Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010 which has been on hiatus for several years — but has now returned for 2024. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.If you’d like to take part simply visit this post and fill in the form!
Davida describes herself as a “66-year-old retired widow who is mildly dyslexic and still loves to read! When I’m not reading or working on my blog, I’m baking bread, making ice cream, and most recently, learning pottery!”
Without further ado, here are Davida’s choices:
A favourite book: ‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje
To this day, I can’t recall any other book that blew me away with its lyrical beauty as much as this one. I’m actually so in awe of it, I’ve never dared to write a review! I’m sure people know the story, about a partly bombed-out building, in France, which had been used as a hospital, but now has only one patient, a pilot who has burns over most of his body. The woman caring for him is joined by two others, in a strange triangle of characters.
A book that changed my world: ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe
I read this in High School when Apartheid was still practised in South Africa. From this book, I learned of the cruelty of colonisation and to accept others for the type of person they are and to not judge them on their beliefs, practices or cultural differences. It also taught me that “different” doesn’t mean “bad”; it just means it’s not what I am accustomed to, and it is wonderful to learn about and respect other people, other cultures and other practices.
A book that deserves a wider audience: ‘The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt’ by Andrea Bobotis
When I read this debut novel just before it was published, I was so impressed with not only the writing but also the cleverness of both the plot and the structure. But hardly anyone else I know has read it, although I see it has gotten a good number of reviews on Goodreads, but not nearly enough, if you ask me. Maybe if more people read it and reviewed it, the author would be more motivated to publish a second novel!
Thanks, Davida, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday. I admit to struggling with The English Patient when I tried to read it in the early 1990s, but I **adore** the film. I haven’t read Things Fall Apart although it’s been in my TBR for many years, and I’ve not heard of The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
What do you think of Davida’s choices? Have you read any of these books?
Congratulations to Northern Irish writer Deirdre Madden who has been awarded a prestigious Windham-Campbell prize, worth US$175,000! Eight of these awards have been handed out every year since 2013.
(Australia’s own Helen Garner received one in 2016, famously thinking it was a spam email and almost binning the news of her win.)
Madden is one of my favourite writers. In the words of the Windham-Campbell prize committee, she brings to “life the smallest movements of characters’ impulses and thoughts, portraying the intricacies of human lives with compassion and effortless depth”.
Madden’s stories show us how we are both bound and freed by the “unholy wind” of time. Her characters’ lives are intersected by extraordinary events: some political (the Troubles), some economic (the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger), some personal, all sudden openings that offer the rare opportunity for transformation and even transcendence.
Windham-Campbell Prize announcement
I met her once at a Faber showcase when she was promoting Time Present and Time Past and she was so gracious and lovely. In those days I always handed out business cards to writers I met, never expecting anything to come of it, but a few days later she sent me an email, writing “you have a most impressive blog” — swoon. (And yes, I’ve still got that email.)
Her backlist is relatively small — eight novels at last count (she also writes children’s books) — of which I’ve read five:
The best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything…
Sitting on the memorial bench in Ballinamore in March 2011
Today marks the 18th anniversary of Irish writer John McGahern’s death. Long-time followers of this blog, particularly when it was hosted on Typepad, will know that McGahern is my favourite writer.
McGahern was born in County Leitrim in 1934, the eldest child of seven. He was raised on a farm run by his mother, a part-time primary school teacher, while his father, a garda sergeant, lived in the garda barracks at Cootehall in County Roscommon. Following the untimely death of his mother in 1944, McGahern and his siblings moved into the garda barracks to live with their father.
These details are important because they shape so much of his writing; a quest to understand his father’s distant, often cruel behaviour and to make sense of his mother’s passing.
His output was small — just six novels The Barracks, The Dark, The Leavetaking, The Pornographer, Amongst Women, and That They May Face the Rising Sun (published as By the Lake in the US) — but each one beautifully polished and eloquent, with an emphasis on nature, rural Irish life, family dynamics and the tension between tradition and modernity.
He was also an acclaimed short story writer.
