Young Writer of the Year Award: Shortlist Readings Event
On Saturday I attended an exclusive bloggers’ event at the Groucho Club in London with four of the authors shortlisted for the Sunday Times / Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award (Sally Rooney was unable to make it from Dublin). Also in attendance were fellow shadow panelists Annabel and Clare and some other notable names from the UK blogging community, including Eric Karl Anderson and Naomi Frisby. It was lovely to meet them, and Annabel, for the first time, and to have time to chat with the shortlisted authors.
That’s me with Clare and Annabel. Thanks to Eric Karl Anderson for taking the photo.
The event was chaired by Robert Collins, a former deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times now with Intelligence Squared. Each author gave a short reading from their book and answered questions from the chair and the audience. In every case, what I heard helped me appreciate the work and the author more. All four writers were so funny and warm, and seemed equally humbled and delighted to be in the running for this award.
Minoo Dinshaw reminded me of an Oxford don twice his age. (Indeed, his father is an Oxford don, and his mother is Scottish writer Candia McWilliam, so he has a proud literary pedigree.) He first became aware of Steven Runciman as a child when he and his mother spotted the wizened old man in a hotel lobby in Edinburgh, where they had traveled for the book festival. He then read Runciman’s Crusades books at school, and when in 2011 he met Runciman’s niece and she asked him to write the biography, he said he couldn’t think of anything else he wanted to do. (And still can’t.) Reading from his Kindle as “I didn’t want to break my wrist” (!), he chose a late passage featuring Steven in his nineties. Dinshaw said that while writing about Runciman he felt by turns flirted with and accused. Living in his subject’s house, working in his library, even sleeping in his bed (just the once), he felt he “had a very strange ghost in my life.” Dinshaw said the project captured his attention because he’s romantic and competitive, but that he’d like to try writing fiction in the future.
Clare with Minoo Dinshaw. Photo by Annabel Gaskell.
Julianne Pachico read a party scene from “The Tourists,” as it’s approaching the festive season. I was intrigued to learn that the interlinking structure of her book only emerged late on in the editing process; she’d originally meant to write a post-apocalyptic novel set all in one house, but found that setting too limiting. “I sort of work it out as I go along,” she said. So is it short stories or a novel? She’s sick of this question! Really she just wanted to write the kind of book she likes to read, citing Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten as examples. Asked about her mentors, Pachico cited her mother, who told her “you’ll never be lonely, you’ll never be bored” as long as you read; and her first tutor, Andrew Cowan, who told her no one out there was writing anything like her story “Junkie Rabbit” – just the affirmation she needed. With all that’s happened in 2017, Pachico said she plans to turn to writing as a way “to outcreate the abyss” (a phrase from her twin sister, who’s also a writer). Pachico also teaches creative writing at Sheffield Hallam.
Julianne Pachico signing my book. Photo by Annabel Gaskell.
(As Sally Rooney was not in attendance, Collins read on her behalf a passage about Frances and Bobbi’s early friendship at school.)
Claire North, aka “Cat” (real name: Catherine Webb; her fantasy and science fiction books are under various names) was in a way the odd one out at this event. Collins opened by saying that this award is all about getting in on the ground level with these writers, several of whom are debut authors. But North is a teen phenom who published her first book at age 14 and is set to release #20 next year. All along her parents called her a freak and demanded that she get her GCSEs and go to uni because writing “isn’t a proper job” (“but we’re very proud of you!” they’d usually append). She’s experienced the full gamut of responses over the years: some swore she wouldn’t have anything to say until age 40; others sighed that once she turned 18 she could no longer be marketed as “young.” She read the perfect passage from The End of the Day: a frantic, bravura account of the riders of the apocalypse together on a plane. She loves that science fiction “makes the extraordinary domestic” and playing with death appealed to her “flippant nature.” Charlie is, she thinks, the kindest character she’s ever written.
Sara Taylor read from one of Ma’s earliest stories about how her parents met. She wrote The Lauras while she was supposed to be completing her PhD thesis on censorship in American literature. At the time she was coming to terms with the fact that she was going to be staying in the UK, as well as remembering family road trips and aspects of her relationship with her mother that she wishes were otherwise. Her agent wasn’t comfortable with the focus on an “agender” character, but Taylor held firm. She’s used to ignoring the advice her (older, male) professors and advisors tend to give her. Instead, she gets tips from her ten-years-younger sister back in the States, who knows exactly how to “fix” her work. Taylor feels the USA is 5–10 years behind the UK on gender issues, and revealed that The Lauras is a response to the novel Love Child (1971) by Maureen Duffy. She has recently finished her third novel and hopes to get back into teaching since writing non-stop for nine months makes her “go a little funny.”
