (as Hackett comes to fear when pressure is put on him to steer the investigation in a certain way).

The role of the Church in harbouring Nazis or helping them to escape also forms a shadowy backdrop. Indeed, in the first part of the novel, which is set in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, an Irish monk helps a Nazi gain safe passage by sheltering him in a monastery in the Alto Adige in Northern Italy. When the story then jumps forward by more than a decade, it feels disjointed, but everything falls into place by the time you get to the end.

Insightful interactions

It’s the interactions between Qurike and Strafford that make The Lock-Up such a compelling read because it’s the little jibes and subtle digs between them that reveal their personalities and prejudices.

Both men are deeply flawed characters and carry out extra-curricular activities that might raise eyebrows. Strafford lacks the backbone to ask if his wife, who has seemingly left him, is ever coming back but has the courage to ask Quirke’s adult daughter, Phoebe, out on a date; Quirke, newly bereaved (you will have to read April in Spain to find out why), is hitting the bottle one minute and hitting on women the next. To see these men fumble around, looking for ways to make meaningful human contact, to quell their loneliness and the stresses of the job, makes for an authentic read.

Of course, everything is nicely tied up at the end — but not in the ways you might think.

Finally, The Lock-Up can be read as a standalone, but I suspect the reading experience is all the richer if you have read the earlier novels. There are occasional throwback references to incidences and characters from the Quirke series of novels which, when you spot them, are delicious little treats. I imagine Banville has a lot of fun writing these books. I certainly have fun reading them.

Author, Book review, Decolonise your bookshelves, Fiction, James Baldwin, literary fiction, New York, Penguin Modern Classics, Publisher, Reading Projects, Setting, USA

‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ by James Baldwin

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Fiction – paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 192 pages; 1994.

First published in 1974, James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk is set in Harlem in the 1970s. It is essentially a love story between 19-year-old Tish and 21-year-old Fonny — but there’s a twist: Tish is pregnant and Fonny, a sculptor, is now in jail, falsely accused of raping a “Porto Rican”.

How their respective families deal with the situation — Tish’s family is positive and supportive; Fonny’s is less so — and the ways in which the couple hang onto their love forms the heart of the story.

The book is listed in ‘This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books’, which I reviewed earlier in the year. I bought a copy for Monet, my 18-year-old, Melbourne-based niece, because I thought it might be something she would like. I had already spotted If Beale Street Could Talk on her bookshelves when I visited in early March (and she kindly decamped to her sister’s room to let me stay in hers).

Together, we thought it might be fun to read some of the books from This is the Canon and write joint reviews on an ad-hoc basis following a simple format.

This is the Canon describes If Beale Street Could Talk as “one of America’s classic urban love stories”, adding:

The backdrop of institutionalized racism in a pre-Black Lives Matter world, and the mistreatment of Black men by the police and authorities makes their lives bleak; they [Tish and Fonny] often feel beaten before they have barely started living. The fact that a disproportionate number of young Black males in the West are stopped on a daily basis by the police for something as simple as walking along the street, makes this story immediately universal and painfully current.

My thoughts

👍🏽 I really loved this story. It’s quick and easy to read but leaves a lasting impression. And it feels totally modern, even though it was written almost half a century ago! I loved the sparkling and witty dialogue, the frank confessions of Tish as first-person narrator and the wonder with which she sees the world.

👍🏽 It is so joyful in places, not just in the love between the two main characters but in the love that Tish’s immediate family show her when she reveals her pregnancy. Here’s what her mother tells her when she finds out her unwed daughter is going to have a baby:

“Tish,’ she said, ‘when we was first brought here, the white man he didn’t give us no preachers to say words over us before we had our babies. And you and Fonny be together right now, married or not, wasn’t, wasn’t for that same damn white man. So, let me tell you what you got to do. You got to think about that baby. You got to hold on to that baby, don’t care what else happens or don’t happen. You got to do that. Can’t nobody else do that for you. And the rest of us, well, we going to hold on to you. And we going to get Fonny out. Don’t you worry. I know it’s hard – but don’t you worry. And that baby be the best thing that ever happened to Fonny. He needs that baby. It going to give him a whole lot of courage.’

👎🏽 The language is a bit confrontational in places. The ‘n’ word is used a lot (the context has obviously changed in the time since the novel was first published) but there’s also a bit of swearing that might feel jarring if you don’t use this kind of language yourself.

Monet’s thoughts

👍🏽  I really enjoyed how much personality and soul the book had, and how that allowed me as a reader to gain such an attachment to the protagonists Tish and Fonny. The way the book was written and the perspective it offered pushed me to care so much about the characters that I ended up sympathising and feeling their emotions, especially that of Tish.