A new-to-me discovery
I discovered McGahern in the British summer of 2006 when I read his debut novel The Barracks. I’m not entirely sure why I came to read him, other than his death, aged 71, was relatively recent and he had been described in various newspaper articles as one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
In his obituary, published in The Guardian, he was hailed as “arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett”.
As a lover of Irish literary fiction, I was amazed I’d never heard of him before and I suspect that’s why I bought his first book, published in 1963, to see what all the fuss was about.
I loved The Barracks so much that I bought his entire backlist (of novels) in one hit. Unusually, they were all sitting on the shelves at Waterstone’s Picadilly, almost as if they were waiting for me to take them home. I also bought his memoir, imaginatively titled Memoir, one of the most affecting books I have ever read.
Over the next 12 months, I devoured all the novels bar one because I didn’t want to be in a position where I had no more McGahern books left to read. I’m a “completist” but even so, all these years later, The Pornographer still sits on my bookshelves unread. Perhaps this year I will be brave enough to read it.
I might even dig out some of his short story collections because since discovering McGahern I have long got over my prejudice against the short story form!
A visit to McGahern country
In March 2011, I had the privilege of going on a self-guided trip to “McGahern country” with my partner Mr Reading Matters. I wrote about the short trip on my old blog, long since deleted, but I thought now was a good time to resurrect it, particularly as I have seen reviews of his work on other book blogs in recent weeks.
I think he’s also come to many people’s attention via the success of Irish writer Claire Keegan, who champions his work and is clearly influenced by his style and themes.
Whatever the case, it always delights me to see readers discovering his writing and appreciating its quiet beauty (and dark overtones) for the first time.
Lough Rynn Castle Hotel in Co. Leitrim, Ireland
On our trip all those years ago, we stayed at the rather wonderful Lough Rynn Castle Hotel, in Mohill, Co. Leitrim, deliberately chosen because it housed a small library dedicated to John McGahern. It was the perfect base to explore the area, where the author spent much of his life.
The John McGahern Library
The John McGahern Library was opened by the then-Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in November 2006 in the presence of McGahern’s widow, Madeline.
It’s housed in a small but sumptuous room on the hotel’s ground floor. The colour scheme is a mix of deep ruby reds and golds, complemented by mahogany timber furniture and glass-fronted bookshelves.
The shelves are lined with various hardcover books, mainly Irish novels and biographies. There is supposedly a selection of rare first edition volumes among them, but I was too scared to touch anything lest I caused damage — and, anyway, many of the titles were behind glass.
First editions of McGahern’s work under lock and key
Of course, a library dedicated to John McGahern has to include copies of his books and a collection of first editions can be seen in a glass display case over which a framed portrait of the great man hangs on the wall.
With its touch of luxury — the stiff-backed chairs, the small chandelier, the fireplace — I’m sure it’s a long way from the priest’s library that McGahern used to riffle through as a child but it is a truly beautiful and fitting memorial to one of Ireland’s greatest writers.
The shores of Lough Rynn
Glorious weather
During our trip, the weather was glorious — blue skies and sunshine, so unusual for Ireland where it can teem with rain for days on end. And as we pootled along the roads of McGahern’s native Leitrim we got a real sense of the beautiful landscape — rolling green hills, woodlands and lakes — that the writer loved so much.
Of course, there’s no “McGahern Country” map you can follow ( certainly in 2011, Discover Ireland hadn’t wised up to that one yet, but perhaps things have changed?), so much of our adventure was based on internet research and reference to a tour that my friend Trevor Cook had made the year before.
We got lost a few times and had one hair-raising episode in our hire car when we thought the wilds of rural Ireland would swallow us whole. We were looking for the farmhouse that McGahern had supposedly spent some time in as a child, but the gravel road we followed — and which we had spent a good half-hour looking for — led us a merry dance through bumpy terrain and wild woodland. Eventually, it became a boreen (rural track) masquerading as a swamp.
A soon-to-be treacherous boreen
As the hedgerows closed in around us and the surface of the track got muddier and muddier, it seemed inevitable that we were going to get bogged (not long after the photograph above was taken the road conditions deteriorated drastically). But Mr Reading Matters, who was driving, held his nerve and pushed on through (I kept my eyes closed). And then, just when we least expected it, we turned a corner where there was a quiet stretch of tarmac waiting to meet us. The sense of relief was enormous.
