These Days - Lucy Caldwell

 Write about what you know. Isn’t that what we’re always told? Your own experience. I think it was Mark Twain who first put the notion out there, or was it Hemingway? No matter. Because when it comes to historical fiction, that just can’t work, can it? Unless you’re that writer who has perfected the art of time travel! Or your previous life regressions have been detailed and vivid. No, thorough research and imagination in swathes are the minimum requirement. But is that enough? Sure that can entertain, inform and you can have a perfectly agreeable and satisfying novel, but sometimes you need that little extra ‘je ne sais quoi’. That extra something that makes you think that the author really was there, really did experience the events described. And that was my feeling when I read Lucy Caldwell’s These Days. I felt as if I was reading a firsthand account of the horrors of that period in history.

Set in Belfast, the novel follows the lives of two sisters, Emma and Audrey. Emma is a volunteer at a first-aid post and is in a clandestine relationship with a female colleague. Audrey is on the cusp of engagement to a young doctor. The novel sees life through their eyes, but also of their mother, Florence. It’s 1941,  World War II is in full flow and Belfast is the target for German air raids. 

The story opens with an air raid and sets the mood for the rest of the novel. That sense of fear and anticipation of what might be ahead and yet the need to maintain some kind of every day life; going to work, eating, maintaining a home and …… loving. Romantic love, familial love, love of place, of pasts, possessions all also at war against ….. war. 

There is no shying away from the brutality, the devastation and the despondency of war and destruction. The fallout that includes the helplessness of trying to comfort the bereaved, the desire to offer practical support. It’s all here. And it’s all so convincing.

As a story, I suppose it’s the kind of thing we’ve read before. It’s not the first Second World War story to deal with the Blitz. (It’s the first one I’ve ever read about the Belfast Blitz though.)But this writer seems to get, not just under the skin of her characters, so that we come to know them intimately, but also under the skin of the very fabric of life in Belfast. The female characters dominate, they’re well drawn, complete people, you can visualise them and they behave as you might expect them to behave. The dilemmas become the readers’ dilemmas because we are so invested in them. The male characters less, so perhaps, although I found Audrey and Emma‘s father to be a sympathetic man.The characters’ responses to the atrocities they’re having to live through is palpable. We are living the fear with them.

It’s such a well balanced story. It never gets bogged down with the detail, so it’s economic writing without shortchanging us. But perhaps the greatest strength in the novel is how this author has managed to vivify this lesser-known event in history. In a way you feel you’re reading an eyewitness account of what happened. Not just the facts; the bombs, and the casualties, the rescue operations, but the depth of compassion and emotion. I loved Florence’s philosophical musings which seemed to me to be the heart of the novel. That sense of impending disaster, changing everything familiar, bringing to the forefront old wounds and regrets, and wanting to make reparation on a number of levels somehow was very moving.

‘….what has haunted me most, what has come to feel most unbearable, the things unsaid, the words unspoken, the touches untouched.’

There really are no happy ever afters when it comes to war. There are survivors. A desire for normality. And paradoxically a desire for change. Beautifully exemplified by Audrey and Emma at the novel’s conclusion.

This story has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott’s Historical Fiction prize. Another worthy contender.

The Geometer Lobachevsky - Adrian Duncan

 

I wasn’t surprised to find that this author originally trained as a structural engineer. There is something so meticulous, measured and structured in his prose that it suggested a mind of infinite precision. A slender novel this tells the story of a Russian mathematician in the 1950s, who is surveying a bog in Ireland. He receives a telegram that requires him to return to Leningrad for a “special appointment“. Given the political climate of the time and the reputation such a country has, both the reader and Lobachevsky realises that it is potentially a death sentence. And so Nikolai goes into hiding on a remote island in the Shannon estuary, where he works with the island families. It gives him plenty of time to think.

This is not a book of action. It’s a book of contemplation. A curious paradox ensues, where the routine and mundane stuff of life exists alongside the fear of a violent regime. Our protagonist muses on cows and other agricultural phenomena. It’s like an extended soliloquy from a condemned man. A modern day Hamlet perhaps? Nikolai is not a man of endeavour, he observes and studies his fellow man and the situations he’s in with a logical and systematic dispassion almost. You get the sense he’s not driven by a wealth of emotion. And yet his observations do show a depth of feeling. It’s as if he is drawing a parallel between the cruelty of land and people, and the cruelty of a political system. It’s as if he sees everything as inevitable without actually saying so. 