👍🏽 The writing style was super accessible, especially for a relatively new reader of the classics. The novel dealt with themes of racism, justice and prejudice, which were really eye-opening. They are definitely themes I would like to read about more in the future, whether through Baldwin’s other works or just in general modern classics.

👎🏽 The ending was too open-ended and sort of up for interpretation, leaving the story feeling unfinished. I would’ve loved a bit more clarity to the symbolism and things mentioned towards the end (no spoilers, haha).

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Monet’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We chose this book to read from ‘This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books’, which focuses on fiction produced by writers of African descent, Asian descent and Indigenous Peoples. It’s written by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay George.

A Year With William Trevor, Author, Book review, England, Fiction, literary fiction, Penguin, Publisher, Reading Projects, Setting, William Trevor

‘The Children of Dynmouth’ by William Trevor

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A Year With William Trevor | #WilliamTrevor2023

Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 195 pages; 2014.

The first Sunday of the month means it’s time to review another William Trevor book as part of A Year With William Trevor, which I am co-hosting with Cathy from 746 Books.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up his 1976 novel The Children of Dynmouth, but it didn’t take long for me to feel that I was on familiar William Trevor turf in which he takes a seemingly ordinary character with eccentric traits and lets them loose in a confined setting, such as a pub (Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel), boarding house (Miss Gomez and the Brethren) or hospital ward (Elizabeth Alone), to see what will unfold. 

In this case, it’s a lonely teenage boy called Timothy Gedge, who is obsessed with a serial killer from the past, and the setting is a small village where everyone knows everyone else and therefore can’t escape or ignore the lad. 

A personality transformation

Initially, Timothy comes across as friendly and helpful, even charming. He’s quite comfortable around adults and able to engage in proper conversations with them. And the adults in the small coastal town of Dynmouth seem happy to have him around to help with odd jobs and errands.

He’d seemed an engagingly eccentric child, solitary in spite of his chattering and smiling, different from other children. 

But as the narrative progresses it becomes clear that Timothy is socially intrusive, can’t take no for an answer and gets on people’s nerves. In the case of two 12-year-olds, Kate and Stephen, whom he befriends, his cloying attentiveness terrifies them. In fact, Kate believes he is “possessed by devils” and runs crying to the local reverend demanding he do something about it.

If you believed he was possessed, she whispered between her sobs, everything was explained.

Timothy’s transformation from a well-meaning teenager to a person who frightens others through inappropriate and unwelcome behaviour forms the heart of this very fine novel.

Search for fame

It all begins with the promise of an Easter talent show in the village. Timothy has big plans to be the stand-out act. He daydreams about TV presenter Hughie Green discovering him and putting him on the TV show Opportunity Knocks.

He starts to badger local villagers for the props he requires, which include a pair of curtains, a bathtub and a wedding dress. That’s because his act is going to be based on the English serial killer George Joseph Smith who became infamous for his “brides in the bath” murders in the early 1900s.

His frequent hassling of people for the bits and bobs he needs turns him into a serious pest. But most villagers are too polite to tell him to go away. They tolerate him — up to a point.

Mr Plant, the local publican, who agrees to let him take an old tin bath rusting in the back yard, wonders if Timothys’s mother had “dropped the boy when he was a baby”:

You heard that kind of thing, a kid’s head striking the edge of something when the kid was a couple of months old and the kid never being normal. […] The Gedge boy seemed intent on something […] with a gruesome flavour, murders taking place in a bath. Sick they called it nowadays, and sick it most certainly was. In his entire life, he estimated, he’d never heard anything like it.

The village spy

While Timothy’s motivations are never fully explained (that isn’t Trevor’s style; he leaves it to his readers to work things out for themselves), his behaviour changes over time. He becomes increasingly obsessed with murders and murderers, particularly within marriage. 

When he spies on neighbours he often sees things he shouldn’t, and when he reveals these closely guarded secrets he is oblivious to the harm he may cause. 

He looked in people’s windows […] He followed people about. He listened to people’s conversations. He harassed people with jokes that weren’t funny.

His vivid imagination often runs away with him and he puts two and two together to come up with five. The consequences of this go beyond just a little harmless tittle-tattle…

Common themes

Of the early Trevor novels I have now read, The Children of Dynmouth is probably my favourite. While he explores many of the same themes — marginalised people in a world that doesn’t quite know how to deal with them, the nature of evil and madness, and the tragicomic absurdity of life — this one really ratchets up the tension and the narrative doesn’t necessarily go in the direction you think it might.

The machinations of small-town life and the interconnectedness of residents are paramount. In fact, Dynmouth, nestled on the Dorset coast, with its curving promenade, modest pier and grey-brown cliffs, is a character in its own right.

