Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy I will receive a percentage commission at no extra cost to you.

Kingsolver’s award-winning novel takes us on a journey with young Demon, told to us by him at a distance of some years. He is born and raised in Lee County to a mother with drug addiction problems and an abusive partner. Life is never easy for him as he is taken in to a social care system which is light on care. His guardians are more interested in the cheque that comes with him than his welfare. Will he be able to find a way out of the life that he sees as set for him?

A lot of space has been given to comparisons with Dickens’ David Copperfield, the blueprint for this novel. I have not read it and do not feel it lessened my experience of Kingsolver’s novel. It is interesting to note, however, that she admits to having felt stuck in how to tell this story, and that Dickens proved to be the key to unlock it. Author of great social novels, shining a light on the suffering of the less fortunate in and around nineteenth century London, Kingsolver’s novel has the same aspiration for modern-day Appalachia. In this she is successful, the book offers us sight of what life is like for a generation of children whose parents' lives have been disrupted with devastating consequences by the opioid crisis forced upon them. Using a first-person narrative brings us close to Demon and creates compassion and understanding where previously there may only have been judgment. 

Kingsolver is open about the fact she was hoping to change the narrative of blame with this novel. The OxyContin crisis was manufactured by capitalists unconcerned with the lives they were destroying. Addiction began with legal prescriptions, following the advice of doctors. The character of June reminds Demon (and us) that this was done to him, to all of them. This isn’t a subject I was aware of before reading Demon Copperhead but there are plenty of resources for the curious, perhaps most notably Dopesick by Beth Macy. 

As Demon and his friends age they become aware of how they are viewed by the rest of the world, how they are so often the butt of the joke. Tommy, a friend made at an early care placement, is particularly distressed by this revelation and worries that people will judge him for it. Demon’s experiences highlight how much of this comes from ignorance. He finds cities dangerous and sad for their lack of nature, offering the opposing view, that city life doesn’t mean better. He notes that poor people in the cities have no way of getting food, in the country they can grow their own. 

All the characters have a difficult time one way or another, from abused women, children whose parents have been incarcerated or died, grandparents taking on the burden of care, and the countless people just trying to keep their head above water. It is a hard environment to grow up in, but it is also one where community is at the heart of life. Church groups provide free lunches for children who would otherwise go without, women make quilts for newborn babies, and everyone brings food to a wake. Desperation, addiction, and want make people behave recklessly, but there’s generosity and kindness too.

In this way the book is about so much more than the life of one man, but Demon’s story will nonetheless grip you. He is a good-hearted character trying to do his best for the people he loves, even when their behaviour is damaging to him. You rage at the injustices he experiences as child and your heart breaks as his life goes into decline after a period of success. We watch as he develops emotionally from repression of deep sadness in his youth to the anger he frequently feels. He makes mistakes as any young person does. We see how the lack of a safe environment impacts his mindset and the realisation of how others, within his own community, see him. Always we want the best for him, to find security and safety, to be loved.

This is a brilliant, challenging read. A rare book that you can feel changing you as you read it. If ever there were evidence of the power of fiction, this is it.

Pick up a copy:
Bookshop
Foyles
Waterstones

The First Woman, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy I will receive a percentage commission at no extra cost to you.

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. 

Pick up a copy:

Bookshop

Foyles

Waterstones

Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellmann

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy I will receive a percentage commission at no extra cost to you.

Ellmann’s epic stream-of-consciousness novel takes the reader into the mind of an Ohioan mother of four. Her narrative is interrupted every hundred pages or so with passages about a mountain lion’s separation from her cubs. This provides a nice juxtaposition, as well as offering an alternative view of humanity. Buried within the main narrative, amid musings on popular culture, politics, police brutality, and all the general concerns and anxieties, is a story of an ordinary life with some very real emotional challenges.

