The winner of this year’s Booker Prize will be announced at a ceremony in London at around 10pm this evening – it is usually announced on the BBC’s 10 o’clock news. You can livestream the event via the Booker’s YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channels.
I have reviewed three of the titles on here (Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, Marlon James’s The Disappearers and Douglas Stuart’s John of John) and I have just completed Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King.
For my personal favourite of those I have read so far, I would be hard-pressed to choose between Elizabeth Strout and Douglas Stuart – I would be very happy if Strout won it because I think her work is so deceptively rich and unique. My strong suspicion, however, is that it’s Marlon James’s to lose. Rebecca Perry’s novel is interesting and engaging but not quite Booker material for me – I’ll post my review later this week.
So, I am usually wrong (ha ha) – I think the last time I was right about the winner was when Douglas Stuart won for Shuggie Bain in 2020. I’ll be tuning in at 9.45pm to find out!
Marlon James won the Booker Prize in 2015 with A Brief History of Seven Killings – can he do it again with this novel? At more than 600 pages it is easily the longest book on the shortlist. I listened to it on audio and really enjoyed the lively narration and felt that was the best way to appreciate the language (there’s a lot of Jamaican patois). It is set mostly in Kingston, Jamaica (though final chapters are set in the United States), largely in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the AIDS crisis was at its height.
The book opens with a group of eight gay men meeting secretly to rehearse for a play. Among them are Eddy Porteous and Jordan Brown, who will be the main narrators as the novel progresses, and Havelock Titus, the group’s Director who has brought them together. They are meeting in secret because of the homophobia they would encounter if they were out. It is not entirely clear why they are meeting at all, except as a way of sharing their love of literature and drama, and as an act of solidarity.
Assembling in this way places them at great risk. One of the things James does brilliantly in this novel is set the scene of deep hostility to homosexuality in Jamaica, driven mostly by the dominance of the church but also by a culture of hyper-masculinity. This is made worse later on by the AIDS crisis, which is seen as God’s retribution for unholy and depraved homosexual activity. The environment of corruption also plays a part – people beaten up because they are gay have no recourse to the law, it might in fact make their situation worse. And gay men are, if discovered, ostracised, even disowned by their families, for whom their child’s sexuality casts a deep stain on their reputation. Within all of this is the deep irony that some of the most violently outspoken opponents of homosexuality, and the most upstanding members of society, are secretly gay themselves. James creates an environment of 1980s Jamaica as deeply hostile to gay people, dangerous, violent and isolating.
James is known for not holding back in his writing from portraying strong sex and violence, and this novel goes all out. For young gay men in Jamaica, the atmosphere of danger and constant threat (both from violent retribution and from deadly disease) creates an environment of hedonism and living only in the moment, not withholding from any opportunity for sexual gratification and maximising pleasure. It is graphic, both the violence and the sex. At times, for me, it was too much. James has been described as the literary equivalent to Quentin Tarantino in his approach to portraying extreme sexual and violent behaviour – when watching Tarantino’s films I often have to cover my eyes!
The group of gay performers is violently attacked, one is killed and another is blinded. There is no follow-up action, though some take revenge into their own hands. The events are recounted through the eyes of a number of those present – one through diary entries, another through interviews with a writer and another through letters. All exhibit deep trauma from their experiences, not just at the hands of a violent mob, but as men who were disowned by their families and communities and have struggled to find peace in their lives. Homophobia has left deep scars.
I found this novel at times very moving, but at times I found I disengaged; sometimes it felt like a point was rendered a little too far and I simply zoned out. I listened to it on audio which really helped my understanding of the language, and the reading performances were brilliant. I realise that graphic sex and violence are narrative choice on the part of the author, and I see its role, but for me, dare I say, it was too much. It did help to convey the sense of the, almost, deathwish of some of the characters, but I did become a little numb to it. I also felt it could be shorter – the excess of the content is matched by the excess of the book’s length.