His human characters are, as ever, brilliantly realised — and it is through their relationship with Timothy that we see them being tested and pushed to the limits. Who will crack first? Will it be the kindly vicar Mr Featherstone or his wife Lavinia who runs the local nursery? Perhaps Commander Abigail and his long-suffering wife, who invite Timothy to supper once a week, will be the ones to finally tell him to go away and never come back. Or maybe Mr and Mrs Blakley, who are minding step-siblings Kate and Stephen while their newly married parents are off on honeymoon, will step up to the mark.

The Children of Dynmouth won the Whitbread Award (the precursor to the Costa Book Awards) in 1976. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that same year. Apparently, it was also adapted for BBC Two in 1987. (I’m not sure I’d want to see it.)

For other takes on this novel, please see reviews by Cathy at 746 books, Jacqui at Jacqui’s Wine Journal and Ali at HeavenAli.

I read this book as part of A Year With William Trevor, which I am co-hosting with  Cathy from 746 Books. You are invited to join in using the hashtag #WilliamTrevor2023. To find out more, including our monthly reading schedule, please click here.

♥ This month  Cathy reviewed ‘Nights at the Alexandra’.

♥ Next month Cathy plans to review ‘Felicia’s Journey’ and I plan to review the short story collection ‘A Bit on the Side’.

Allen & Unwin, Author, Book review, Dominic Smith, Fiction, Italy, literary fiction, Publisher, Setting

‘Return to Valetto’ by Dominic Smith

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Fiction – paperback; Allen & Unwin; 358 pages; 2023. Review copy courtesy of the publisher

Dominic Smith’s latest novel, Return to Valetto, is a deliciously entertaining read set in a near-abandoned Italian village rife with human dramas — both past and present.

The gorgeous prose, intriguing plot, captivating setting and brilliant cast of characters make this a truly immersive novel about history’s long tentacles, family secrets and the path to rough justice.

Smith, who brought us the bestselling Last Painting of Sara de Vos and, more recently The Electric Hotel, has a penchant for framing his stories around historical events, people and places. This novel is no different.

His Italian village setting — Valetto, which is perched on an isolated rocky outcrop in Umbria — is inspired by the real town of Civita Di Bagnoregio which can only be reached by a fortified footbridge and is known as “the dying city”.

Italy’s fascist past and the role of its resistance fighters in the Second World War are also fleshed out in this intricately plotted story.

Village on the hill

Just 10 people remain resident in Valetto, which is slowly falling apart — thanks to landslides, earthquakes and the ravages of time — and there’s little reason for people to stay.

Yet one person wants to move into the village – not escape it. Her name is Elisa Tomassi and she’s a mild-mannered chef from Milan. She claims that she’s inherited a cottage attached to a large villa, but the Anglo-Italian family who own it — a trio of eccentric widows, Iris, Rose and Violet, and their elderly mother Ida — claim otherwise.

They say she’s an interloper and that her claim — that their late patriarch, Aldo Serafino, promised the cottage to her family in exchange for sheltering him during the war (when he was a resistance fighter) — is unfounded.

Things come to a head when their nephew, Hugh Fisher, an American-based academic historian, arrives at Valetto for the summer. Recently bereaved and with an adult daughter studying in Oxford, he had hoped to use the cottage — left to him by his late mother — to write a paper about the social history of abandoned Italian towns (his speciality) for an upcoming conference.

But with Elise marking her territory, whether rightly or wrongly, he moves into his Aunt Iris’s guest room instead.

The narrative, predictably, pits Elise against the family; less predictably it looks at what happens when the family try to debunk Elise’s claim, a process that turns a petty dispute over property and the wishes of the dead into something with much deeper, and more disturbing, roots.

US edition by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Looking back

Return to Valetto asks some in-depth questions about history, including who gets to write it and how we interpret it.

We want history to be a unified narrative, a casual, linear plot that cantilevers across the centuries, but I’ve always pictured it like a filigree of a wrought-iron gate, our unaccountable lives twisting and swooping against a few vertical lines.

And it also posits some pertinent questions about reparations and redemption, including how we bring to justice those that committed unspeakable acts during the war but have never been arrested or forced to confront a court of law.

The story deals with heavy themes, but Smith’s writing isn’t maudlin; instead, it’s light on its feet, frothy and graceful.

There’s humour, too, not least in the vibrant cast of characters, each of whom has their own quirks and eccentricities (Aunt Iris, for instance, dedicates her spare time investigating unsolved crimes from her bedroom), and his grandmother’s 100th birthday celebration, which forms the climax at the end of the novel, is outrageous fun.

And if that’s not enough, there’s also a romance, a road trip and a very public reckoning to contend with. It’s not perfect (some aspects, such as Hugh’s inability to recognise a woman’s romantic interest in him, feel a bit cliched), but on the whole Return to Valetto is a beguiling and thoroughly enjoyable read.

For other takes on this novel, please see Lisa’s review at ANZLitLovers and Theresa’s at Theresa Smith Writes.