Some of the mathematics within the book eluded me. Each part of the book was prefaced with some kind of geometric maxim? For example, “ Shadow cast by pyramid travels over the lower vertex of triangle; circle spins past in the background, followed in the distance by an oscillating, square.“ I get a picture in my head, but I don’t know what it means! 

The prose is paradoxically languid while describing intense physical activity, but it meanders through nature’s harmony and its violence. The description of the thunderstorm is exquisite. A sense of static beauty provides the entire novel and yet, for this reader, anyway, a sense of the enigmatic prevailed too. I had the sense on occasions that something was just out of my reach, as if I were missing something salient. Perhaps that’s  a good reason, maybe, to re-read the book! Also, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this in our politically correct times, but it came across as a very male book! Apologies if that is inappropriate. 

This has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction prize 2023, and I shall be interested to see how it fares. 

The Memory Keeper - Jackie Kohnstamm

 

In many ways, this is like reading an in depth episode of Who Do You Think You Are instead of watching it. Although the detail is such that it is very easy to picture everything that transpires in this absorbing tale of one woman’s search for the truth.

If you hear the term “Holocaust survivor“, you immediately think of somebody who managed to survive or escape, the horrors of the death camps of Nazi Germany and their “final solution“. But after reading this book, I think that term can extend to relatives and descendants of those who perished. 

This book tells of Jackie Kohnstamm’s determined, indefatigable and meticulous mission to seek the truth of what happened to the grandparents she never met and who perished in Theresienstadt concentration camp. Jackie’s mother managed to escape Berlin before the deportations began as had her brother and sister before her. They, too, were Holocaust survivors in my opinion. But Mrs Kohnstamm, spoke very little of what happened during the war, leaving her daughter countless questions about the past.

In one of those indefinable moments that happen every once in a while, call them sliding doors moments, call them serendipity, call them fate, Jackie googled her grandparents names and found that four days previously two Stolpersteine had been laid in their names outside their previous residence in Berlin. This proved to be the catalyst for a search that took her back to Berlin on several occasions.

( stolpersteine  - https://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/ )

In this book, Jackie allows us to accompany her on her journey to find out the truth about her, maternal grandparents about their lives, and about those months of torment inflicted upon innocent people by a barbaric and heartless regime. It’s an absorbing book for Holocaust students and genealogists alike as Jackie visits various archives and researchers and translates documents and performs countless searches in her desire to know the details of Max and Mally. And as you progress through the book, you find that you want to know almost as badly as Jackie does the circumstances, the detail, the whys and the wherefores. 

There are many “moments“ in the book. But one that really got me was when Jackie in Berlin, searching through documents at the Berlin Compensation Office finds her own birth certificate -  the original. Somehow, for me, it seemed like cement across the miles and years sealing the family together.

This is a very readable book. Whether you have an interest in the Holocaust or not it’s a fascinating account of an individual’s detective work. But if you are a student of the Holocaust, it’s another invaluable addition to your library.

My thanks to Canongate Books for a gifted copy.

The Night Guest - Fiona McFarlane

 

So impressed, was I with the quality of the writing in Fiona McFarlane’s shortlisted, Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize novel The Sun Walks Down, that I sought out a copy of her debut novel The Night Guest from my local library.

This is a very different book, set in contemporary times with what has become something of a universal theme and a contemporary one – identity, ageing and memory. 

Ruth, the protagonist, is 75 and clearly in the early stages of dementia. Her condition deteriorates throughout the course of the novel, and the story develops deceptively from what seems to be straightforward tale of an ageing lady receiving carer help to a disordered descent into an abyss of surreal and psychological pandemonium.

The dynamic between the two main characters, Ruth and Frida the carer, shift subtly as the story develops. The reader is thrown off balance by not quite knowing whether it’s Ruth‘s deteriorating condition that is causing confusion, or whether Frida is not quite who she seems to be or both even! And you’ll get no spoilers from me!

