Tag: fiction

Booker shortlist review #2 – “This Other Eden” by Paul Harding

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently. I’ve started a new training course, adding a qualification for my day job, so time has been a bit pressured to say the least. I am delighted to say that I HAVE been reading though, and keeping on track with the Booker shortlist, so I have a few banked and ready for review. I wrote about If I Survive You a couple of weeks ago, a book I enjoyed, but can’t say I was wowed by. The next book on my list was This Other Eden by American author Paul Harding. This is Harding’s third novel in thirteen years, so he is not as prolific as some, but his debut novel, Tinkers, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. 

This Other Eden is set on the fictional Apple Island, just off the coast of Maine, during the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Apple Island is home to a small and quite insular community. Most are of mixed ethnic origins. The islanders are marginalised and keep themselves very much to themselves and there exists a mutual suspicion between them and the authorities on the mainland. Although financially poor and living without modern conveniences, there is a kind of purity to the way of life on the island. The people live modestly but are relatively self-sufficient and are untroubled by “normal” social conventions and behaviour.

The sense of ‘idyll’ comes under threat, however, when community and religious leaders on the mainland begin to express concern about what they perceive as the uncivillised way of life on Apple Island. At first they dispatch a young teacher, Matthew Diamond, to the island to educate the children in basic reading, writing, arithmetic and, most importantly, religious instruction. Over time, Matthew Diamond finds he grows fond of the children and finds a few of them to be unexpectedly talented, in art, mathematics and literature. 

The mainland authorities are not satisfied by simply sending a teacher to support the children; it is as if they feel their own way of life, the social standards they are attempting to uphold, are gravely threatened by the islanders whom they see as little better than savages in their midst, particularly the adults. Soon enough, a party of experts is sent to examine the island’s inhabitants, take physical measurements and so on, as if this will indeed determine (confirm?) the extent of moral decrepitude present in the population. There is indeed some inbreeding, the history of the community is troubled, but the treatment of the islanders by the authorities, juxtaposed with their gentleness and love, invites the reader to question who is the more savage. Needless to say, it does not end well for the islanders, there is a certain inevitability building throughout the book.

This is a powerful and affecting novel and is based on real historical events which took place on Malaga Island in 1911 when an entire community was evicted from its settlement. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and listened to it on audio. 

Recommended.

Booker book review #1 – “If I Survive You” by Jonathan Escoffery

If I Survive You  is Jonathan Escoffery’s debut novel, published earlier this year. Quite an achievement to be shortlisted for the Booker on your first attempt! It is described by the publisher as a series of linked short stories, following the fortunes of a family living in Miami. The parents left their native Jamaica when they were young, in the 1970s, when there was civil and political turbulence in the country, looking for a better life and a better future for their two sons, Delano and Trelawney. Each of the chapters follows a different character or stage of a character’s life. Trelawney’s story, however, makes up the bulk of the book.

The family is neither settled nor happy. The father, Topper, works mostly as a labourer in building and landscaping. They eventually own their own home and he runs his own small business, but the house is structurally unsound and in a state of gradual decay – a metaphor perhaps for the family’s fortunes generally. The parents eventually separate after many years of unhappiness, and Sanya, the mother, returns to Jamaica. The country is still, at that stage, troubled by unrest and political turmoil but she finds that preferable to life in the United States.

Delano is the elder of the two brothers. He aspires to be a musician, but when responsibility is foisted on him fairly early in life (his partner becomes  pregnant) he sets up his own landscaping business. Trelawney is very different to his brother and the two are at loggerheads for most of the book. Even as children they fought bitterly and were cruel to one another, not helped by the fact that their father seems to favour Delano. It is not clear why. When the parents separate, they each take one boy to live with them, and Topper takes Delano, making it quite clear that he does not want Trelawney, seems even to fear him somehow. Possibly because Trelawney has greater potential, is more academic and gets a college degree. It’s as if his father considers him better able to look after himself. Delano, he seems to believe, needs him more, but this creates a toxic environment around the relationship between the three men.