I suspect this novel might be a strong contender to win the Prize. I recommend it as an important literary achievement, and I particularly recommend the audio version.
A couple of weeks ago I posted my review of Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel Land and wrote about seeing her speak at the start of the Manchester Literature Festival, where she talked at length not only about the new novel but about Hamnet and about her 2017 memoir I Am, I Am, I Am. The title draws on the closing words of Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar in which the deeply troubled main character tries to kill herself several times and experiences extensive medical treatment for mental illness. In O’Farrell’s memoir she writes about her “seventeen brushes with death” after each of which, against the odds it would seem, she manages to survive.
O’Farrell has written and spoken extensively about her childhood illnesses, serious conditions (most seriously perhaps was the encephalitis she contracted around the age of 8) which meant many months of hospital treatment, missed schooling, separation from her family and then, when she did return to school, a sense of distance and separateness from her classmates – she was the child who often needed a wheelchair or was unable to participate in all the usual activities. At the time, being so young, of course, she was unaware of the seriousness of her condition, but nonetheless had a kind of insight into what was going on around her. She is able to recall her childlike observations of medical staff, the matter of fact response to overhearing a nurse tell another child in hospital that she was likely to die soon; too old to not understand, too young to have developed an emotional and philosophical attachment to “life”. And yet, the body endures, pulls through.
The adult Maggie is therefore able to look back on her life as framed in terms of life or death events – each time her luck could go either way. It is striking to me that many of the events here would not, for most of us, be considered a brush with death – a nasty illness or accident can be frightening, leave us shaken, but we might not see it as a brush with death if we had not had a really close brush with death in our formative years. Events like food poisoning in Asia, a knifepoint mugging in South America, even almost having a car boot brought down on her head by her mother when she was young (not interpreted by her at the time as a brush with death, only after her mother told her about it later). This is interesting because towards the end of the book, she writes about instances which speak less of her own mortality and more of her children’s. O’Farrell is a mother of three and it is clear that she sees her own life inextricably linked to that of her children – all parents will identify with this I think, and she captures the sensation brilliantly. The car boot incident has only entered her lexicon as a brush with death since she has had her own children and realised what it feels like when your children’s lives are threatened. As a parent you would give anything to swap places with them.
The final chapter is given over to her daughter. She has a number of severe life-threatening allergies and the author describes to us what her life is like – a kind of exclusion from the carefree life of other children, who can go on play dates without a care, don’t need to worry about who they sit next to when sharing a packed lunch and who can participate fully in all the activities that most of us take for granted. Her life will always be one of extreme caution. As her mother, every threat to her child’s life, is a threat to O’Farrell’s very existence. In some ways the ending is as if she has passed this baton of health concern on to her child, but in another it is about how the risks to the child are an extension to her personal sense of mortality, only much much worse.
This is a poignant, powerful, brilliant ending to the book that had this reader in tears; as the mother of a child with a life-threatening allergy (though not nearly as extensive as O’Farrell’s daughter’s) I could identify strongly with her fears. The ending is also, however, triumphant, on behalf of both herself and her daughter – the human instinct to survive, sometimes against considerable odds, is really quite awesome.
A superb book, highly recommended. I listened to this on audio and found the narration by Daisy Donovan very effective and engaging.
This is Elizabeth Strout’s eleventh novel and takes her away from Maine and the cast of characters with which we have become so familiar, and to Massachussetts in 2024, around the time of the last US Presidential election. It is perhaps Strout’s most explicitly political novel to date. The novel has all the trademark elements of Strout’s writing which readers have come to love. The central character is Artie Dam, a middle-aged history teacher in a high school, beloved by staff and pupils alike, but he is a man disillusioned with life, who feels lonely and, when we first meet him, is contemplating suicide. Arty lives with his wife Evie, a psychiatrist, and their marriage is showing strains often seen in long relationships where people have become complacent. They have one son, Rob, a fragile young man who is in the process of getting divorced from his wife Francesca – she is a concert pianist and her life on the road has meant they have drifted apart. Rob has had a difficult time in relationships, one of his earlier girlfriends having been killed when the car they were in crashed, and which the girlfriend’s parents partly blame Rob for.