One of the main themes of the novel is motherhood - the narrator’s feelings of incompetence and unworthiness, as well as her grief and guilt over the loss of her own mother. The lion narrative also draws on the devotion of a mother and the lengths she’ll go to in order to protect her offspring. Our narrator, who remains unnamed throughout, worries about not being able to look after her children properly, of being neglectful. She variously acknowledges the importance and difficulty of parenting, and questions whether she should have become a mother. ‘the fact that making food for people is actually a highly pressured, skilled, responsible job, just like motherhood, but nobody seems to notice,’ gives us a sense that she feels strongly that making a living baking pies while looking after her children is not valued by society, and this feeds in to her own sense of self-worth. That she can acknowledge that her occupations are important and demanding gives the reader some hope that she has the potential to see value in herself.

Anxiety plays out for her in almost every aspect of her life, but perhaps never more so than when it comes to her children. She admits to feeling shy around them and being afraid to tell them what to do, but it this line on people deciding to try for a baby, that really resonates, ‘the fact that nobody ever tells them that the terror of what could happen to your kids cripples your life, the fact that all mothers are going through this all the time, I think; but we never talk about it,’

Fear of death and loss hangs heavy over her, the repeated mantra of having been broken by the death of her mother is present throughout. She talks of not being able to love fully since because she can’t bear to go through that pain again. Her own cancer journey contributed to the sense of fragility of life and yet she offers herself no compassion, feeling instead that she failed her family during her treatment and recovery. Reading this during 2020 made the fears and anxieties all the more pertinent and difficult to read and sit with.

Alongside the personal worries and dramas are a lot of references to awful real life events - school shootings, assault, and a myriad of other violent crimes. Some topics are familiar to the international reader but many may not have made the news outside of the U.S. It had me researching names and events that I hadn’t come across before and sharing some of the despair.

The impact of human activity on nature is also present and plays along neatly with the lion’s tale, although it is often the negative impact on humans with the likes of the proliferation of PFOA in almost everything that captures most of the narrator’s attention. She reminds us all of the way people carelessly poison the planet, and that it’s being destroyed for all living creatures, ‘the fact that the good news right now is that animals don’t yet know we’ve wrecked the place, or they don’t know we did it at least, or they’d come after us, red in tooth and claw, the fact that it’s actually pretty lucky they don’t blame us for it,’

The climax of the novel builds, the lion sections appear more frequently as the two lives seem on the cusp of overlapping. Despite there being some dramatic events, the end of the novel feels somewhat anti-climactic as the narrator continues in her never-ending monologue, her sense of inadequacy still intact. For some, this technique will be happily received as we bid farewell to the characters, safe in the knowledge that their lives will continue without our prying eyes. It feels as though her general anxiety and disappointment in herself turns every event, whether it’s a lemon drizzle cake that didn’t rise properly, or a brush with death, into another reason why she is not good enough.

This is a beast of a book, and one that will not be universally loved. The constant repetition of the phrase ‘the fact that’ can be grating and yet at other times you almost don’t notice it. It is, however, a book that will really make you think, and is an interesting glimpse into life in America. The references may be specific but the themes are recognisably relevant to the general human experience. An interesting read, but possibly not one to pick up if you’re trying to soothe your mind from the ills of the world.

Pick up a copy:
Bookshop
Foyles
Waterstones

Travellers, Helon Habila

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy I will receive a percentage commission at no extra cost to you.

Habila’s fourth novel examines the motives and reception of a variety of migrants, condemning the hostile environment tactics of governments and reminding us all that no matter where we are from we are all human, with the same needs and desires for safety and love. The novel is split into six books, each focussing in on a different character, our unnamed narrator ever-present. The book opens with him and his wife Gina trying to hold their marriage together after a traumatic event. They have moved to Berlin temporarily for Gina to complete an art project and with the hope that it would help her husband to resume his halted academic work. She is painting a series of portraits entitled Travellers, and when he finds himself drawn to one of her rejected subjects he is thrown into a revolutionary world of activism. It soon becomes apparent that the circles Gina moves in hold racial prejudices that she either doesn’t worry about or chooses to ignore, something made impossible when Mark, an activist, joins them and refuses to bow under the pressure of social convention.