In spite of his education, Trelawney does not have it easy, however, and it is his story we follow most closely. He is mostly homeless, at times even living in his car, which he can barely afford to put fuel in. He works in various dead-end jobs until finally securing a position as the manager of a housing block for elderly people, where he is forced to do the company’s bidding, maximising revenue at the expense of the ageing and frail inhabitants. Trelawney is a young man who has done everything that has been asked of him to participate fully in American society and yet as a Black man he remains subject to casual racism and systemic discrimination. Even his girlfriend’s family, themselves Latin American immigrants, cannot accept him and are openly hostile. We learn that Trelawney is relatively light-skinned, which makes him an outsider even in the Black community – perhaps that is also why he is rejected by his father? He cannot find anywhere that he fits, a home, a sense of belonging. 

A further motif that runs through the book is the Hurricane Andrew disaster, one of the most devastating ever to hit Florida. It represents one of the actual events that citizens had to try and ‘survive’, but for Trelawney, his brother, his whole family and countless others, there are many other daily battles for survival.

This is a powerful novel in many ways – the characters, particularly the three central males, are well-drawn. The author writes about racism and discrimination in a way that only a person intimately acquainted with such experiences could. He also writes honestly and sympathetically about a deeply dysfunctional family, particularly where paternal relationships are concerned. For me, the weakness of the novel lies in the lack of a narrative thread. In many ways it is series of ‘shorts’; I am reminded of Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker-winning Girl, Woman, Other here, but that book was more successful, I think, because each of those stories could have stood alone. That is not the case with If I Survive You where each story only makes sense in relation to the whole. And yet, there is not a strong enough story, for me, to hold the whole thing together.

In writing this review, I have struggled to recall certain details, for example, when it is set (from Wikipedia I learn that Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992)  and the names of most of the minor characters. Beyond the profound sense of unease about injustice, racism and societal trauma, I find myself unable to answer the question about why this book should be a Booker-winner.

Recommended, but perhaps not heartily.

Women’s prize shortlist book review #6 – “Pod” by Laline Paull

I have at last completed this book, which is the final one I read on the Women’s Prize shortlist for this year. The publisher’s blurb describes it as “An immersive and transformative new novel of an ocean world – its extraordinary creatures, mysteries, and mythologies – that is increasingly haunted by the cruelty and ignorance of the human race.” Its main character is Ea, a dolphin who makes the difficult decision to leave her pod, believing that her disability (a form of deafness that prevents her from performing the special ‘spinning’ rituals unique to her kind) has made her responsible in large part for a tragedy that struck the pod and resulted in the death of her mother.

I was attracted by the theme of a marine world threatened and disturbed by the crisis facing our oceans. I hoped it might explore this profoundly important theme, one of the most critical issues facing the human race today, in a unique and innovative way. I thought it might be interesting to deal with it from the perspective of sea creatures and was curious about how the author might deal with that without it becoming trivial or childlike. Well, the answer is that she introduces strong violence and an erotic dimension. The characters have names and they communicate. They also operate in communities and there are both inter and intra-species rivalries. The communities are ordered in hierarchies and often these hierarchies are brutal. In the pod of dolphins that Ea joins for example, or rather is captured and forced into, there is a strong male leader who has his own harem, and rape and sexual exploitation are part of life for the younger female members. 

I cannot summarise the plot of the novel any further than this because, in truth, I’m not actually sure what it was all about! I have never watched Game of Thrones, but you would have to have been living under a rock these last few years to be unaware of it. Well, I think Pod might be a literary, dolphin version of Game of Thrones! I dislike writing negative reviews, I’d rather not post a review at all (except I am also a completer-finisher and have to finish all six reviews of the Women’s prize shortlist!), but I am afraid I really struggled to finish this book. Yes, it is well-written, yes it is imaginative and yes it is certainly unusual, but for me, it just didn’t work. I didn’t really care for any of the characters, mainly because I didn’t feel I could connect with them. They were animals, but they spoke, but some understood each other and others did not. It felt incoherent, confused and confusing. The descriptive passages, such as the accounts of rape and of full-blown underwater battles, were powerful in their way, but I was unable to see these in my mind. I struggled to envision the world the author was trying to create.