SPOILER ALERT
Artie’s world is rocked by two events which I will discuss here, so a bit of a spoiler, but I should add these happen in the early part of the novel – I am not going to reveal how it all resolves. First, Rob reveals to Artie that he is not his biological father – this is in fact a family friend (a man who is now dead and whom Artie was not fond of, though he remains close to the friend’s widow Flossie). In her desperation to become pregnant, and guessing that Artie might be the cause of their infertility, Evie obviously sought help from the family friend, who willingly obliged, and who then, rather spitefully, went on to inform Rob by letter before he died. Rob was about to confront his mother with the information, but when Artie walked in unexpectedly, missed his opportunity.
The second event is that Artie slips from his dinghy when trying to climb aboard his beloved yacht and almost drowns. He is saved by a local man, Ken. Ironically, the brush with death gives Artie a new reason to live and he begins a friendship with the man which will be one of the more enriching parts of his life.
The rest of the novel explores Artie’s relationships – his friendships at work and outside of work, particularly with Ken, and with his students. Artie is increasingly out of place at the high school, his ways seeming increasingly old-fashioned in the world he now finds himself in, but his students continue to respond to his basic human goodness, his care for them, and his commitment to his job. Most of all, however, there is Artie’s relationship with Evie and with Rob. Artie plans to tell Evie that he knows about Rob, but as time passes the couple seem increasingly distant from one another. Evie is absorbed in her own world and seems to have less and less time or patience with her husband. This conversation that they never seem to have, is it Artie’s avoidance, or as time goes by, his disinclination to try and reach her?
In contrast, Artie’s relationship with Rob gets closer; he finds that “the conversation” opens up a channel between them, they find they can communicate better once they have communicated about something ‘real’. Both men know that although they are not biologically related, their connection goes beyond that and is in fact far deeper.
Elizabeth Strout is such a good writer that you think she is telling you a simple story, but she is in fact exploring much more complex theses about what it is to be human, about the need for connection, and about the consequences for us all, as individuals and as members of society, when this breaks down. She even gives us some Jungian philosophy in this one and her characters discuss it without for one moment sounding false, pretentious or unnatural. Her characters come alive on the page, even the minor ones; she has that capacity to give you the whole via tiny details.
I loved this book and found it hard to put down. Highly recommended.
The Manchester Literature Festival kicked off this week and runs until 25th October. I usually like to attend a few events, but will be away for much of the period this year (more of that to follow!). I was fortunate, however, to be able to attend one of the opening events, a talk with Maggie O’Farrell; my book club recently completed her new novel Land, so it was fantastic to be able to go along and hear her speak about it. Maggie O’Farrell is surely one of the finest British authors of her generation and since she is only in her mid-fifties, hopefully has many more years of writing ahead of her. Her career reached a new zenith last year with the release of the film “Hamnet”, which was an adaptation of her 2020 Women’s Prize winning novel. O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay of the film with Director Chloé Zhao, which itself won many awards, including a best actress BAFTA and Oscar for Jessie Buckley.
With all that going on, one can only marvel at the work ethic of O’Farrell – how on earth did this mother of three squeeze in another 400+ page novel? Furthermore she has to be one of the humblest most relatable literary giants alive!
Land might be O’Farrell’s most personal novel to date and at the MLF talk she described the novel as loosely based on one of her own ancestors who, according to family myth (which may also be truth), was the first cartographer to map the island of Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, in the service of the British government, which Ireland was a part of at the time. She has not been able from her research to confirm all the details of this, as cartographers were not allowed to sign their own name on the maps they produced, but she has nonetheless let her imagination form a story out of a few bare facts.
