The First Woman, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

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Makumbi’s prize-winning novel tells us the story of Kirabo, twelve years old at the start but a young woman by the end. Brought up in a rural Ugandan village by her grandparents, her father is a fleeting presence, having made a life for himself in Kampala. Her mother is notable by her absence, one keenly felt by Kirabo. As the book progresses we see Kirabo grow and mature, becoming more aware of the political turmoil that has provided the backdrop to her formative years.

The story is not told in first person narrative yet it feels as though it is Kirabo telling it to us. This means that in her younger years things she doesn’t understand are glossed over. Figures such as the dictator Idi Amin have the potential to dominate attention, but he remains at the periphery, becoming clearer as she ages, and offering us a glimpse of life as a teenager during such a tumultuous and dangerous period. 

Feminism and the role of women is a central theme in the novel. Kirabo herself ‘ignored it because as far as she knew, feminism was for women in developed countries with first-world problems.’ Makumbi instead chooses to focus on mwenkanonkano, highlighting the different forms of feminism that exist, that different circumstances lead to different approaches. The women in the novel are strong and influential in Kirabo’s life. We learn also of the Ugandan creation myth of the first woman, Nnambi, and Kirabo is taught by Nsuuta how these myths tie in with modern misconceptions and fears around women.

Attitudes to sexuality are also explored. Kirabo is taught that menstruating is dirty and it is referred to as her ‘ruins’. A refreshing alternative view is offered by her Aunt Abi who provides a more liberal outlook, encouraging her to get to know her body and sexuality before sharing it with a boy.

Kirabo is eventually sent to an all-girls school where they attempt to remove all male influence. She sees that it’s already too late however, noting that they have already learnt that their worth is linked to their usefulness to men. She is observant and questioning, seeing girls removed from school pregnant and pondering the fact that the lives of the boys who got them pregnant continue unchanged.

At the heart of the novel are notions of family and the women Kirabo turns to for advice. She is horrified when she discovers her father’s other family and his wife’s reaction to this unknown step-daughter turning up at her home. Kirabo’s desire to find her mother preoccupies her mind, and when she finds out who she is she acts recklessly, hurt by the stinging rejection. Despite this absence, she is loved and supported, sometimes slightly spoilt. We see as she comes in to her maturity the shift towards being able to see situations from the perspectives of others and to truly appreciate those who raised her.

This is an interesting read with a lot to sink your teeth in to. Kirabo is a believable, likeable character with relatable flaws. It offers us an insight into growing up with huge political upheaval and violence happening all around with the contrasting personal struggles and pains of approaching womanhood. 

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Sudden Traveller, Sarah Hall

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Hall’s latest short story collection is a searing look at humanity and the inevitable trauma and grief that comes with being alive. The book opens with a surreal tale of a woman transforming into something new and living with an excruciating, mystery pain. It ends with a mother comforting her child at night. The prose is beautiful and evocative throughout and you’ll find yourself wanting to just sit and let what you’ve read sink in.

Relationships, especially within families, are a recurring theme. In The Grotesque we follow Dilly as she runs some errands around Cambridge before her birthday party. She initially seems childlike but we soon discover she is much older than originally imagined. With an over-bearing mother and a family she feels outside of, she lives in fear and subservience of her more self-assured relatives. You get the sense that outward appearance is more important to them than genuine affection. Dilly’s party is full of her mother’s friends, and she is too afraid to eat a scone in case she is seen to be breaking the diet her mother enforces. Her reaction to seeing Charlie-bo, a local homeless man, at the brunt of a prank is to feel pity while commenting that others would have found it funny. Her mother would be dismissive of him. From this opening we understand that her family is not like her. Hall expertly builds character without resorting to explicit description, and allows us to feel we know far more about the characters than you’d expect in short form.