I wonder if science fiction fans might find this book more engaging than I did. Perhaps followers of this genre might be better than me at stretching credulity, buying into a landscape completely unfamiliar. I’m not sure. I have read science fiction that I felt was more successful than this novel. 

I’d be keen to hear from anyone else who has read this book, would love to hear your views, because I really feel like I have missed something with this novel. I did not read it consistently, which was perhaps part of the problem and perhaps why it felt inconsistent. But unfortunately, I did not feel motivated to read it, it just did not capture my interest. I was relieved to get to the end! Hmm, such a shame when a book does not work for a reader.

Book review – “Old God’s Time” by Sebastian Barry

I have been an enthusiastic follower of Sebastian Barry for a few years now. I love his work and I have heard and watched a number of interviews with him and he comes across as a wonderful man too – humble, compassionate, witty and someone who even despite his immense and widely acknowledged literary prowess does not take himself too seriously. There are a couple of his novels that I have still to read, but I was very excited when Old God’s Time was published earlier this year and received strong reviews.

It is not like any of Barry’s other novels that I have read. It bears his trademark command of prose, his profound empathy, particularly for those in their dying years, and his extraordinary ability to capture the unique spirit of Ireland – the light, the landscape (even this relatively urban one) and a particular perspective on the human condition. This novel is set mostly in the present day in Dalkey, a small coastal town not far from Dublin. Tom Kettle is our main protagonist, an ageing retired detective, living alone in an apartment in a converted mansion, who is contacted by his former boss for assistance in the unsolved suspicious death of a priest. Another priest has made some allegations about the incident, which occurred many years earlier, that the force now needs to follow up. Tom was involved with the earlier investigation when he was still working. 

Tom is treated respectfully by the two young officers who come to interview him and by the former boss himself when Tom is invited to the station to provide a DNA sample, just to ensure they are following all the correct procedures. The contact throws up a lot of painful history for Tom. We learn that he adored his late wife June, herself a deeply troubled woman, and that they had two children Winnie and Joseph, also troubled, but for different reasons. Tom reflects on how June came into his life, the things they had in common and the experiences she had as a child in the care of the Catholic church that he would never be able to relate to. Suffice it to say that the church does not come out well in this novel.

As Tom’s introspection goes to deeper and ever darker places, elements of the family life he shared with June and the children are gradually revealed, both the good and the bad. He reflects candidly on his police career and concludes that perhaps it took him away from his family in ways that caused later troubles. But he was simply a man trying to do his best. 

This is in many ways a simple book, lacking the complex timelines and plotting of some of his other works. But in other ways it is a very profound novel about an ordinary man looking back on the events of his life, the joys and the heartbreak, as the past comes crashing in on him with a dramatic denouement. 

This book was longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, but, sadly, did not make it to the shortlist. It is, however, a ‘Highly recommended’ from me. If you are familiar with Barry’s work, you might find this one surprising. 

Booker Prize shortlist 2023

For me, few things herald the arrival of autumn in the literary sphere more than the announcement of the Booker Prize shortlist, one of the world’s foremost literary prize for novels written in English. For a few years now I have attempted to read my way through the shortlist and predict the winner ahead of the awarding of the prize, which is usually sometime in October. It generally works out at one book a week, which for me, in the last couple of years has been a tall order. I never usually manage to read all six books on the shortlist in time; I think my best performance to date has been about five. For some reason we have been given a little longer this year – the winner of the Prize will be announced on 26 November, well over two months from now – so I feel I am in with a fighting chance!

I did not agree with the judges last year – the winner, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, was among my least favourite on the shortlist. I am not familiar with any of the authors on this year’s shortlist. Facts I have gleaned about the shortlist are: there is a two-thirds/one third gender split (guess the proportions); half the authors are called Paul; there is one very long and one very short novel; half the novelists are north American, one is African, and the two Europeans are both Irish!