We never did find that farmhouse.
McGahern landmarks
But we did find plenty of other landmarks associated with McGahern. Here are some of them:
The plaque that commemorates his last novel
This plaque on the footpath in Ballinamore commemorates McGahern’s last novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, which was first published in 2001. It sits at the foot of a memorial bench (see the photograph at the top of this post).
The abbey that stars in McGahern’s last novel
Fenagh Abbey, in Fenagh, was built on the site of a 6th-century monastery founded by St Caillin. It sits atop a hillside overlooking the local village and surrounding landscape. In That They May Face the Rising Sun, this is the graveyard where the character Johnny Murphy is buried.
The garda barracks that stars in his debut novel
The barracks in Cootehall, just over the border in Co. Roscommon, where McGahern’s father, a garda sergeant, was based and where the family, including John, lived after the death of his mother. This is also the basis for the barracks in McGahern’s debut novel of the same name.
McGahern is buried alongside his mother
This is McGahern’s plain but dignified grave. He is buried alongside his mother, who died of breast cancer when he was 10 years old, in the grounds of St Patrick’s church, Aughawillan. The inscription on the cross reads:
Susan McManus McGahern, NT
2 May 1902 – 28 June 1944
John McGahern
12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006
Find out more
You can read all my reviews of McGahern’s work on my McGahern page.
And McGahern’s obituary published in The Guardian is worth revisiting if you wish to find out more about his life and his work.
Please excuse the poor quality of the photographs in this post. They were originally taken on a digital camera (not a smartphone) in 2011 and have been “rescued” from the Internet Archive website Wayback Machine because I no longer hold the originals.
I wrote this post for Cathy’s #ReadingIrelandMonth24. You can find out more about this annual blog event at Cathy’s blog 746 Books.
Fiction – paperback; Europa Editions; 300 pages; 2023. Translated from the French by Alison Anderson.
Children’s right to privacy in the Internet age is at the heart of Kids Run the Show, a provocative novel — part crime thriller, part social commentary — by French writer Delphine de Vigan.
The story focuses on Mélanie Claux, a young mother of two, who exploits her children online for financial gain.
It is set against a backdrop of calls to regulate the commercial exploitation of children by their parents and to classify the activity as work. In fact, in 2021, France introduced a law to protect “child influencers” on social media because it regards it as a form of child labour, which is already outlawed. The legislation is designed to protect the rights of children who are making money online via online platforms and the Internet.
Mélanie, a failed reality TV star (she got voted off Loft Story, France’s first reality TV show, an adaptation of the Big Brother franchise, early in the first season), is desperate for love and attention. Unable to achieve it for herself, she sets about achieving it vicariously through her children via a YouTube account called “Happy Recess”.
Here she posts cute videos of 8-year-old Sammy and 6-year-old Kimmy, which go viral, attract millions of “likes” and rack up the follower numbers. Happy Recess becomes so successful it generates enough money to support both Mélanie and her husband, Bruno, who live in a beautiful apartment full of beautiful objects, many of which are “freebies” sent to them for review or endorsement purposes.
Kidnapped for ransom
But when Kimmy disappears while playing hide-and-seek with other children in their apartment building early one evening, Mélanie’s carefully curated life begins to fall apart.
At 21:30 Mélanie Claux received a short private message on her Instagram account. The sender, whose name was unknown to her, had no followers of their own. Everything indicated that the account had been created with the sole purpose of sending her the following message: “Kid missing, deal coming,” which confirmed the theory of kidnapping for ransom. (page 33)
The case is referred to the Paris Crime Squad and investigative officer Clara Roussel has the thankless task of trawling through hours and hours of Happy Recess YouTube videos, looking for clues to Kimmy’s disappearance.
The list of suspects is long (possibly anyone who has ever watched a Kimmy video) and Clara’s task is a challenging one. But this isn’t a strict police procedural, rather it’s a thought-provoking examination of how social media has eroded our sense of privacy and created new opportunities to generate lucrative income streams — but at what cost?