The main character, based on O’Farrell’s ancestor, is Tomás who, when we meet him at the start of the novel, is working with his young son Liam, carrying out survey work on behalf of the British army. Liam hates the work, which is very physical. Tomás is passionate about his work and intends that Liam will follow in his footsteps. He is a tough taskmaster and a strict father and it soon becomes clear that Liam has more scholarly ambitions. Tomás is married to Phina, a strong-willed woman whom he fell in love with at the workhouse where they were both resident as children, and they have three children: in addition to Liam there is Enda and Rose. A fourth child, Eugene, will follow.
The family has its troubles, after he is severely injured in a work accident in which he loses an arm, Tomás goes into a deep depression, through which Phina nurses him. He vows never again to work for the British, and moves the family to a remote peninsula in the west of the country, where they rent a derelict cottage and small piece of land, from which Tomás hopes they can make enough to live on.
The story is set in the shadow of the Irish famine of the 1840s, which caused the deaths of over a million people and the mass migration of a million more. This catastrophic event changed the social make-up of the country and the physical landscape. The family itself is also deeply impacted – through Tomás’s mapping, which exposes some of the death and destruction, and through the choices made by the individual children as they consider their destinies.
O’Farrell also weaves in Irish pagan myth and legend – at the MLF talk she shared how she drew on the many stories her father would tell her and her siblings – giving a profound sense of the how the land of Ireland, the very shape and texture, which Tomás is so diligently attempting to record, bears witness to people and stories that go back beyond mappable time.
This is a multi-layered, complex novel that draws on many ideas and is epic in its scale. But at the heart of it is love – that which exists within the family, that which the Irish hold for the hard-won land beneath their feet, and the deep love that the author has for her family history, which she honours so powerfully in this novel.
This is a brilliant piece of work that I recommend highly. I was also delighted to obtain a signed copy of the beautiful hardback edition which has the most beautiful cover artwork by Helen Cann.
**I am baffled that this book did not make even the longlist for this year’s Booker Prize, for which it was eligible. Astonishing!**
Last week I shared some photos of my wonderful summer holiday in Scotland where I was fortunate enough to spend some time on the island of Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. I started reading this book while I was there and was then delighted to see that it has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. I am not surprised and would have been questioning the decisions of the judging panel if it had been omitted!
The novel is set in the 1980s and the main character is Calum (Cal) Macleod, who is returning home from Edinburgh, where he has been a student studying textiles, at the behest of his father John (Cal is actually named after his father but prefers to use his middle name), who tells him that his grandmother’s health is failing. John lives with Cal’s grandmother Ella, even though she is actually his ex-mother-in-law, John having divorced Cal’s mother Grace some years earlier. Ella owns the croft on which the family depends for a living. Cal himself is deep in debt, from his studies, and unable to find a job, so although he is reluctant to return home, in reality he has few choices.
Also, Cal is gay, and has found his student life in Edinburgh very freeing in that respect (though, as we will learn, very isolating in others). He has not come out to anyone at home and is afraid that he will be cast out by his father and by the deeply religious community on the island if he does. (When we visited Harris and Lewis, we arrived on a Sunday and everything was closed, and that is 40 years further on from this book.) Cal has a poor relationship with his father and the novel opens with him taking the long journey home, by bus, ferry and another bus, both dreading and putting off his arrival, choosing to spend his first night back on the island drunk in Tarbert, the ferry port, rather than at the family home.
As soon as he arrives at home, John berates his son – for not coming home earlier (word has got around that he arrived on the island the day before), for his haircut and his tardy ways. Ella does her best to calm troubled waters, but John is a stubborn man and he never misses an opportunity to criticise his son. Cal is put to work instantly, helping his father with the weaving (an activity that is meant to bring in extra money to the household, but barely pays for itself now) – it is the one area where Cal and John can begin to bond. Cal recognises his father’s ‘feel’ for the work and his eye for colour in the tweed fabrics he creates. We begin to see where Cal gets his talent for textiles and some areas of common ground slowly start to emerge between the two men.