I am not familiar with any of the shortlisted authors. I was disappointed not to see Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time make the shortlist, having been on the longlist. I have just finished that book so look out for my review soon. I also wanted to see Ayobami Adebayo’s A Spell of Good Things make the shortlist as my book club loved her 2017 novel Stay With Me. However, that is the Booker – it never fails to surprise or to be bold and brave and not follow the crowd.

I’m going to kick off my reading marathon with Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You and build up to Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, which at 656 pages represents the greatest threat to my not completing the shortlist!

Ready, Set, Go…

Women’s Prize book review #5 – “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver

I had a strange reading summer – rather than go sequentially through the various titles I planned to read, I was juggling half a dozen or so simultaneously. It sort of worked – I had different books for different moods – but it meant that it took me a long time to get through each one. Hence, it’s taken me a while to get through all six books on the Women’s prize shortlist. Demon Copperhead felt like a fairly constant companion. I listened to it on audio and it’s long. But that was okay, because it’s stunning and I didn’t want it to end. You know when you get one of those books that you grieve for once the reading experience is over? Well, Demon Copperhead was one of those for me. It’s a well-deserved winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, a stand-out piece of work in what was a very strong field. This was my penultimate read from the six shortlisted titles so I hadn’t read it when it was announced as the winner.

Demon Copperhead is a modern-day re-telling of the Charles Dickens classic David Copperfield. The broad plot of that novel, as you may be aware, is that we follow our hero from infancy to maturity, from inauspicious beginnings, fatherless and later orphaned. David is sent to various schools and institutions where he is treated badly, but somehow survives due to his own determination and intelligence. David marries early, but his young wife dies soon after. Only then does he realise his love for the daughter of one of the few benign guardians in his life.

Barbara Kingsolver turns this Victorian bildungsroman into a story of a modern American tragedy setting her novel in Virginia, one of the most deprived and left-behind parts of the United States (and where she has made her home). Demon lives with his drug and alcohol addicted mother in a trailer, his father having died before his birth. The trailer is on land owned by the Peggot family, whose son ‘Maggot’ is Demon’s close childhood friend. The Peggots take Demon on a short break to visit their daughter June in Tennessee, one of their few children who has made something of herself and therefore a rare role-model for Demon. On their return home, Demon finds that his mother has married her cruel and violent lover Stoner. 

Demon’s mother relapses and he is sent to a foster-carer, a tobacco farmer whose motives for fostering are dubious at best, though it is convenient for the social services department to overlook this because he takes on their most difficult to place cases and has several other teenage boys living with him. After the death of his mother, Demon is sent to a different foster family, the feckless McCobbs who have entered into fostering merely to obtain income to meet their significant debts. They fail to meet Demon’s most basic needs for food and clothing and force him to sleep on a mattress in their laundry room. Eventually, Demon decides to run away from the McCobbs and finds his way to his paternal grandmother’s home, a woman he has never met. She undertakes to ensure he is cared for, however, and arranges for him to live with the husband of one of her former foster-children (who died of cancer) and his daughter Agnes.

Demon finally seems to have found himself in a good situation with decent people who care about him…but we are only halfway through the book. Hard to believe, but the worst is still to come. There have been hints throughout of what is to befall our hero: his mother’s addiction problems, the drug-dealing of the much-admired leader of boys at the tobacco farm, ‘Fast Forward’, and the portrayal of a certain hopelessness about life in this part of the country. Demon will inevitably become sucked into what is surely one of the most heinous scandals perpetrated by the pharmaceutical industry, the oxycontin crisis that continues to wreak havoc and destroy lives on an industrial scale in parts of the USA. 

The story continues, darkens further. It is not a read for the faint-hearted and yet you cannot stop because as the reader you have become invested in this powerful central character, our narrator who speaks directly to us. We feel his pain. 