We also see death discussed in several of the stories. In Orton a woman has decided to have her pacemaker turned off, choosing death. The story has a sense of calm and control to it as she reminisces about an early sexual encounter that had happened near where she has decided to breathe her last. In Sudden Traveller we experience the heartbreak that follows death as a new mother sits in a car breastfeeding her baby as her brother and father prepare a grave for her own mother. It is a devastating read as the young woman tries to come to terms with what has happened, thinks about having to carry the coffin, and describes how they’ve each dealt with their grief uniquely. For me this was the standout story of the collection, it packed a real emotional punch.

The book is a treasure trove of intensely felt stories of ordinary people. A triumphant reminder that short stories can be every bit as compelling and affecting as a novel, the characters and events condensed into a concentrated bullet that goes straight to the heart. 

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Girl, Edna O’Brien

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O’Brien’s latest novel, although not explicitly named in the book, is based on the abduction of 276 school girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria in 2014. It opens with a description of the night they were taken, one girl jumping out of the truck into the unknown to escape the horrors ahead. What follows is a harrowing account of gang rape, stoning, and the daily cruelties inflicted. It is hard reading yet unputdownable. The narrative isn’t linear as our narrator, Maryam, attempts to find freedom while experiencing repeated flashbacks and ostracisation because of what happened to her.

We are forced to witness great suffering just as the other girls are made to watch their peers undergo abuse, knowing they will soon be suffering similar. Later, we are told that their abusers sometimes film their attacks, laughing and gloating, witnessing for pleasure instead of fear. They have all the power and take any opportunity to humiliate the girls. The presence of smart phones also offers a stark reminder that this wasn’t centuries ago but continues today.

There is no comfort for the girls. Maryam describes her experience of childbirth, of the uncaring women acting as midwives who leave as soon as the placenta has been removed and who made her clean the room of the mess of labour. This is one example of many that highlight how they are mistreated and made vulnerable with no reprieve or chance of human sympathy.

The tone is dispassionate, suggesting a numbing experience often brought on by trauma, and she tells us that when telling her story to officials she leaves out details of the repeated sexual assaults. In a celebration of her return she is told many times not to mention anything too gruesome, people do not really want to know the truth. Indeed, she finds that her relationship with her mother has become fraught as they both try to process what has happened. She is rejected and seen as suspicious by many, O’Brien carefully showing that it doesn’t end with the celebratory footage of their return - the consequences of their captors’ actions will follow them through life.

O’Brien has come under some criticism for writing a book from the point of view of a character whose life is so different from her own, but it is done sensitively, with careful research. She comments in interviews that she felt compelled to write it, to tell the stories and bring the cause to the forefront of people’s attention. An unflinching portrayal that demands your attention.

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American War, Omar El Akkad

It’s late in the twenty-first century and America is once again in the throes of civil war. It has been wracked by climate change and the free Southern States have refused to give up fossil fuel. The Chestnut family live in a metal shack in a wasteland, terrified of the ever closening war. Benjamin, the father, is killed in a suicide bombing while attempting to organise a way for his family to move to the North. Martina and her three children; Dana, Sarat, and Simon, are forced to move to Camp Patience, a sprawling refugee camp that will be their home for years to come. The book goes on to show the irreversible damage war does to the Chestnut family.

Sarat is the main focus of the text. Tall, tough, and trusting, we see the war gradually break the innocent trust and curiosity she held at the opening. She is radicalized and tortured and commits acts of terrorism that the reader may struggle to reconcile with their desire for a happy ending and admirable protagonist. El Akkad has said that his aim was not to create a likeable or even a sympathetic character in Sarat but for the reader to understand how she came to be the person she becomes. In this he certainly succeeds, and although her actions are at time shocking it feels difficult to entirely condemn her.

Camp Patience has all the hallmarks of the refugee camps we are familiar with hearing about, yet being thrown into the day to day, knowing the characters are there for years, brings home the realities of displacement in war-torn countries, that the struggle continues long after the cameras have gone. El Akkad based the experiences in the novel deeply in fact, both from his time as a journalist and in research for the novel. This is also true of Sugarloaf, the detention centre where atrocious tortures are doled out. Again, he has made nothing up, and the reader knows this, making it all the more harrowing.