The novel recounts the long and tough road that their relationship will need to navigate and the compromises that Cal in particular will need to make. Douglas Stuart also begins to peel back the layers of the community, the undercurrents that are suppressed in service to the religious imperatives, how the dreams of the young people on the island are impoverished due to the lack of opportunity and how when there is no hope people turn to other ways to numb the pain of their existence.
This novel is at times rather dark and hopeless, but there is something positive in Cal’s acceptance of his father, even if his father will struggle to accept him, and the small acts of resistance that some of the characters exercise just to be themselves. The novel answered many questions for me about the beautiful island I visited, so remote and disconnected from the pressures of urban life, but while I was there I found myself wondering about the young people brought up there, what they wanted, how they expressed themselves. I sincerely hope things have changed for them.
This is a powerful and beautiful novel that must be a strong contender to win the Booker Prize for a second time for its author.
I bought this book from a gorgeous bookshop in Portree on the Isle of Skye. When I’m travelling I always like to pick up something “local” and although the author is actually from Kilmarnock, this novel is set in the Outer Hebrides where, as I wrote earlier in the week, I had the good fortune to spend part of my holiday this summer. There were, of course, far too many great Scottish books to choose from, but I was very impressed with Graeme Macrae Burnet’s 2016 Booker Prize shortlisted novel His Bloody Projectso I was keen to try this one. As with the earlier book, and others he has written, I understand, his novels are often based on real life cases, murder mysteries. In the Afterword to Benbecula, the author writes extensively of his research and his own conclusions about the case.
This story concerns a brutal triple murder that took place on the remote Scottish island of Benbecula in 1857. Angus McPhee, the second son of four siblings, killed, seemingly in cold blood, his mother, father and aunt. The story is narrated by the elder brother Malcolm, a man who now lives alone, his two other siblings having abandoned the island and the desolate life that apparently lay ahead of them, tended only by a local woman who cooks and cleans for him and takes some care over his personal hygiene.
The author creates a powerful sense of remote island life in the middle of the nineteenth century, where it is hard for labouring families like the McPhees to make any sort of a living. They manage a small croft and collect seaweed from the shore for fertiliser, providing barely enough income to feed them all. In addition to Malcolm and his brother Angus, there is a sister Marion and a younger brother John, who appears to have learning difficulties. They are a family of loners; none of the siblings seems to get on well with any of the other islanders, or have any love interest. Malcolm describes his sister Marion as being plain at best and Angus’s lascivious behaviour towards other local young girls marks him out as a person to be avoided. Malcolm worries that there is something genetically faulty in the family.
Angus has unpredictable and sometimes violent outbursts which make it necessary to restrain him physically, sometimes for days at a time. Whilst he is clearly considered, by the local church elders and the governing authorities, a danger to the public, no-one predicts that he will murder members of his own family.
Malcolm narrates the story and his is a dark and troubled soul, bearing the scars of his family shame, but also the burden of loneliness that must inevitably attend someone in that position in a small community where everyone knows you, your family and the horror that your sibling has visited on his own flesh and blood. Malcolm reflects on his own life, both in the present and the past, and on the events he has borne witness to. We see the devastating impact that a brother’s crimes have had on the one left behind. The island itself is a key part of the novel – the loneliness and isolation reflect Malcolm’s own, the deeply religious nature of the community judges Angus directly, and Malcolm indirectly.
This is a deeply researched and thoughtful novel where the author has attempted to get inside the head of his main protagonist, whilst also interrogating the facts of a deeply horrifying incident that must have shaken a small community to its core.
This is my fourth review from the Women’s Prize shortlist, which was won recently by Virginia Evans for The Correspondent. Dominion is a remarkable debut novel and could easily have been the winner for me; although I did love The Correspondent there is something weightier about Dominion and it is beautifully written. The title refers to the town in Mississippi in which the novel is set but also the hold that men, the church and societal expectations (ie the patriarchy) have over the women at the centre of this story.