Kingsolver follows the plot of David Copperfield faithfully, keeping many of the names and adapting others, the cleverest for me is U-Haul, the modern-day Uriah Heep who Kingsolver imbues with similarly odious characteristics. It is heartbreaking to think that things we thought belonged to a past century, cruelty and neglect towards children, the suffering of people born poor, are still with us.

Taking on a re-telling of a book like David Copperfield, considered by many to be Dickens’s finest novel, was an act of awesome ambition but Kingsolver has accomplished her task with aplomb and created a true tour de force of a novel.

Highly recommended.

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction announced tonight

Well, I did not hot my target, but I had fun trying! When the shortlist for this year’s Women’s Prize was announced a few weeks ago, I set myself the goal of reading all six titles, much as I do with the Booker Prize in the autumn. The Women’s Prize is at least as big as the Booker now, so why not. (Dare I say it is also a bit more accessible?)

I’ve read three out of the six novels and have posted reviews on Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks, Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris, and The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. I have almost finished my fourth, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. I have not yet started Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver or Pod by Laline Paull, although I will definitely read both of them.

I have loved all the books I have either finished or am reading. Two are debut novels, and in only one instance (Maggie O’Farrell) have I read anything previously by the author. I have heard a great deal of praise for Kingsolver, but have not heard much about Pod, though it sounds a very unusual and innovative work.

The winner will be announced this evening at 7.10pm by Chair of Judges Louise Minchin, and it can be watched live on YouTube.

Of the four that I have read or am reading, all would be a worthy winner. They are fantastic novels. For me, the one that has stood out though is Fire Rush. It has such a raw energy and the author creates a world that draws you in and is completely compelling.

Only a few hours to go – let’s see if the judges agree with me!

Women’s Prize shortlist review #3 – “The Marriage Portrait” by Maggie O’Farrell

Maggie O’Farrell won the Women’s Prize in 2020 with her eighth novel, Hamnet. It would be quite a coup if she won the prize again in 2023 with her ninth novel. Hamnet is without doubt one of my favourite novels of recent years. Beautifully written, moving, and an astonishing subject. In The Marriage Portrait O’Farrell takes a somewhat similar approach: taking a real historical figure, about which very little is known, and inventing their back story. This time, O’Farrell takes us to 16th century Italy. 

The main character in the novel is Lucrezia de Medici who lived a short life from 1545-1561. She was the daughter of the then Duke of Florence and his noble Spanish wife. She was their fifth child, and is portrayed in O’Farrell’s novel as somewhat unruly. Little was really expected of her, apart from a decent marriage, but as the third daughter, she would not have been considered for the highest ranking match. Her brothers, of course, were schooled in the arts of ruling. Lucrezia is portrayed as sensitive, and passionate about art and nature. She is taught to paint, since she shows some aptitude for it and it at least keeps her out of trouble. Painting is the one activity in which she finds true happiness.

Lucrezia’s elder sister Maria is matched with the nobleman Alfonso, the heir to the Duke of Ferrara, but when Maria dies suddenly, Lucrezia is forced to step in as a substitute. The children’s nurse, Sofia, sensing Lucrezia’s horror at the prospect, manages to persuade the Duke to hold back from marrying his daughter off, on the basis that she is still a child and not yet begun to menstruate. There is only so long that Sofia can protect her charge, however, and at the tender age of 15, Lucrezia is married to Alfonso, who, by then, is Duke of Ferrara. 

Lucrezia is terrified to leave her family. Initially, she is taken to her husband’s country residence, the delizia, where, as Duchess, she enjoys a little more freedom than she had in Florence. Her husband Alfonso, is constantly preoccupied with matters of state and a schism in his own family and largely abandons her. It is clear, however, that her expected role is to bear heirs and Lucrezia endures the consummation of their marriage with fear and horror. 

When the couple return to court to begin married life proper, Lucrezia becomes increasingly aware of a more sinister side to her husband. It is clear that her initial fear of him was not simply girlish trepidation, but a deeper sixth sense. Very soon she begins to fear for her safety. 