With the current problems in America it is easy to read this as a cautionary tale, and yet it was written before Trump announced his intention to run for President. Instead it is concerned with the past and the present and bringing atrocities that people turn a blind eye to into such close proximity that they can’t be ignored. A difficult read that rings true on many levels.

First Love, Gwendoline Riley

First Love is a study in unhappy relationships. Neve and Edwyn have an uncomfortable marriage. The reader is to expect nothing less as we are told early on that they’d both planned to be alone and married against their better judgment. Neve is a writer with a part-time job to subsidise her income, something which Edwyn seems to consider a flaw on her part, relying on him to provide for her. He is significantly older, has an illness which frequently causes him pain, and takes his frustrations out on Neve and rages against women more generally.

As a reader the perpetual question is why are they together. Edwyn claims freedom is the most important thing, something which he evidently feels Neve restricts. Even in the scenes showing their supposed affection the terms of endearment he uses have an unpleasant edge – ‘little compost heap’ and ‘little cabbage’. Later in the novel we see what can only be described as abusive behaviour and Neve’s attempts to cope with his outbursts. In an interview, Riley commented that she hoped by the end you could see that there was something in Neve that drives him to these rages, which is not to say it’s her fault. A complex and difficult emotional situation.

We are also show how Neve’s psychological makeup was forged through a challenging upbringing. Her father was a bully and after his separation from her mother forces himself into Neve’s life. He is controlling and sometimes cruel. Edwyn accuses her, during an argument, of relating to him in the same way she did her father. The reader can’t help but wonder if her intimate relations have indeed been coloured by this dysfunctional parental relationship.

Her mother also proves to be a challenge. She leads a chaotic life and is needy in a child-like way. She married again but found unhappiness once more and so looks for her next companion, her attempts to date falling flat. Neve tells us that she doesn’t want to end up like her, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why she perseveres with Edwyn. Her mother is an intriguing character, seemingly deeply unhappy yet determinedly optimistic. She mentions in passing sexual trauma in her youth which she claims not to have been deeply affected by yet her reaction to suggestions of sexual desire and her marital celibacy suggest otherwise. Neve is frustrated by her but won’t fully cut her off.

First Love is a powerful, uncomfortable read. The first-person narrative perhaps skews our opinion in Neve’s favour and yet you’re left feeling like you can’t quite pin her down. Is everyone as unfair to her as she thinks, or does she have a deep seated aversion to being relied upon that makes her feel she is being taken advantage of? An intriguing, complex little book.

Attrib. and other stories, Eley Williams

The debut collection from Williams contains a series of emotionally charged musings on the small things in life that can become a source of great anxiety. The interiority of each piece with their mostly first-person narratives means each nugget of beautifully constructed fiction packs a punch.

In Smote we see a woman agonizing over whether or not to kiss her girlfriend in an art gallery, unable to get over the feeling that it might not be appropriate. Alight at the Next shows a combination of turmoil over whether or not to invite a boyfriend home with annoyance at inconsiderate commuters on the Tube. These scenarios turn moments that in reality occupy mere seconds into pages as their internal monologues go into overdrive.

There are tales of burgeoning love alongside the crushing uncertainty and worry that comes when they begin to fall apart. In Concision we are privy to the painful end to a difficult phone call yet not a word of dialogue is included. In Platform the potency of a final photo of a loved one is mixed with humour as the narrator notices another personal drama unfolding in the background as a toupee flies off one head, ready to hit another unsuspecting traveller. A reminder that all around us life is happening outside of the nexus of our own.

Animals feature heavily, most memorably in Spines in which a family refuses to help a frightened hedgehog that has fallen in to their holiday pool. This story is a perfect example of Williams’ ability to draw believable, complex characters through their actions.

Whether you regularly read short stories or not I would highly recommend Attrib. It catches your heart from the first and skillfully takes you through the mundane in quite an extraordinary way. Williams’ love of words shines bright as she leads you on a journey of word play, literary experimentation and very human tales.