The borders between private and public had disappeared long ago. This staging of the self, of one’s everyday life, the pursuit of likes: this was not something Mélanie had made up. It had become a way of life, a way of being in the world. One-third of the children who were born already had a digital life. (page 190)
The last section of the novel fast-forwards to 2031 to look at the long-term impact of the case on each of the main protagonists. It makes for uncomfortable reading.
Kids Run the Show is a clarion call, warning parents about the dangers of turning children into media stars before they are old enough to understand the consequences of their fame.
Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010 which has been on hiatus for several years — but now it’s time to bring it back. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.If you’d like to take part simply visit this post and fill in the form!
Bill, who is based in Perth, Western Australia, has previously taken part in Triple Choice Tuesday (see here, in 2017). He describes himself as an “old, white guy” but most of us know him as an erudite literary blogger who makes his living driving a truck across Australia. It’s always interesting to see what he’s reading and listening to on the road.
Without further ado, here are Bill’s choices:
A favourite book: ‘The Midnight Robber’ by Nalo Hopkinson
Look, everyone knows my favourite book is Normal People by Sally Rooney, but how can I explain that? The Midnight Robber is brilliant science fiction (SF) about a planet settled entirely by Jamaicans. It’s written in patois by Canadian/Jamaican woman author Nalo Hopkinson.
A book that changed my world: ‘That Deadman Dance’ by Kim Scott
This was the first book I paid any attention to, written by an Australian Indigenous author. You can never look at white settlement the same way again. When you’ve read that, read Another Day in the Colony by Dr Chelsea Watego, and feel about one foot tall.
A book that deserves a wider audience: ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula Le Guin
Everyone should read Le Guin (1929-2018). She is immensely thoughtful about all sorts of subjects and a brilliant storyteller. Here she sets her story in two worlds: one which is rationally self-governed, and the other which is a lot like the Earth.
Thanks, Bill, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday, once again.This is certainly an interesting trio of books, the only one that is familiar to me is That Deadman Dance (reviewed here).
What do you think of Bill’s choices? Have you read any of these books?
It’s an account of the life and times of Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann (1875-1955), whose work — Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain et al — I’ve never read, so part of me wonders whether I might have enjoyed the experience more if I was familiar with his writing.
Yet, on the face of it, Mann is the perfect subject for a fictionalised biography because his life was so intriguing on so many levels — economically, socially, politically, sexually. He was born into a rich mercantile family, but his father left them high and dry when he died, and it was up to Mann to find his calling as a writer.
A closeted homosexual with a (supposed) interest in young boys, he went on to marry the devoted and independently minded Katia, who was from a wealthy industrialist family, with whom he had six children. Three of their children went on to become famous writers.
But Mann’s life was marred by the times in which he lived, particularly the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of World War II, during which he fled to Switzerland and later the US. Despite his wealth, he and Katia never seemed to settle in one place, moving constantly between Europe and America, and spending time in Sweden.
His fame meant he was often called upon to criticise Hitler and the Nazi Party, but he was reluctant to use his platform, frightened that it would put other family members at risk, but perhaps, also, because he was more interested in his own self-preservation, of living a quiet life in which he could continue his writing uninterrupted.
Tóibín chooses to tell Mann’s story in a distant third voice so that we don’t really get much of an insight into Mann’s motivations. The closest we get to a seemingly non-existent interior voice is when he frets that his diaries, which detail his sexual fantasies, may fall into the wrong hands.
And despite the great cast of characters that surround him — in particular, his transgressive, sexually outrageous-for-the-times offspring Erika and Klaus — we never really discover what others think of him. The only hint is toward the end, when his youngest son Michael sends him quite a scathing letter, claiming that he has neglected his children in favour of his creative life.
‘I am sure the world is grateful to you for the undivided attention you have given to your books, but we, your children, do not feel any gratitude to you, or indeed to our mother, who sat by your side. It is hard to credit that you both stayed in your luxury hotel while my brother was being buried. I told no one in Cannes that you were in Europe. They would not have believed me.