There’s a lot of tension in the novel which again keeps the reader on their toes and makes for some uneasy reading in some cases. The titular night guest is in fact a tiger. And you can’t help but think of The Life of Pi or even The Tiger’s Wife. I found it interesting that Ruth‘s friend is called Richard Porter, because I immediately thought Richard Parker!! And so the tiger is not a new metaphor in contemporary literature, but it is a powerful one and it remains so here.

McFarlane’s writing is poetic just as it is in her current novel And serves to sustain the nervy atmosphere created. Her characterisations are thorough and believable. She seems to have captured the lack of confidence that comes with old age, regardless of any memory issues. And Ruth is a delightful character. I had such a strong sense of wanting to protect her. The account of her foray into town is both touching and heartbreaking. Frida, too, is an immense character. You see her descend into a different kind of chaos from Ruth’s. I found myself constantly questioning whether she really cared for Ruth or not. She was a paradox, a mass of contradictions. 

Clearly, we have a writer of note.There is a huge gap between this book (2013), and her current one (2022) with a collection of short stories (2016) in between. I actually like that. It means we have an author who is not churning out work for the masses. She’s got something to say and she’ll say it when she’s ready to say it. Which to me says it’s going to be worth listening to! The only problem for me, as I start to catch Ruth up in age, is that I might not be around by the time she finishes her next book!

Ancestry - Simon Mawer

 Several years ago, when I was clearing my late mother’s house, I came across a small card, detailing an unknown relative’s interment in a local cemetery. I only recognised her surname because it was the same as my great-grandmother‘s maiden name, but I remember being astounded that I knew nothing else. But with the help of the local council’s Bereavement Services, I located the burial place,  where I stood and pondered. I wanted to know about this woman, how she related to me. It sent my sister and I on a journey; perusing censuses with their occasional dubious transcriptions of names, requesting certificates of birth, marriage, and death from the General Registry Office, travelling to cemeteries, locating streets, some of which were no more or with changed names and demolished houses - in my very own Who Do You Think You Are adventure! 

And it seems that Simon Mawer has done exactly the same. Except that he had the wonderful idea and foresight to use all that research and  information to construct a fiction based on enough facts that we might have ourselves a new genre - ‘faction’!

Mr Mawer is a natural storyteller. He brings his characters/relatives alive, using the barest of details and impressions from documents and newspaper articles in the most absorbing way. And as much as this is a novel it also seems to offer us flavours of history from a maritime life in the 19th century to the trenches of Sebastopol during the Crimea. Social history too has a place, particularly with regard to the women in Victorian England and attitudes to widowhood. 

The novel is in three parts that deal, I guess, with the maternal ancestry in part one, and the paternal ancestry in the second part, with part three trying to tie up ends and leads us to the epilogue, which focuses on a 1928 photograph. 

For me, it was the women I wanted to read about, Naomi and Ann’s stories, so, at times, I found the balance disproportionate.The experiences of the 50th regiment in the Crimea were harrowing, but I felt too much focus was given to this part and I felt the outcome, for the purposes of this fiction, became obvious. But, conversely, aficionados of military history would be hanging on every word, I should imagine, it was well written.

I’d be interested to know what people who have never dabbled in genealogy made of the book! I feel I’m coming at it from a different perspective from many others. The author was very clear to make the distinction between fact and fiction, which I think is helpful for people who have not read census entries and registration documents. Some actual instances are backed up by newspaper articles. This could so easily have been a factual book, one person detailing their search for their ancestors, and that could end up being a somewhat dry account. Or it could have been a complete fiction without any reference to genealogy which would have made for a good story but Simon Mawer has given it an added dimension - it’s a fusion of both, and it has been a compelling read.

So much has gone into this book and I’m not just talking about the research. I think that when you’re writing about your family there is an invisible web of emotion that subliminally brings all the words together. How many times have we seen on the TV show, Who Do You Think You Are people overcome with emotion over ancestors they’ve never met! I think that what the story does is show just how powerful family ties and blood ties really are. Perhaps it’s that enduring need to find ourselves, to try and understand who we are, and how we have reached this point in our existence that the need to know about the past can consume some of us as we search for those answers. I know it did me. For example, finding out that my great-great-grandfather was a tailor in Penzance thrilled me. And my sister recently found the house where he lived all his life. It makes it all so real. That’s what this book does too.