White Tears, Hari Kunzru

When Seth meets Carter at high school he is surprised that this wealthy, cool student pays him any attention. Their friendship is based around a mutual love of music, the blues being Carter’s particular passion. He refuses to listen to anything by white artists, believing it is never as genuine. On leaving college they move to New York and set up a recording studio where they use samples from old records to make new recordings sound aged, yet Carter still maintains this obsession with the genuine and authentic. On one of Seth’s recording trips around the city he picks up a few lines of a song. Carter becomes obsessed and they create a record, releasing it online as though it were a long lost track by Charlie Shaw, an artist they believe they have created. Among the plethora of responses is JumpJim, an old collector who warns them off getting involved in this world. The narrative begins to dissolve from this point, telling JumpJim’s tale alongside Seth’s, whose narrative eventually becomes inextricably entangled with Charlie Shaw’s.

Carter and his sister Leonie attempt to separate themselves from their famous family name, and the way in which the Wallace fortune was made. Carter is deeply involved in the cultural appropriation of the blues, and Leonie decorates her apartment to look like that of a struggling artist. She expresses multiple times that everyone always wants something from them and that nobody will take her art seriously because they’re too busy trying to sell her something. Their desire to create a visage of something that they are not while nonetheless being happy to live off the family fortune leads them to danger.

Seth has no wealth of his own, although it is his skill that allows their company to work, and is heavily reliant on Carter to provide, something that the Wallace’s fail to understand. He admits to having had  some kind of episode in his youth, and much of the latter sections of the novel feel as though he is having a breakdown as he desperately tries to escape the ghost of Charlie Shaw. He is used as a vehicle to demonstrate the inherent racism in American society, that the systems are designed to perpetuate oppression. His treatment by the police is shocking and the flashbacks show how even after slavery was abolished the justice system was rigged to force the poor into hard labour.

Seth wanders the final chapters as a ghostly figure trying to remain invisible to stay out of trouble. His comment ‘when you are powerless, something can happen to you and afterwards it has not happened’ is a poignant comment not only on the immediate aftermath of events but the way in which history is written with the absence of many voices. In an interview, Kunzru commented that with Trump in power in America these discriminations are losing the veneer of civility that has so long obscured them.

A powerful, difficult, and important read that will inspire a sense of outrage.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

Barbery’s critically acclaimed novel focuses on the residents of 7 Rue de Grenelle in Paris, specifically twelve year old Paloma Josse, daughter of wealthy parents, and Renée Michel, concierge for the apartment block. Paloma’s narrative sections are labeled as ‘Profound Thoughts’. Her first section is deeply philosophical and it is startling when you realise it is a child speaking. She has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday and to burn down the apartment. She aims to have and record as many profound thoughts before this time as possible. She plays down her intelligence at school, fearing she would get no peace if she showed her true capabilities. In this she has something in common with Renée who hides her love of great literature and classical music to maintain the façade of what she believes people expect from a concierge.

Both characters are fairly isolated in their own ways. Although Paloma lives with her parents and sister she does not feel part of their world, considering their concerns superficial and shallow. Renée has lived alone since the death of her husband, and in her refusal to show her true self is alone in her interests. She does have one friend, Manuela, who works in the same block as a cleaner but who hopes to leave France, much to the horror of Renée. Things begin to change when a long-term resident dies and the mysterious Kakuro Ozu moves into the vacant apartment. He sees beyond Renée's façade and extends the hand of friendship, something which she struggles to accept at first. Eventually their budding friendship leads to Paloma and Renée finding kindred spirits in each other.

It is touching to see Renée’s confidence grow and with it her happiness, though it takes sharing some upsetting memories with Paloma before she is able to see that all she has believed for many years may not be entirely true. These revelations are an important moment for understanding her character and the reasons behind her forced solitude. It is also heartening to see Paloma blossom with her new friends, beginning to see the world in a difference light and questioning her resolve to cut her life so short.

An interesting, unusual book which will challenge the mind, make you smile, and at times frustrate. In parts beautifully poetic, clearly borne of deep knowledge, it will toy with your emotions until the end.