‘You are a great man. Your humanity is widely appreciated and applauded. I am sure you are enjoying loud praise in Scandinavia. It hardly bothers you, most likely, that these feelings of adulation are not shared by any of your children. As I walked away from my brother’s grave, I wished you to know how deeply sad I felt for him.’ (page 394)
Perhaps the reason I struggled to fully engage with this novel was the complete lack of emotion in it. Both Mann and his wife come across as rather cold fish. Was it a protective coping device? A way of saving face?
It’s hard to know, because despite the many deaths in the family which are detailed here — including the deaths by suicide of Mann’s sisters in separate incidents, and the loss of a son-in-law when the Transatlantic passenger ship he was travelling on was torpedoed during the war — Mann does not appear to shed a tear. He chooses to bury himself in his work.
Even the rivalry that Mann has with his older brother, Heinrich, who was also a writer, does not seem to trouble him and yet they had been close, living together in Italy when they were both young men. United by their desire to escape their bourgeois roots and the long shadow of their late father — a senator and grain merchant of some repute — they appear to have chosen completely different paths; Heinrich takes the radical, outspoken path, Thomas chooses the one of least resistance.
This is reflected much later in the circumstances in which they live in America: Heinrich and his ditzy second wife Nelly live in a squalid apartment; Thomas and Katia reside in a large, flashy house with an enormous garden.
Of course, the problem with a fictionalised biography of this nature is the lack of distinction between fact and fiction. I do not know enough about Mann’s life to recognise what is an act of Tóibín’s imagination and what is real.
I had hoped to take The Magician as I found it, to enjoy a story about a fascinating writer who was beset by deeply personal challenges throughout his life, but what I got was a rather plodding account of a seemingly unknowable man. Perhaps, in the end, that was Tóibín’s point?
Two longlists for big prizes for women’s writing have been announced this week: the Stella Prize (in Australia) and the Women’s Prize for Fiction (in the UK).
The 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist
The Women’s Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers. It is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000.
🏆Hangman by Maya Binyam (One) 🏆In Defence of the Act by Effie Black (époque press) 🏆And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott (Allen & Unwin) 🏆The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape) 🏆The Maiden by Kate Foster (Mantle) 🏆Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan (Viking) 🏆Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville (Canongate) 🏆Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (Jonathan Cape) 🏆Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy (Faber & Faber) 🏆8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee (Virago) 🏆The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord (Gollancz) 🏆Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (Picador) 🏆Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie (Oneworld) 🏆Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan (Jonathan Cape) 🏆River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (Duckworth) 🏆A Trace of Sun by Pam Williams (Legend Press)
The shortlist will be announced on 24 April.
The 2024 Stella Prize longlist
The Stella Prize is a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing. The $60,000 prize is awarded annually to one outstanding book deemed to be original, excellent, and engaging. All genres are eligible.
🏆Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (Giramondo Publishing) 🏆She Is the Earth by Ali Cobby Eckermann (Magabala Books) 🏆Feast by Emily O’Grady (Allen & Unwin) 🏆Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead by Hayley Singer (Upswell Publishing) 🏆The Hummingbird Effect by Kate Mildenhall (Scribner Australia) 🏆Body Friend by Katherine Brabon (Ultimo Press) 🏆The Swift Dark Tide by Katia Ariel (Gazebo Books) 🏆West Girls by Laura Elizabeth Woollett (Scribe Publications) 🏆Graft: Motherhood, Family and a Year on the Land by Maggie MacKellar (Penguin Random House) 🏆Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko (University of Queensland Press) 🏆Hospital by Sanya Rushdi (Giramondo Publishing) 🏆The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop (Hachette Australia)
Fiction – hardcover; Jonathan Cape; 225 pages; 2021.
Can there be a more intimate act than listening to a war criminal’s testimony and then interpreting it — in real-time — in an international courtroom setting?
Such interpreters often deal with sensitive subjects — including violence, death and ethnic cleansing — but must maintain impartiality and communicate what they hear accurately and without emotion.
Or, as the first-person narrator in Katie Kitamura’s extraordinary novel Intimacies says, they must make the “spaces between languages as small as possible”.