Ancestry has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize this year, and I was lucky enough to win a copy.

Ada’s Realm - Sharon Dodua Otoo translated from the German by Jon Cho-Polizzi

This could be a Marmite book for many. It’s quite extraordinary and defies comparison. Fleetingly I thought of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas with its interlocking lives and different time frames, and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, but not for long. With a fluid narrative that meanders through the labyrinth of our imaginations Sharon Dodua Otoo has created a character who transcends convention - Ada -who lives through the Orbits, as the sections in the novel are named. And the orbits join together like the links in the bracelet that cements the different periods of time together.

The book challenges the margins and protocols of literary language, structure and characterisation. In one sense it’s mind blowing. Ada is many women but in a way she is every woman. As she navigates the centuries she offers the reader a view of womens’ place through time. And yet it doesn’t present as an overtly feminist novel. It examines womanhood overall, in different cultures, through different times. The author does so with vivacity and humour. It’s refreshingly original. As a reader I had the sense of being bounced about, back-and-forth in time, accompanying this woman, who is both strong and determined yet also, a casualty of history’s attitude to women. We know that Ada is an African woman, that is made clear from the opening orbits in Totope but I felt the character transcended culture and race to represent all females. For those with a fundamental belief in reincarnation, and previous lives, this will be a fascinating read. A degree of spirituality is inherent in much of the narrative as seemingly inanimate objects take on personality and enjoy conversations with God, even! 

All the Adas have individual characteristics, yet they converge as a whole woman ultimately throughout the fragmentation of time.

All of the various narratives link seamlessly offering a cohesion that I feel to be vital for such a daring book. The translation by Jon Cho-Polizzi is sublime, flawless even. I don’t feel he’s lost any of the original flavour of the German text. In fact, when you’re reading you lose sight of the fact that it’s a work in translation. That isn’t always the case.

I’ve a feeling this book will either take the world by storm for its ambition and originality or it will sink without trace.

I fervently hope it is the former. I would like to see it hit the awards long lists, at the very least.

My thanks to Corinna Zifko at MacLehose Press for my beautiful gifted finished copy.

I Am Not Your Eve - Devika Ponnambalam

 There is a haunting quality to this deceptively slender novel that tells the story of Teha’amana, the muse of Paul Gauguin during his Tahitian days. The somewhat unorthodox narrative presents as fragmented at times as the various voices offer their perspectives, from Gaugin himself through to the diary extracts from his daughter. It’s a narrative that requires concentration from the reader to focus on exactly whose voice we are listening to. Teha’amana remains dominant, and rightly so.

Something that struck me most forcibly was the very visual nature of the writing. It was almost as if a Gaugin painting had been created with words rather than paint. The subtle and effective use of colour words gave the text a vibrancy that matched that very identifiable quality that pervades Gaugin’s work during this period in his career. It’s cleverly sustained throughout the novel and was very impressive.The novel also uses the myths and legends of Tahiti to run alongside Teha’amana’s story fusing her present with the ancient lore of her country adding an almost spiritual dimension to the tale not to mention the understated effects of colonialism and patriarchy. The title hints of the Biblical, and a smattering of potential feminism maybe? 

The novel is very much Teha’mana’s story and does little to dilute the controversy of Gaugin, and the view that, his Tahitian art particularly, was exploitative. Teha’amana was his child bride in Polynesia, the same age as his eldest daughter,  whilst he left his legal wife and the rest of his family back in France grappling with the implications of his painting. 

Much of the story presents, almost as a prose poem, full of rich, evocative language that celebrates and encompasses the Tahitian culture. But there are also very quotable, epigrammatical lines.

‘Everything has a shell.

      Man’s shell is his woman because he comes from her. And woman’s shell is woman because she comes from herself.’

And,

‘This is my body, my voice.’