Sabre Winfrey is the ultimate patriarchal figure, much-beloved Minister at the church, local businessman, affluent and at the top of the social hierarchy. His status lends some degree of power also to his wife Priscilla, but as mother to his five sons, none of whom truly appreciate her, she is hemmed in by the men around her. She has beauty and power, which does not make her a favourite among many of the women in the community and she is referred to somewhat disparagingly as ‘First Lady’. Priscilla has her flaws – a limp, a result of a childhood accident, a dependence on prescription drugs which she obtains from a local dealer, and a conviction for driving under the influence which puts her, quite literally, at the mercy of her husband and sons for getting around. Priscilla is nobody’s fool, however; she knows her husband is having a liaison with another beauty in the congregation, and as the novel progresses and she learns more about her sons, particularly her youngest and her favourite Emmanuel, she begins to question everything about her family and the society in which she moves.
Diamond is in many ways the antithesis of Priscilla – born into a broken family she was adopted as a child, rescued from a life of chaos and poverty, but still has contact with some of her siblings. Diamond is also beautiful, however, and is deeply in love with Emmanuel, or ‘Wonderboy’ as she calls him, the youngest Winfrey son, smart and gifted both athletically and musically. Diamond and Priscilla are cool and suspicious of each other, but when Emmanuel’s mistakes catch up with him and he and Diamond attempt to flee Dominion, both women go on a journey of seeing how their devotion has been misguided.
The novel is set in the 1990s and while racial discrimination is never very far away, particularly around the life chances of young black men not born into affluent homes, it is not the main thrust of the novel as it goes in the direction of looking at the way that the community has hemmed in the two intelligent and thoughtful women at its centre. Separated in age by a few decades, Priscilla and Diamond lives are irrevocably impacted by men (arguably the same man!). Men who enjoy the undeserved adoration of their community. Diamond dislikes Priscilla and her airs and graces; Priscilla dislikes Diamond and where her beauty and her body might lead her precious son. Both women will go on a journey to find out a bit of the truth about each other and, more importantly, their flawed men.
This novel is a stunning debut from Addie E Citchens and I enjoyed it immensely. I can only think it was a coin toss away from winning the Women’s Prize! The chapters alternate mostly between Priscilla and Diamond, but occasionally also Emmanuel and the author gives each one a distinctive narrative voice. The turns of phrase are a joy.
I listened to it on audiobook and the performances were excellent and the use of music was also an interesting addition, giving the novel a real sense of time and place.
I was about halfway through this when it was announced as the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction a couple of weeks ago and I am delighted that it won as I have enjoyed it very much. The story spans several years from 2012 to 2022 and is told almost entirely in the form of letters to and from the main character Sybil van Antwerp. Sybil is a woman in her 70s, divorced for twenty-five years from her Belgian husband. She has two adult children, one of whom, her daughter Fiona, lives in England, the other a son, Bruce, lives closer to her home in Maryland. We also learn quite early on that Sybil and her husband Dan had another child, Gilbert, who died at the age of eight.
Sybil is long-retired but had a distinguished career in law, as clerk to a judge. Her lifelong hobby has been letter-writing, and she writes to everyone! From lengthy, newsy, intimate letters to her childhood friend Rosalie (who married the brother of Sybil’s ex-husband), to shorter letters of admiration to favourite authors (she is a regular correspondent with Joan Didion, with whom she shares an interest in the grieving process), to very short and no-holds barred letters of disapproval to the Dean of the local college where she has for years attended courses (as an auditor) and now finds she is no longer permitted to do so. Though her first love is pen and paper, Sybil has also acquainted herself with email and there are a number of exchanges – one with a customer service agent named Bassam, a refugee from Syria, who deals with her queries and concerns about taking a DNA test after having been gifted a subscription by her son (Sybil was adopted as a baby). Sybil strikes up quite a friendship with him.
Sybil can come across as harsh and difficult at times, but we also see her softer, more caring side in the exchanges she has with Harry, the neurodivergent teenage son of a former colleague, now friend, with whom she seems to have a curious rapport, despite their large age difference. When Harry experiences some severe mental health difficulties it is Sybil who steps in, without question.