[…] interpretation can be profoundly disorienting, you can be so caught up in the minutiae of the act, in trying to maintain utmost fidelity to the words being spoken first by the subject and then by yourself, that you do not necessarily apprehend the sense of the sentences themselves: you literally do not know what you are saying. Language loses its meaning. […] And yet—as I stared down at the pad of paper in front of me, covered in shorthand—something did seep out. I saw the words I had been saying, for nearly twenty minutes now, cross-border raid, mass grave, armed youth. (pages 116-117)
Set in The Hague
In this compelling story, told in languid first-person prose, the unnamed interpreter accepts a one-year contract at the International Court in The Hague [1] on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands. It’s the perfect opportunity to escape New York City, where she was raised, following the death of her father after a long illness and her mother’s return to Singapore.
Here, in a strange new European city, with a new job, she tries to adjust to a new way of life, aware that her colleagues all seem super confident, even flamboyant, while she’s more introspective and focused on just getting through the year without making any drastic errors.
Asked to interpret for a former president who has been accused of the worst crimes against humanity, she grapples with the emotional challenges of her job. And outside of work, she also grapples with two intertwined issues: her identity and a sense of home.
Australian paperback edition
A tale of contradictions
The story is full of paradoxes. In this calm and peaceful city, the narrator is surprised to discover there’s an undercurrent of violence; the international criminal court, which strives to provide justice for victims regardless of their nationality, is said to have an African bias; and the extreme nature of certain atrocities, such as genocide or war crimes, is in complete contrast to the mundane characteristics of the individuals who commit them.
Any wonder the narrator seeks to build intimate relationships with good people — she needs them for emotional support, companionship and fun. She finds this with Jana, a single Black woman in her forties who is a curator at the Mauritshuis museum, who becomes a close friend.
Her character was the opposite of mine, she was almost compulsively open whereas I had grown guarded in recent years, my father’s illness had served as a quiet warning against too much hope. She entered my life at a moment when I was more than usually susceptible to the promise of intimacy. I felt a cool relief in her garrulous company, and I thought in our differences we achieved a kind of equilibrium. (pages 2-3)
And then there’s her lover, Adriaan, whose “intrinsic ease” with her offers a sense of normalcy, routine and comfort. But while intimate, it’s an ambiguous relationship for Adriaan is married with children (“He had been left by his wife a year earlier”) and for much of the novel he’s in Lisbon, trying to sort things out with his estranged wife, leaving our narrator with a set of keys to his substantially sized apartment because it “would make me happy to imagine you here”.
On the surface, this seems a wholly intimate act, to reside in your lover’s home, surrounded by his things (and his wife’s things), but it soon becomes a chore when Adriaan stops communicating and his one-week trip morphs into an extended period away with no end date in sight.
Quiet and understated
Intimacies is a quietly understated novel about big issues (another paradox!), including morality, crimes against humanity, trauma, justice and the importance of language, especially the way it is interpreted and conveyed.
I loved reading about the intricacies of this line of work, of the pressure to do it against the clock and to do it accurately so that a reliable witness doesn’t appear unreliable and doesn’t affect the “outcome of a trial”.
It’s a stylish novel, full of beautifully crafted sentences, the kind that meander but are deeply personal and contemplative. It’s a beguiling tale, but there’s an undercurrent of suspense, too — will Adriaan ever return, for instance, and will the former president do or say something in the courtroom to unravel her professional demeanour?
I highly recommend adding this one to your list — I’m confident it will be going on my list of favourite reads for 2024!
[1] In her acknowledgements, the author writes: “Although the court that appears in this novel does contain certain similarities to the Internationa Criminal Court, it is in no way intended to represent that institution or its activities”
Fiction – Kindle edition; The Gallery Press; 224 pages; 2018.
Nightspawn is John Banville’s debut novel, first published in 1971.
It’s a slippery story, impossible to get a handle on. It’s full of political, often murderously violent, intrigue, peopled with a cast of strange characters and, despite its Greek island setting, pulses with a darkly Gothic atmosphere.
From an alleyway came the flash of a fang and one red eye, there, gone. (Location 264)
It’s narrated by an expatriate Irish writer called Benjamin White who’s entangled in a devious revolutionary plot he doesn’t quite understand and, for much of the story, he lurches from one strange catastrophe to another as he tries to work out what is real and what is not.