The novel opens at a banquet, where Lucrezia is being fed various delicacies by Alfonso. It is 1561, the year that she died and Lucrezia tells the reader that she believes her husband wishes her dead. Thereafter, the novel flits back and forth between Lucrezia’s early childhood, giving a sense of how her character and her place in the household evolved, and 1560-61 and the progress of her brief marriage. 

Having enjoyed Hamnet so much, I was really looking forward to this book and treated myself to a signed hardback copy. It moves at a much slower pace than Hamnet and I found it quite difficult to get into at first. There is more scene-setting and building of character than there is plot, but then we are talking about a very short span of time in the life of a person who did not have very much to do with their days! About halfway through, once Lucrezia is married, I think it improved – the sense of threat builds, the insular nature of courtly life becomes more apparent, and Lucrezia’s isolation all add to the feeling of danger for her. Even those she might reasonably think of as ‘friends’ – her husband Alfonso, his sisters, the servants – all in fact represent a potential threat. Her only confidante is her ladies maid Emilia, but she is also powerless and vulnerable. It is only when a group of artists arrives to set about making a commemorative portrait  of her (the marriage portrait) that Lucrezia realises the deep peril of her situation. As the novel darkens, it improves.

I would recommend this novel although for me it did not have the powerful impact of Hamnet, but then it must be very difficult to follow something that brilliant.

Women’s Prize shortlist review #2- “Black Butterflies” by Priscilla Morris

My second book review from the Women’s Prize shortlist. Fire Rush set the bar high, but Black Butterflies is a cracker too! It’s the debut novel by Priscilla Morris and has garnered a lot of attention, being shortlisted for a number of prizes. Morris draws on her part-Yugoslav heritage for the subject matter of this novel and her intimate knowledge of Sarajevo and her feeling for the people of that city shine through. 

Set in 1992, at the time of the outbreak of the Balkan wars and in particular the devastating siege of the city of Sarajevo, the war is seen through the eyes of Zora Kovovic, an artist of Serb origin who teaches at the university and lives with her Bosnian journalist husband. Their daughter lives in England with her English husband and child, and Zora’s mother lives alone in a flat nearby.

The novel opens with Zora visiting her mother’s flat only to find that a coarse and rather frightening Bosnian family has moved in following the passage of a law that entitles them to occupy empty properties. Zora’s mother has been staying with her over the winter, recovering from illness. The sense of impending doom is clear, everything is about to change. Zora and Franjo, Zora’s husband, who is somewhat older than her, decide that he should leave Sarajevo and take her mother with him, for the safety of England. Zora says she will follow later, she feels a duty to her students and wants to keep an eye on both her mother’s and their own apartments, fearing that they will be taken over otherwise. She does not feel in any danger. She believes that the life they have in cosmopolitan, artistic Sarajevo, which feels like the Paris of the Balkans, could not possibly be under threat. 

Franjo and Zora’s mother leave and the situation in the city rapidly deteriorates as war between the ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia escalates. Very quickly, bombs begin to drop, snipers in the hills surrounding the city,target its inhabitants and many are killed simply going about their daily business. Bodies begin to appear in the streets. The siege intensifies, there are power outages, food becomes scarce and eventually essential services are cut off – water, sewage, power and telephone lines. It very quickly becomes impossible for Zora to escape. 

Spoiler alert:

The novel follows the siege for a year, recounting in vivid detail the suffering of the people who chose to remain in the city. What is hardest for Zora is the loneliness. Without Franjo and her mother and no possibility of contacting them or her daughter, Zora is completely isolated. Her mental state is reflected in her art. When she is prevented from working at the university, she withdraws to her studio to paint obsessively, but when the building where her studio is housed burns down and she loses almost all her work, it is like she has been robbed of her very soul. This theme pervades the novel and is not only a powerful metaphor for Zora’s individual suffering, but also a measure of the cultured and refined nature of the community, contrasting with the crudeness and brutality of the soldiers who become the masters of the frightened city-dwellers. 