This is a novel about ageing and self-discovery, and about making peace with the facts of your life. Sybil is losing her sight – she has a degenerative eye condition – and this is devastating to her, not least because it threatens to put an end to her letter-writing. But as her sight deteriorates she gains new insights into her past life; she explores the painful circumstances of her son’s death and faces up to the fact that while she will never stop grieving, she must look that grief in the face and truly feel it. In doing so, she may be able to liberate herself from the self-imposed life sentence of guilt and allow herself to find happiness in her later life.
This is a really moving novel that explores some powerful universal themes, but tells its story in an accessible, entertaining, sometimes funny, sometimes very sad way. A really interesting idea, cleverly executed and beautifully written.
I have still to read three of the other shortlisted novels, but this was the most compelling of the ones I have read so far. I listened to it on audio and the performances were excellent, really bringing to life the cast of characters.
The winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced tomorrow and as always it’s a great shortlist. I have read two of the books – Flashlight by Susan Choi, which I reviewed on here when it was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year, and The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson. I am also part-way through The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which I am enjoying enormously. The remaining three books on the shortlist (Heart the Lover by Lily King, Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly, and Dominion by Addie E Citchens) also all look excellent and I am keen to read those too.
I listened to The Mercy Step on audio and it is read by the author, which at first I thought I might find disappointing, but I came to appreciate the authenticity of her Bradford accent, and the naturalness of expression in the Jamaican accents of her parents and their associates. The events of the novel mirror closely those of the author’s life; Mercy is born in Bradford in the early 1960s to parents from the Caribbean (part of the Windrush generation) and the family is large – Mercy is the middle of the five children, but we learn that there are more children who were left behind in Jamaica. The novel ends when Mercy is eleven years of age and is about to start attending the local grammar school.
Beyond the facts of Mercy’s childhood, I have no idea whether the family in the novel in any way resembles the author’s own experience of growing up – I have not read any interviews with her. What becomes clear very quickly is that the household is chaotic – Mercy is the third of four girls, before the long-awaited and highly prized son is born. At first, Mercy feels a deep connection to her mother; she talks of the cord that connects them, as if the umbilical bond had never been broken. But when another baby comes along, the toddler Mercy’s world is shattered and she cannot comprehend having been usurped. This is the start of Mercy beginning to create her own identity separate from the family.
Mercy’s father is emotionally absent (as, in fact, is her mother) – he is a gambler with no interest in his children (except the boy when he arrives) and is violent and abusive. The household is chaotic and there is very little money. The children are largely left to fend for themselves (especially later on when their mother has to work long hours to support the family), but at the same time they are bound by strict rules dictated by the religious convictions of their mother’s evangelical faith. Her blind adherence will later place Mercy in a very dangerous position.
The Mercy step is initially literal, an actual place on the stairs where Mercy can be alone with her precious Dolly, and fantasise about a different life where no-one else is demanding her mother’s attention. It later comes to represent a place in Mercy’s mind where she can escape the drama and degradation (and danger) of the family home. As she grows older and starts school she becomes fascinated by ancient civilisations and realises she can create worlds in her mind that remove her from her harsh reality. Discovering the library is a near-miracle for the young girl and it soon becomes her safe place. We follow Mercy as she grows up and away from the family. At the age of eleven she is ready to embark on a new, more self-confident phase where she can finally be herself.
I really enjoyed the novel and it is beautifully written. I loved the way the author got into the mind of the baby, toddler and child Mercy and was able to see the world from that perspective. I also enjoyed learning about the experience of a migrant family coming from halfway across the world to the bleak environment of postwar northern England. The author is now in her sixties and has led a full and interesting life as both a lawyer and activist and it will be interesting to see what her next novel brings.
I recommend this book – I’m not sure it will win the Women’s Prize. I think Flashlight is probably a higher calibre novel and it’s the only other shortlisted book I’ve completed! But The Mercy Step is a great debut and very engaging.