Secret document
At the heart of the story is a mysterious document — “containing certain signatures” and sometimes described as “the little thing, the little thing which means so much” — that could be used to help a cause or put certain people in power.
A revolution is brewing and Benjamin, constantly mistaken for an Englishman (a running joke throughout the book), is advised to leave.
The army was everywhere, in tanks, in jeeps, in lorries, on foot, but through it all, the battered yellow cab came nosing, its windows wide, and the car radio blaring martial music, appropriately enough, filling the streets with the strains of war. (Location 2598)
Murder, kidnapping and violent assaults abound. Their ferocity is only matched by the moody weather, the stormy sea “alive with ghostly glimmers of phosphorescence” and the “uneasiness in the air”.
Out over the sea a gathering of ugly black cloud was smeared like a grease stain on the sky. (Location 78)
A game of chess
Benjamin’s detailed moves — including his steamy love affair with Helen, a married woman, whom on one occasion he rapes — is a bit like a game of chess. (Interestingly, there are characters named Black, White and Knight, which can’t be a coincidence. Even the novel’s title could be a pun on “Knight’s pawn”.)
Toward the end of the story, there’s a quote that perfectly describes the experience of reading this book:
My mind would not work very well; my thoughts were fragmented and dispersed, and I had a vertiginous sensation of planes of awareness slipping and sliding uncontrollably, running into each other and locking, like loose, shuffled pages of a book. (Location 2564)
Not a ‘normal’ novel
Nightspawn isn’t an easy book to follow — but it seems Banville deliberately intended it to be so. In an article he wrote in 1994 looking back on his first novel, he said he had a “deep distrust of the novel form” and “at the age of 25 I had no doubt that I was about to transform the novel as we knew it”.
Plot, character, psychology: such words had me reaching for my revolver.
He apparently wrote eight drafts, all in the third person; it wasn’t until he introduced a first-person narrator that he felt happy with it.
Do not mistake me: the book holds a dear place in my heart. Whatever its faults, it contains the best of what I could do. It is incandescent, crotchety, posturing, absurdly pretentious, yet in my memory it crackles with frantic, antic energy; there are sentences in it that I still quote to myself with secret and slightly shame-faced pleasure.
I understand what he means. The prose is astonishingly good; he writes with a painterly eye and has an uncanny ability to make inanimate things come alive:
The fog comes to my window, nuzzles at my window like some friendly blind animal. (Location 1279)
And:
The ancient telephone spoke. One could not say that it rang, for it had an oddly querulous, croaking call, like that of some awkward, ugly and sullen bird. (Location 1672)
And:
Her hands fluttered nervously, and fell together like frightened animals. (Location 2709)
And despite the heavy subject matter — death, betrayal and the Greek junta — humour is never far away:
I took a couple of steps across the floor, and then, in a flash of blinding white light, something hard fell on the back of my head, behind my ear, and I was falling, down, down into total darkn— wait now, wait, I am getting carried away with all this thriller stuff. Backspace, a bit. I took a couple of steps across the floor, and halted. (Location 2142)
Challenging romp
Nightspawn is probably not the right novel for first-time Banville readers, but if you are relatively acquainted with this work, you’ll likely recognise some of his trademarks — a flare for showy writing, wonderful descriptions of art and a focus on the unreliability of memory.
I found it an enjoyable, if somewhat ambiguous, challenging and occasionally perplexing, romp.
It’s the sort of book you read not for the plot or the storyline but for the sheer delight in the wordplay and the stylistic prose. It’s strange and bonkers and beautifully Baroque, perfect if you like that sort of thing.
I read this book as part of A Year With John Banville, which I am co-hosting with Cathy from 746 Books. You are invited to join in using the hashtag #JohnBanville2024. To learn more, including our monthly reading schedule, please visit my John Banville page.
♥ This month Cathy reviewed ‘The Newton Letter‘, the last in his Revolutions trilogy, published in 1982.
♥ Next month I plan to read ‘Birchwood’, published in 1973, and Cathy plans to read ‘Christine Falls’, the first book penned under his pseudonym Benjamin Black. (I have previously reviewed ‘Christine Falls’ here.)