This was such a special event. There were no more than 20 people in the room, and at the end I got a chance to speak to each of the authors as they signed my books. I normally get shy in such situations, but everyone was completely approachable. (Sara Taylor and I confirmed that we were indeed on the same study abroad program to England, a few years apart, so spent some time reminiscing about Reading and our formerly women-only colleges. Her mother went to Hood College, my alma mater – thus the brief mention of it in The Lauras.)
Important upcoming dates:
- November 24th: shadow panel meeting in London
- November 27th: deadline for shadow panel winner decision
- November 29th: shadow panel winner announced on STPFD website
- December 3rd: shadow panel winner announced in Sunday Times
- December 7th: prize-giving ceremony at the London Library
I’ll be aiming to post my last couple of reviews on Wednesday.
On the Road with Ma: The Lauras by Sara Taylor
Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist review #1
Sara Taylor’s debut, The Shore, was a gritty and virtuosic novel-in-13-stories that imagined 250 years of history on a set of islands off the coast of Virginia. It was one of my favorite books of 2015, and earned Taylor a spot on that year’s Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist as well as the Baileys Prize longlist. Her second book is a whole different kettle of fish: a fairly straightforward record of an extended North American road trip that 13-year-old Alex took with his/her mother 30 years ago.
Alex and Ma have run off from their home in Virginia and left Alex’s father behind. They travel, seemingly at random, all over – North Carolina, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, California – stopping for weeks at a time for Ma to earn enough to move on again. On the way they visit various sites from Ma’s past, mostly foster homes where she lived as a runaway teen and made fleeting connections with friends and lovers. Her five best friends were all apparently named Laura. Sometimes it seems Ma is after revenge; other times she’s making amends for mistakes from her past or attending to unfinished business. One thing gradually becomes clear: this is no arbitrary journey but a quest with a destination. It even has a Harold Fry element, though Taylor avoids Rachel Joyce’s schmaltz.
The Lauras is more complex than your average coming-of-age tale, largely because of Alex’s deliberate androgyny: a whole novel passes without us figuring out whether the narrator is male or female. “I suppose I was forgettable, came across still as whichever gender a person expected to see … being either and neither and both at once fit me more closely than the other options on offer,” Alex writes. But this chosen indeterminateness is not without consequences: there are a couple of disturbing scenes of bullying and sexual assault.
I enjoyed the mother-and-teen banter and the depiction of characters who are restless and rootless, driven on by traumatic memories as much as by uncertainty about the future. However, I had a few problems with the book. A road trip is generally a fun fictional setup, but here it tends towards the episodic and the repetitive. Moreover, Ma’s past is generally conveyed by secondhand stories rendered in Alex’s voice, which subordinates Ma’s perspective to her child’s and relies on somewhat dull reportage. Also, the metaphorical language and level of psychological understanding seem too advanced for a young teen, which only emphasizes the disjunction between the events being recounted (perhaps from the 1990s?) and the supposed present day three decades later. Those niggles explain why I abandoned this book a third of the way through on my first attempt in December 2016, and why, for me at least, it overall pales in comparison with the originality of The Shore.
I prefer this cover image.
Bearing in mind that I might be meeting these authors at the shortlist event or prize-giving ceremony, I’m not going to rate the five ST Young Writer books. (It wouldn’t take much sleuthing to find my Goodreads ratings, but never mind.) I’m still a huge fan of Sara Taylor’s work and look forward to her next book; were this to be the consensus of the rest of the shadow panel I would happily recognize it, but it’s unlikely to be one of my top two.
Other reviews of The Lauras:
Postscript: Taylor and I have a few neat connections: she graduated from Randolph College (formerly Randolph-Macon Women’s College), whose study abroad program in Reading, England brought me over here for the first time, and when not working on her PhD at UEA lives with her husband in Reading. Plus a tiny mention from The Lauras made me cheer: Ma went to Hood College, my alma mater!
Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist
Now that the shortlist has been announced in the Sunday Times, I can also share it here:
For the first time ever, the judges have chosen five titles, having apparently found it just too difficult to decide on four!
- Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman, Minoo Dinshaw (biography)
- The End of the Day, Claire North (science fiction novel)
- The Lucky Ones, Julianne Pachico (linked short stories)
- Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney (contemporary novel)
- The Lauras, Sara Taylor (contemporary novel)
My initial thoughts: I only predicted Sally Rooney, and am surprised not to see Fiona Mozley here. My only other disappointment is that no poetry has been recognized this year.