Interesting that a couple of books this year have focused on artists’ muses. I couldn’t help being reminded of Sophie Haydock’s The Flames which told of Egon Schiele’s muses. Both books, give voice to these women who are rendered immortal, almost by these artists, and whose likenesses we can gaze on decades, centuries, after their deaths. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine, or remember that they were living, breathing women with their own lives, hopes and dreams, all there for these artists to capture should they so desire. Without these paintings they would probably never be known to us. But what I think is interesting is that these stories, to an extent are placing current thinking and moralities on events that occurred in a past where contexts were very different. But, in the case of I Am Not Your Eve to have created a book with such rich layers shows a great deal of research and exploration into a little-known culture and present it very palpably.

This book has been shortlisted for this year‘s Walter Scott Historical Fiction prize. And that’s quite an achievement for a debut novel. I was fortunate enough to win a copy in a prize draw, which I am very grateful.

Ginger and Me - Elissa Soave

 There were some laugh out loud moments in this coming-of-age story from Elissa Soave, but nothing prepared me for the ending, which left me feeling very sad.

Very much a maturation story for our times and whilst I enjoyed it immensely it felt like a story I’d read before. Perhaps as you grow older and you read so many books complete originality becomes something of a luxury. What kept me on board with this book was the author’s perception and ability to see into a character.

Wendy broke my heart. It was clear fairly early on that she was pretty much firmly on the spectrum and maybe we can thank Mark Haddon for making it okay to have autistic people as leading characters. But it’s not enough to merely write about autism unless the writer understands the Asperger’s mind and this writer does. Perfectly. She’s absolutely nailed it. We see the world through Wendy’s eyes and therein much of the poignancy is derived. The autistic tendency for obsession and compulsion is perfectly described here with Wendy’s belief that she is in tune with a published writer. 

But if Wendy broke my heart, then Ginger practically finished me off! There’s a sense of knowing exactly what’s going on, but no one actually coming out and saying it. Wendy probably doesn’t intuit with her particular way of thinking and you get the sense that Ginger is simply too fearful to spell it out.

Wendy’s bus driving reminding me a bit of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters! You’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus as a metaphor for being hip or unhip and the fact that both Wendy and Ginger are on and off the bus strengthens the metaphor to show their confusion and the difficulty of navigating life in their challenging worlds. 

But if it is sounding a little bleak there is some humour in the book, especially Wendy’s penchant for literal interpretations and it is a story about friendship and loyalty.

My thanks to HQ stories where I won the book in a draw. 

The Sun Walks Down - Fiona McFarlane

 

Some years ago, in the 70s, I believe, there was a Nicholas Roeg film, Walkabout, starring a very young Jenny Agutter. The film told the story of two children lost in the Australian outback in harrowing circumstances, and they were befriended by an Aboriginal boy to whom they owed their lives. The film had quite an impact on me and cemented in me a reverence for the Aboriginal culture.

When I begin to read Fiona Mcfarlane’s The Sun Walks Down. I was reminded of that film. I found a similar mood to be created. At the heart of this novel is Denny, six years old and lost, after a dust storm, in the outback. And Aboriginal trackers play a big part in the story. Whilst lost child novels are not unusual, they generally belong to the crime, thriller, police procedural genres. Not the case here at all.

When the realisation and full impact that Denny is missing hits his family and his community the wheels are set in motion. It’s a devastating event. But I feel that Denny’s lostness was a metaphor for how lost all these disparate people are in their various ways. And how if they can find Denny, they can find themselves too.

Although the action is set in Australia, where the climate, governed by the sun, plays a big part, it has a multicultural feel too with the Swedish artist, and his English wife to the German mother of the Police Constable’s new wife suggesting also the colonialism that overwhelmed the country. It is as if all these people pivot around Denny who remains just out of reach for much of the book. Denny presents as a spiritual force in the bush, a trait intuited by his father’s Aboriginal tracker, Billy, who senses Denny’s “otherness“. Denny is too young, maybe to articulate any self mysticism, but he tells his mother when she avers that he is her Denny, he says “I’m not anybody.“

The plot is cleverly constructed around all of the characters and their particular needs and nuances, for example, Minna, desperate for love on all levels, Cissy, a potential feminist if she did but know it.  Conflicts, both physical and cerebral,  jostle for position between the search parties. The tensions rack up throughout the progress of the story, until they explode into flames towards the book’s conclusion.