“Begging you to read Sula by Toni Morrison,” my niece Monet said in a WhatsApp message in mid-January. “Finishing that book felt like a break-up… it’s my new favourite book.”
With such high praise, I put in a reservation request at my local library and a few weeks later the book was available for me to read.
When I was about a third of the way through it, I sent Monet a message: “OMG. This book. The mother burning her son. The two girls drowning that little boy.”
It was a story that was full of jaw-dropping moments, most of which I didn’t see coming. It gave the story a compelling and powerful edge.
Sula comes in at less than 200 pages, but it contains a lifetime of angst, love, joy, death, tragedy and humour. Every page contains something surprising or revelatory.
I filled it with Post-It tabs, which I use to mark passages I like or think important to the story, and writing this review now, I’m not quite sure how to summarise the book except to say it’s a powerful yet unconventional tale about friendship, identity, betrayal, systematic racism and the consequences of societal expectations in a small American town in the early to mid-20th century.
The tension between tradition and rebellion, conformity and individuality, are central themes.
It was Morrison’s second novel, first published in 1973, and is largely regarded as being integral to the formation of black feminist literary criticism.
But I didn’t read the book through that lens, nor, I’m sure did Monet.
I read it as a compelling tale about a Black community framed around the unlikely friendship between two girls, the titular Sula Peace and Nel Wright, from opposite sides of the social spectrum who become super close as children but choose different paths to follow as adults. In the end, their friendship disintegrates spectacularly but leaves both feeling lonely and misunderstood.
My thoughts
👍🏽 I loved the way Morrison paints such an evocative portrait of the town known as Bottom and then fills it with intriguing and flawed characters, including
Sula, a complex and rebellious figure who defies societal norms and expectations and has a birthmark on her face which might be a sign of the devil
her friend Nel, who represents conformity and tradition in contrast to the way Sula lives her life
Helene, Nel’s mother, who strives for respectability and acceptance
Hannah Peace, Sula’s mother, known for her beauty, promiscuity and carefree attitude
Eva Peace, Sula’s grandmother, a strong and resilient woman who raises her grandchildren after their mother’s abandonment.
👍🏽 I was taken aback by the shocks that come one after another, but they make the book compelling and page-turning. There’s death by burning (twice), death by drowning, adultery and personal confrontations.
Morrison sets the scene pretty early on by having Shadrack, a seriously traumatised Great War veteran, discharged from hospital far too early. Left to his own devices with just “$217 in cash, a full suit of clothes and copies of very official looking papers”, he has nowhere to go and is too weak to walk steadily along the gravel shoulder of the road he heads out west on.
Passengers in dark, square cars shuttered their eyes at what they took to be a drunken man. […] The police took him to jail, booked him for vagrancy and intoxication, and locked him in a cell. (pages 12-13)
👍🏽 I appreciated the way Morrison integrates casual and systematic racism into the narrative to show that this is the way Black people were treated but makes no commentary on the injustice of it; she just lets the examples sit there and if you weren’t looking for it or lack lived experience, it’s so subtle you might not even notice.
As an example, when Helene takes Nel on a train journey, she is shocked to discover the restrooms are reserved for white people only. When she asks a fellow passenger where the toilet is, she’s told it’s over “yonder” and is directed to a field of long grass.
And when a bargeman tells the sheriff that he’s found a young Black boy’s body in the river, the sheriff is completely disinterested because “they didn’t have no niggers in their country” and is advised to “throw it on back into the water” as if the boy was a piece of rubbish.
Monet’s thoughts
👍🏽 This is an absolutely gorgeous book. The prose is beautiful and flawless in its entirety. The twists are so unexpected; the way it’s written you have no idea what’s going to happen next. And the relationships between the characters are magnificent.
👍🏽 I was instantly hooked by the retelling of Nel on the train. The racism was shocking to read about — especially considering that this was the average life of an African-American woman in the 1920s. The fact that the train carriages were segregated, then the toilets, made me verbally say, “WTF”.
👍🏽 The fact that Morrison’s writing could make me fall in and out of love with characters throughout the book was inspiring. I loved Sula in the beginning and admired her confidence and aura, but by the end, I had accepted her fate and longed for her misfortune.
Reading Matters 