From here we see stories of exile, fractured families, and the narrator himself accidentally ending up in a refugee camp. There are heart wrenching tales of a husband repeatedly going to an arranged meeting point in the hope of seeing his wife again despite there being little chance of her having survived the journey, parents making heartbreaking decisions in an attempt to protect their children, and the constant judgment and resistance of Europeans to accept them. You can’t read this book without feeling guilt at the way governments and individuals respond to migrants. The book deals with heavy topics but the writing will capture your attention and whisk you along, completely absorbing you in the lives being portrayed.

These stories are not mere fiction, but based around the lives of people Habila met during his own time in Berlin. It shines a light on the systems that make migration so challenging and the unique loneliness of being in a foreign land, whether by choice or necessity. A searing portrayal of the lives that so often go unspoken, I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Pick up a copy:

Foyles

Waterstones

Sudden Traveller, Sarah Hall

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy I will receive a percentage commission at no extra cost to you.

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. 

Pick up a copy:

Foyles

Waterstones

Girl, Edna O’Brien

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy I will receive a percentage commission at no extra cost to you.

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.

Pick up a copy:

Foyles

Waterstones

Murmur, Will Eaves

This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy I will receive a percentage commission at no extra cost to you.

Alec Pryor's story uses Alan Turing's life as inspiration in Eaves’ latest novel. The character worked at Bletchley Park and is undergoing chemical castration for engaging in homosexual activity. We know that Alec is a doppelganger for Turing but Eaves is clear that there was a purpose for this slight separation of historic figure and fictional character. He did not want to attribute words and thoughts to Turing that he would likely have rejected. The characters in the novel have a life of their own while shining a light on history.

The structure jumps around in time and style. At times we are taken back to his school days and first love – Christopher Molyneaux who died tragically young. We see him in dreams and flashbacks, the memory of him haunting Alec still. There are also letters between Alec and his ex-fiancée June. Intimate, honest letters that show the depth of their friendship and mutual respect for each other’s intelligence. We see in flashbacks his proposal and the transparency of their relationship – he was honest with her about his sexuality and expectations, not wanting to trap her in an unfulfilling marriage.

There are musings on his change of appearance caused by the injections. He seems barely recognisable but knows, deep down, that it doesn’t change who he is, and acknowledges the strangeness in seeing our own reflection, that there’s also something between it and reality. He approaches his treatment intellectually, almost as though he sees it as a research opportunity, he doesn’t rail against the injustice of it.

Another theme that recurs is that of personal responsibility. He comments that the nurse who injects him is able to separate her actions from the result as someone else has ordered it, she is just doing her job. Later Eaves writes ‘pain is memory without witness or corroboration. It isn’t real to anyone else, and that is what allows torturers, including governments, to be torturers. They can pretend it isn’t happening because it isn’t happening to them.’ In interviews Eaves has spoken of the importance of including Turing’s interest in psychology and philosophy in the novel, areas of his intellectual life that are not commonly known. They are carefully woven into the narrative, making the reader think more broadly about human behaviour.

An interesting read whose prose is almost poetic at times. One to read if you like your fiction to leave you with lots to mull over.

Pick up a copy here.

Heads of the Colored People, Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Thompson-Spires’ debut short story collection is darkly humourous and thought provoking. Some of the characters appear in multiple stories and there’s a good sense of cohesion and neat circularity. The opening story jolts you into the seriousness of the content with an innocent black man being shot by police. We then move on to petty office politics, the pitfalls of social media obsession, and competitive parents point scoring against each other. The subjects of the stories have wide appeal and relatability but the normality of the lives depicted make the painful truths that much more stark.

For the younger characters especially there’s a certain amount of conflict regarding their identity. They find themselves in predominantly white environments and some become conflicted, keeping different aspects of their lives separate, adjusting the way they speak or do their hair depending on who they’re spending time with. The book gives us an insight into the challenges facing black people in America today and the ways in which they navigate this.

Relationships are examined in almost all of the stories. We see a mother and daughter falling out over disagreements on YouTube content and the false perfect family image they show to the world. There’s teens struggling to find true connection in a world that never switches off and mothers struggling to look after their children, worn down by the tragedies they witness every day. This is a thoughtful collection that’s full of cutting observations on the modern world. The stories are engaging and sometimes shocking, with a host of characters that capture the imagination. A brilliant read.