There is great variety on this list, ranging as it does from sci fi lite to biography/history. I have only read part of one of the books: an unsuccessful attempt with The Lauras last December, though I am more than happy to try again because I loved The Shore so much. I am now halfway through.
I enjoyed the one book I read by Claire North very much (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August) so look forward to trying another, and I have heard a lot about the Sally Rooney book and read various reviews (it seems to be a polarizing read, though).
I think we are all feeling a bit daunted by the 640-page biography about a historian I had never heard of. However, I have been getting more into biographies so will be interested to see how the author shapes this life story. I am a few chapters in so far, but have a feeling I will be reading it right up until our decision meeting.
I will be posting 1+ shortlist review per week in November, starting with The Lauras.
The Best Fiction of 2015: My Top 15
2015 was a great year for fiction, largely dominated by doorstoppers (like Death & Mr. Pickwick and City on Fire, in addition to the Franzen and Yanagihara listed below) and Harper Lee. I’ve decided to pass on Go Set a Watchman, but I’ve read plenty of the year’s big-name fiction, as well as some more obscure titles I’d like to bring to your attention.
As difficult as it is to pit books against each other and come up with a numbered list, I’ve given it a go and come up with my top 15 fiction works of the year. To keep it simple for myself and straightforward for potential readers, I’m limiting myself to two sentences per title: the first is a potted summary; the second tells you why you should read it. I also link to any full reviews.
Let the countdown begin!
- The Shore
by Sara Taylor: Gritty and virtuosic, this debut novel-in-13-stories imagines 250 years of history on a set of islands. Every region needs a literary chronicler, and I reckon Taylor – channeling David Mitchell with her cross-centuries approach – is it for the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia’s islands.
Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins: Gold, fame, citrus: reasons people once came to California; now, only a desperate remnant remains in the waterless wasteland. As a smart, believable dystopian with a family at its heart, this trumps any of last year’s efforts (like Station Eleven or California).
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish: Like West Side Story, this debut novel is an updated Romeo and Juliet narrative – a tragedy-bound love story with a grimy contemporary setting and a sobering message about racism and the failure of the American dream. The matter-of-fact style somehow manages to elevate the everyday and urban into an art form. (Reviewed for Third Way magazine in August.)
- Circling the Sun
by Paula McLain: Before she ever thought of flying solo across the Atlantic, aviatrix Beryl Markham was just Beryl Clutterbuck: raised in Kenya, one of Africa’s first female horse trainers, its first professional female pilot, and the other side of the love triangle featuring Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and Denys Finch Hatton. McLain describes her African settings beautifully, and focuses as much on the small emotional moments that make a life as she does on its external thrills.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal: One of my favorite debuts of the year: a culinary-themed collection of short stories loosely linked through the character of Eva Thorvald, a young chef with an unfortunate past and a rare palate. Read it for a glimpse of how ordinary, flawed Americans live – no fairytale endings here.
Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum: This arresting debut reads like a modern retelling of Madame Bovary, with its main character a desperate American housewife in Zurich. Watch Anna’s trajectory with horror, but you cannot deny there is a little of her in you.
The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett: In this impressively structured, elegantly written debut, Barnett chronicles the romantic lives of two Cambridge graduates through three-quarters of a century, giving three options for how their connection might play out. There is no one perfect person or story: unsentimental this may be, but it feels true to how life works. (Reviewed for Third Way magazine in July.)
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: An incisive study of a marriage, beautifully written and rich with allusions to Shakespeare and Greek mythology. Groff makes it onto a short list of women I expect to produce the Great American Novel (along with Curtis Sittenfeld, Jennifer Egan, and Hanya Yanagihara).
Purity by Jonathan Franzen: East Germany, Bolivia and Oakland, California: Franzen doesn’t quite pull all his settings and storylines together, but this is darn close to a 5-star Dickensian read. It’s strong on the level of character and theme, with secrecy, isolation and compassion as recurring topics.
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman: Kleeman’s first novel is a full-on postmodern satire bursting with biting commentary on consumerism and conformity. Think of her as an heir to Dave Eggers and Douglas Coupland, with a hefty dollop of Margaret Atwood thrown in.
The Animals by Christian Kiefer: Kiefer’s second novel contrasts wildness and civilization through the story of a man who runs an animal refuge to escape from his criminal past. A tough opening sequence establishes themes that will be essential to the novel: the fine line between instincts and decisions, the moral dilemmas involved in environmentalism, and the seeming inescapability of violence.
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra: A collection of tightly linked short stories giving an intimate look at Russia and Chechnya in wartime and afterwards – revealing how politics, family, and art intertwine. Just as he did in his first novel, Marra renders unspeakable tragedies bearable through his warm and witty writing.