Zora’s apartment is in a small block and she and the other residents who elected to remain develop a powerful bond. They often share what little food they have, and find comfort in one another’s company. It feels like the only thing keeping them sane. Zora eventually escapes Sarajevo, with the help of her son-in-law, who manages to secure a press pass and counterfeit papers to get her out, but though she wants to be reunited with her family, she finds it difficult to leave her fellow Sarajevans and part of her wants to stay. The siege has changed her, changed all of them and they will never be the same again after the experiences they have shared. There is the sense that her loved ones will never truly be able to understand her ever again. 

This is a really powerful novel, which I loved, but which is absolutely heartbreaking at the same time. As a senseless war on the eastern side of the European continent rages once more, this reminder of the horrors of the Balkan war and the break up of the former Yugoslavia (indeed, tensions in that area seem to be re-emerging), we get a glimpse of what life is like for the innocent bystanders in times of war. Again, I listened to this on audio and it is skilfully narrated by Rachel Atkins.

Women’s Prize shortlist review #1- “Fire Rush” by Jacqueline Crooks

It’s been a busy few weeks with half term, travel away from home and the day job, so I have not been doing as much reading as I would have liked. This is especially disappointing given that I’d set myself the goal of reading the shortlist for this year’s Women’s Prize! I have been doing a fair bit of driving and running though so at least I’ve been getting through some of them on audio. There is nothing quite like the feel of a book in your hands, but, increasingly, I am finding audio is the way I access most of my reading. Are you finding this too?

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks was the first of the shortlisted books that I picked up and I am so glad I chose the audio version. At its heart is a love for music, specifically dub reggae, and the interconnectedness of the music, the Caribbean culture, the London scene of the 1970s where the book is set, and the idea of music as salvation. Short excerpts of dub reggae are built into the audiobook at key moments and it gives an extra dimension to the text, characters and setting, as well as the pace and tension of the book. This is also not a musical genre I am particularly familiar with, so I definitely would not have ‘heard’ it if I had read the book in hard copy.

The book opens in 1978 in the south London suburb of Norwood, where twenty-something Yamaye lives with her indifferent and sometimes cruel father. Her life seems to be going nowhere and the bleakness of the moment – it was a period of economic stagnation, cultural wilderness and all against a racist backdrop – is tangible. Yamaye lives for music, dub reggae, and spends her weekends at an underground club in the crypt of a church with her friends, sassy Asase and white Irish girl Rumer. There is an ever-present sense of threat from the authorities and most of the characters have had a brush with the law at some point. There is also an ever-present threat of violence, from darker forces operating in this underground world. 

At The Crypt, Yamaye meets Moose, a craftsman who works with wood, particularly the teaks and mahoganies from the Caribbean where he is from and where his grandmother still lives. Moose and Yamaye embark on a love affair. He dreams of going back to Jamaica with her and living a free and peaceful life in the country. Yamaye has dreams too, of becoming a DJ, mixing tracks at reggae nights. 

Spoiler alert:

All their dreams are shattered, however, by two devastating events: Moose is killed in police custody and Asase is found guilty of murdering Yamaye’s friend and the owner of the record shop she frequents. Events turn quite dark and fearing that her life is in some danger, Yamaye escapes to Bristol where she spends time in a ‘safe house’ which proves to be anything but. She must make a second escape and flees this time to Jamaica, determined to track down Moose’s grandmother, to find out more about her roots, and specifically to try and connect with her late mother who died mysteriously in Ghana when Yamaye was a child. In Jamaica she finds a new lease of life, but also encounters new dangers that will lead her to a final reckoning with forces that want to harm her. 

This is a really powerful book which tells a fascinating story. Over a period of five years or so we watch Yamaye grow from being a timid and cowed young woman, oppressed in her own home, to one who finds her inner power through music, love and embracing her true cultural inheritance. 

I loved this book. It was both gripping and engaging from start to finish. The audiobook is brilliantly read by Leonie Elliott (the actress who plays Lucille in Call the Midwife) who manages the range of voices and accents with aplomb. This is an example of audio really adding to the experience of the book and I recommend it highly.