But it isn’t merely an engrossing narrative that renders Ms McFarlane’s work so striking. It’s ambitious in concept and throws up a number of considerations as the characters weave in and out of their own lives and the lives of the others. Each character has their flaws and impediments – Mary, with her hearing difficulties, the Reverend Daniels, so well intentioned, yet so ineffectual – all lost within their own worlds. For a while, I thought that, Bess, alone, was less lost as she retreated into her private room but, no, she is as lost as they all are.

Watching over them all, from the physically lost Denny, to the metaphorically lost others, is the sun - that synthesis of light that sees us all wherever in the world we may be. Through the duration of the novel , the star produces the most exceptional sunsets. Karl Rapp, the artist tells us that in Sweden, the sun doesn’t set, it walks down, hence the title, and the sun in this story is walking marathons and you feel at times that it is the sun, alone, that is dictating what transpires.

The author’s prose is stunning. It’s the kind of prose that fills you up to overflowing leaving you somehow astounded that people are able to create such pictures from their word palettes. Such effective images - 

‘George would be disconcerted if it stopped – it would be as if a number had fallen off a clock face.’

‘Failure is a stooped, pale figure with an open mouth and swollen eyes.’

You may be wondering if the lost Denny is found. I’ll not divulge suffice to say I think it would be a decision for the reader to make when they’ve read the book.

At the time of writing this piece I learned that the book has just been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize, a most worthy contender. And in fact, I won my copy of this book in the Walter Scott Historical Fiction giveaway  - which meant I could cancel my library reservation!😉 Many thanks for my generous prize.

Secrets of the Dictator’s Wife - Katrina Dybzynska

 I’m not certain of the relationship between this collection and Freya Berry’s novel, but there must be one because Ms Berry has endorsed the work! Perhaps if I had read the novel, I might understand! I don’t know if the reading of that novel enhances the reading of these poems but I’m not bothered because I enjoyed the collection very much. My guess is that the poems are a consideration of the title character from the novel. And I guess the only way I’m going to know that is if I read the novel!

I always read poems aloud. And this time I recorded these as I read so that I can listen to them over and over. And it’s been a brilliant way to really absorb this expansive, lyrical poetry. 

Who is better placed to observe and experience the vagaries of power than somebody married to the person wielding that power? I’ve often wondered about the partners of dictators. Whether they questioned the nature of their relationships. Did Eva Braun really love Hitler? 

These poems tap into the psyche of somebody in that position and questioning, perhaps timidly at first, but by the end, more confident, although still questioning.

‘Will I testify against the man

who, at times, seem to be a part of me?’

There’s a mystery and almost a sense of the forbidden as if the protagonist is daring to oppose her husband, wondering if we should even dare to have these thoughts.

‘I learnt not to leave traces. 

To communicate by smoke signals, 

evaporating in the air. To walk as it’s sweeping

 a pine branch behind my footprints.’

I enjoyed her consideration of of everyday life, the normal things that we all do. Gardening, taking showers, going to the hairdressers, but they’re all undertaken beneath the shadow of power.

I think the reader is also asked to question the nature of power. What is it? And why is it? And this poet conjures the past to define the present and place that present into some kind of context. I think my favourite poem of all was the titular poem Secrets of the Dictator’s Wife. Not just because it seems to embody everything that the whole collection is about, but the cadence of the verse emphasised a sense of the confusion maybe, the uncertainty experienced.

‘There was a time when I was not the Dictators 

Wife, though I’m not supposed to talk about it.

Yet I remember. I look back at uncensored 

books and thoughts shared sleepily.

A time in the future was more than escape 

routes and relentless reminders of loyalties.

 The freedom of representing nothing 

but my own, not yet final decisions.’

Another favourite is The Dictator’s Wife Turns Away From the Mirror. I found it very poignant that she doesn’t recognise the face in the mirror, and her suggestion that she has actually become a mirror,

 “waiting to shatter a reflection of someone else. “

The sense that the life of a dictator’s wife is a fragile one pervades the entire work. It’s a powerful collection that insists, with its skilful and astute use of language and poetic devices, that we peel back our own layers and consider what it is to live life in this way.

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon and Fly on the Wall Press for a gifted copy of this absorbing collection.