Girl at War by Sara Nović: This pitch-perfect debut novel is an inside look at the Yugoslavian Civil War and its aftermath, from the perspective of a young girl caught up in the fighting. The way Nović recreates a child’s perspective on the horrors of war is masterful: Ana’s viewpoint is realistic and matter-of-fact, without the melodrama an omniscient narrator might inject.
Adeline by Norah Vincent: Set in 1925–1941 and structured like a five-act play, the novel revolves around Virginia Woolf’s philosophical conversations with Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey and his lover Carrington, T.S. and Valerie Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and her doctor, Octavia Wilberforce. Vincent has produced a remarkable picture of mental illness from the inside.
- A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara: Jude St. Francis: Dickensian orphan, patron saint of lost causes, Christlike Man of Sorrows, and one of the most memorable characters in recent fiction. This novel is an attempt to tackle the monolithic question of what makes life worth living; among the potential answers: love (though it doesn’t conquer all), friendship, creativity, and the family you create for yourself.
Best Discoveries of the Year: Mary Lawson (Road Ends), Daniel Kehlmann (F: A Novel), Jonathan Evison (This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!) and Jonathan Coe (Number 11).
Debut Novelists Whose Next Work I’m Most Looking Forward to: Jessamyn Hope (Safekeeping – reviewed here in June) and Carmiel Banasky (The Suicide of Claire Bishop – reviewed for Foreword’s Fall 2015 issue).
The Year’s Biggest Disappointments: Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper; Where My Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks and Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving (both rehash the authors’ familiar themes; I couldn’t make it past 15% in the latter).
Novels I Most Wish I’d Gotten to in 2015: Nell Zink’s Mislaid, Sara Baume’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither, and the final two volumes of Jane Smiley’s “Last Hundred Years” trilogy.
What are the best novels you read this year? Any new favorite books or authors? Your comments are always welcome.
I’ll be back tomorrow with my top 15 nonfiction books I read this year (most of them not published in 2015, however – I seem to have been a nonfiction slacker!)
Reviews Roundup, April–May
One of my goals with this blog is to have one convenient place where I can gather together all my writing that has appeared in disparate online locations. To that end, once a month – or maybe more often – I’ll provide links to all the book reviews I’ve published elsewhere, with a rating and a short taster so you can decide whether to click to read more. (A couple of exceptions: I won’t point out my Kirkus Indie or BlueInk reviews since I don’t get a byline.)
[I seem to have done more ‘free’ than ‘required’ reading this past month, which I attribute to having been on vacation in America for about two weeks of that time.]
BookBrowse
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy [subscription service, but an excerpt is available for free on the website]: In Flournoy’s debut novel, the 13 grown children of Francis and Viola Turner must put aside their own personal baggage and decide what will become of their parents’ Detroit house during the financial crisis.
The Bookbag
Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett: This sequel to 2012’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning science fiction novel Dark Eden sees Gela’s descendants splitting into factions and experimenting with different political systems. Starlight Brooking emerges as a Messiah figure, spreading a secret message of equality. Releases June 4th.
Sophie and the Sibyl by Patricia Duncker: In Duncker’s sixth novel, a playful Victorian pastiche, George Eliot’s interactions with her German publisher and his feisty young wife provide fodder for Daniel Deronda. Consciously modeled on John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, this is a postmodern blending of history, fiction, and metafictional commentary.
We Love This Book
The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan: This inventive debut novel imagines a circus traveling through a flooded future world. Humanity is divided into two races, landlockers and damplings. Fear and prejudice distance these groups but the novel imagines them drawn together through a meeting between two young women, Callanish and North.
Foreword Reviews
The Organ Broker by Stu Strumwasser: “There is no shortage of organs; there is only a shortage of organs in America.” The antihero of this debut novel finds organs on the international market and sells them for huge profits to Americans on transplant waiting lists. With snappy dialogue and a lovable hustler protagonist, it explores ethical ambiguities.
BookTrib
I chose my top four mother–daughter memoirs (by Alice Eve Cohen, Abigail Thomas, Alison Bechdel and Jeanette Winterson) for this Mother’s Day article.
I also post reviews of most of my casual reading on Goodreads.
Mademoiselle Chanel by C.W. Gortner: A writer of Tudor-era mysteries turns to more recent history with this novel about Coco Chanel. Detailing every business venture and love affair, he makes some parts a real chronological slog. I always associate Chanel with the 1950s–60s, so it was interesting to learn that she was born in the 1880s and experienced both world wars.