Sight, Jessie Greengrass

Greengrass’ debut novel is unapologetically introspective as our narrator questions whether or not she should become a mother. Her decision is known from the start and so it is not that you wait to find out but instead experience all the self-doubt and moral questioning that went into the outcome. In some ways her reservations seem linked to the death of her own mother. The dependence and forced physical intimacy toward the end had a profound effect on her and the absence of a maternal figure that follows makes her question herself. Without a mother she forgets how to be a daughter, something she doesn’t notice until she receives the care of her partner’s mother.

Her relationship with her maternal grandmother has also impacted her deeply. Known only as Doctor K, she advocated for an examined life, sitting with the narrator as a child, teaching her to reflect on dreams and her internal life. She encouraged her own daughter similarly, resulting in the extinguishing of dreams, a fact the narrator has always found sad. The novel is interspersed with sections on historic figures. The most obvious parallels are with that of Sigmund and Anna Freud in which the father psychoanalyses his own daughter with seeming beneficial results. Many readers would question the moral reasoning behind a parent exposing their own child to their analysis, and the narrator finds connections to her own moral musings.

Many of the historic sections deal with consent or the lack thereof, and the narrator torments herself with the thought of bringing another person into being without the chance of them having given consent. She feels keenly the responsibility that in choosing to become a mother she must make herself the best than she can, a task she believes she has failed before her baby has even been born, putting her own comfort first. This guilt and self-doubt do not seem to fade with time. She notes that she is only truly able to love in absence – when she is with her daughter she craves time to herself yet when she gets it wishes she were with her. Many of the thoughts and behaviours she chastises herself for appear to be experiences common to parents.

A refreshing, honest look at motherhood in the modern world. In generations past it would be hard to imagine a book such as this being published, for it to be acknowledged that motherhood is not necessarily the obvious choice and that it is just that, a choice. Greengrass creates a sense of place with great skill and the tangents into the lives of real people are both interesting and add depth. An unsettling but thoughtful read that opens the way for considered conversation.

Crudo, Olivia Laing

Written over seven weeks in 2017, Crudo is a chaotic account of a tumultuous summer. The protagonist, Kathy, is getting married but thoughts of her upcoming nuptials fill her mind far less than the reporting of both the serious and the trivial on Twitter. The opening, ‘Kathy, by which I mean I, was getting married,’ immediately lets us know there’ll be an interplay between the lives of the author and Kathy and that this persona won’t be entirely reliable or trustworthy. We are told later that Kathy often lies and so we often approach the tale with wariness. Sadly, the politics which often seem absurd are all too real. ‘… they were like stupid boys at school except killing people and in government, it wasn’t a great moment in history, she still couldn’t quite grasp how it had all come about.’ We can relate to her disbelief at the apparent crumbling of the world as we know it.

Kathy is an interesting character for a number of reasons. Based partly on the life of Kathy Acker, the experimental author who died in 1997, and drawing on Laing’s own experiences, she is complex and compelling. The reader may be taken aback when in the same breath that she tells us she’s getting married we hear that she also has a boyfriend. As the novel progresses so does Kathy’s self-awareness on her attitude to relationships. She loves her husband but also requires solitude, realizing that she has previously chosen aloof and distant partners precisely because they afforded her the freedom she craves. Her feelings can sometimes come across as callous, ‘her husband’s sad eyes upset her but also infuriated her, she detested being responsible for anyone else’s happiness.’ yet at the same time it is refreshing to see such honesty in the difficult transition that requires more selflessness and compassion than she has previously been able to obtain. Perhaps these feelings are also rooted in a doubt in her own ability to provide what is needed by those made dependent on her in love.

Rarely is a book so completely rooted in time. The obsessive checking of social media to see the latest crisis unfold, the underlying desire to protect the environment with the sad lack of real action, and the general sense of unease and dread all ring true. Laing has spoken of her desire to record the chaos of the time that will be lost in historic narratives where a sense of logic and intelligibility will be imposed on a period that had none for those living through it. In many ways a painful read as events continue to hurtle toward as yet untold disasters. The juxtaposition of the wider concerns of the world with one woman’s own self-discovery makes this a captivating read.

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.