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison: I liked the medical-related pieces – attending a Morgellons disease conference, working as a medical actor – but not the Latin American travel essays or the character studies. The overarching theme of empathy was not as strong as I thought it would be; really, the book is more about how experiences mark the body.
The Real Thing: Lessons on Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter’s Notebook by Ellen McCarthy: McCarthy writes about weddings and relationships for The Washington Post. This is a collection of short pieces about modern dating, breakups, wedding ceremonies, marriage, and making love last. The style is breezy and humorous, largely anecdote- and interview-based, with some heartfelt moments. If you’re a wedding junkie you’ll definitely enjoy it, but I didn’t think it broke new ground.
Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder by Amy E. Butcher: The facts are simple: one night towards the end of their senior year at Gettysburg College, Kevin Schaeffer walked Butcher home from a drunken outing, then stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death. This book has elements of a true crime narrative, detailing the crime and speculating on possible causes for Kevin’s psychotic episode, but it’s more about how the crime affected Butcher. This is a concise and gripping narrative reminiscent of Half a Life by Darin Strauss.
A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell: Vee, Lady and Delph are the fourth generation of Alters, a Jewish family cursed with a rash of suicides. Indeed, the majority of the novel is the middle-aged sisters’ collective suicide note, narrated in the first-person plural. They reach back into the past to give the stories of their ancestors, including great-grandparents Iris and Lenz Alter, the latter of whom had the ironic distinction of being the Jewish creator of Zyklon gas (based on a real figure).
Beloved Strangers: A Memoir by Maria Chaudhuri: Islam versus Christianity is a background note, but the major theme is East versus West – specifically, Chaudhuri’s native Bangladesh set against America, where she attended university and later lived and worked. Religion, sexuality, dreams and second chances at love are all facets of the author’s search for a sense of home and family in a life of shifting loyalties. (My full review will appear in the autumn 2015 issue of Wasafiri literary magazine.)
The Shore by Sara Taylor: Gritty and virtuosic, this novel-in-13-stories imagines 250 years of history on a set of islands off the coast of Virginia. As a Maryland native, I think of Chincoteague and Assateague as vacation destinations, but Taylor definitely focuses on their dark side here: industrial-scale chicken farms, unwanted pregnancies, domestic violence, bootleg liquor, gang rape, murders and meth labs.
Echoes of Heartsounds: A Memoir by Martha Weinman Lear: Longtime New York City journalist Lear’s first husband, a doctor named Hal, died after a series of heart attacks. Ironically, 30 years later she was admitted to the same hospital for a heart attack – an event that presents completely differently in women. As a sequel to her previous memoir, Heartsounds (1980), this explores life’s odd parallels and repetitions.
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald: A Swedish tourist opens a bookstore in small-town Iowa. Given that she’d never visited the States at the time she wrote this novel (published in her native Sweden in 2013), Bivald has painted a remarkably accurate picture of a Midwestern town peopled with fundamentalists, gays, rednecks and a gun-toting diner owner. A cute read for book lovers, provided you can stomach a bit of chick lit / romance.
Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness by Sasha Martin: Martin writes well and I enjoyed this book overall, but at times you may become frustrated and ask “where’s the food?!” That’s because the makeup of this book is: Misery Memoir – 70% / Global Table Adventure blog – 30%. Martin had the idea to cook dishes from every country of the world. At the rate of one feast per weekend, the blog project took four years. She manages to give a fairly comprehensive overview of the cooking she did over that time.
Plumb Line by Steve Luttrell: Disappointingly average poems about nature and memory. The situations and sentiments are relatable but the language so plain that nothing sticks out.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert: The picture Kolbert paints of our environmental situation is depressing. I already knew the facts of climate change and animal extinction, but according to Kolbert the prognosis is even worse than I was aware. As a longtime New Yorker journalist, she writes at a good level for laymen: not talking down, nor assuming any specialist knowledge. Luckily, there are spots of humor to lighten the tone.
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain: This is just as good as The Paris Wife – if not better. I didn’t think I was very interested in aviatrix Beryl Markham, but McLain proved me wrong. The love triangle between her, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and Denys Finch Hatton forms the kernel of the book. McLain describes her African settings beautifully, and focuses as much on the small emotional moments that make a life as she does on the external thrills, though there are plenty of those.
The Size of Our Bed by Jacqueline Tchakalian: Well-structured and grouped into thematic sections, these poems are primarily about motherhood, the death of a much-loved husband from cancer, and adjusting to the reality of war. Alliteration and assonance stand in for traditional rhymes. Tchakalian is especially good with colors and flowers, which combine to create memorable metaphors. Releases September 15th.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 