Bibliocat

“Nothing moves on… no time because you taught the bird not to tell it… no reading because I don’t know how… I sleep… I eat… I live right next to you on the floor… I wait for you to come home and we fix things that don’t need fixing… for what? What does it mean? You don’t see it… I’m dead already.”

“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy famously said. Well, for 17-year-old Anna, home is a filthy flat full of junk so extensive it’s superseded the architecture: the Insomnia Museum. For the past 12 years, she’s been helping her Dad construct it from the flotsam and jetsam he brings in. 12 years since she has left the flat, though the outside world still occasionally manages to intrude, light seeps in through the gaps in the boarded-up windows, music creeps up through the floors. But, one day, Dad falls asleep in his chair and doesn’t wake up, and so Anna must not only find somewhere to belong, but learn how to live – both literally and figuratively –  in a world that seems even stranger and certainly far more dangerous than the one she just left.

As you might have guessed, The Wizard of Oz holds great significance for our protagonist. Not only is it her favourite film, it’s her only window into an outside world of sorts (the image of Anna, alone in the flat, surrounded by junk, lit by the glow of the TV as she watches the tape over and over again is a poignant one). Reinforced by the numerous references made to it throughout – in titles of chapters for instance – and the fact that Dorothy acts as Anna’s  imaginary friend/spirit guide. And with The Insomnia Museum, debut Welsh author Laurie Canciani has cleverly created a kind of Wizard of Oz in reverse: starting off in a strange place – a setting that should be familiar but distorted, this time not by magic and fantasy but by neglect and decay – before entering the grey, ‘Kansas’ mundanity of the real world – here, a deprived estate in thrall to a drug economy.

Anna is an interesting character, 17 but painfully childlike. Her father clearly loves her, but his drug addiction and hoarding habits mean he is unable to look after her properly, and his efforts to ‘protect’ her – isolating her, not teaching her basic skills such as how to tell the time or read – have damaged her, leaving her so that, when her father is gone, she is woefully unequipped to navigate the world outside. (Thankfully, she is found and taken in by Lucky and his son Trick, and thank god she is, as this would be a much, much darker book otherwise.)

This is reflected in the writing. Everything is filtered through Anna’s perspective, her knowledge – or lack thereof – colouring what we see (it takes a moment or two for the reader to work out what the otherwise charming and whimsical sounding “catching white rabbits” is actually a euphemism for, for example), resulting in a staccato writing style, Anna’s sentences often ending abruptly mid-thought, mirroring her confusion. Amongst the grit, like flakes of gold in a pan, there are moments of beauty, such as when Anna finds what turns out to be a lipstick: a “round black tube with a gold ring around the middle” with a “red crayon” inside.

The story builds slowly, reaching a conclusion that, whilst it might not be a stereotypically perfect happy ending, it’s certainly a much happier place than where we began. Overall, The Insomnia Museum is an interesting and original debut, proving that there is, indeed, no place like home, but that, sometimes, you have to go searching for it first, and that Canciani is one to watch.

The Insomnia Museum is out now from Head of Zeus.

West is the debut novel of award-winning short story writer, Carys Davies, whose last collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike won the Frank O’Connor International Prize.

Cy Bellman and his wife come to America for the promise of a different life, a better one. But then she dies, leaving Cy and their young daughter Bess alone. One day, he sees a story in the newspaper about the huge bones of some ancient animal discovered in the mud of a Kentucky swamp and it quickly becomes all he can think about. He must find out if the rumours are true, and, maybe, if there are any that still live. And so, he sets out from his Pennsylvania mule farm for the unmapped wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. But in doing so, leaves Bess behind, vulnerable to the beasts that roam closer to home while she awaits her father’s return.

West starts out as an American frontier fable: like the pure, kind-hearted fool in a fairy tale, Bellman embarks on a seemingly mad quest that elicits scorn and mockery from those around him, leaving Bess – the ‘maiden’ on the verge of puberty – vulnerable to unwanted and inappropriate male attention, particularly from Elmer Jackson, their neighbour and farmhand. Like the wolves who prey upon on the heroine in fairy tales, Elmer’s designs on Bess are often compared to the activities of the mules, showing sexual predation in a distinctly animalistic light.

But what starts out as a fable slowly and organically turns into a kind of Greek tragedy. Shortly into his journey, Bellman acquires a guide of sorts: a seventeen-year-old Native American boy inauspiciously named ‘Old Woman From A Distance.’ He and Bess become the story’s chorus, its observers. Considering the story’s location and the period in which it’s set, no mention of the Native Americans would have been a little disingenuous, but Davies weaves their story into the narrative with sensitivity and relevance. The relationship between Bellman & Old Woman is a lot more complicated than mere adventurer and companion: for one, they haven’t come together voluntarily as Bellman literally ‘acquires’ him from a French Fur Trader; and second, neither speaks the other’s language, so they cannot communicate effectively. It’s also a relationship characterised by a lot of mutual suspicion: Bellman harbours at least the minimum amount of white settler suspicions and prejudices towards the natives, and it is heavily implied that Old Woman’s sister was raped and killed by white settlers or soldiers, specifically by one who shares Bellman’s distinctive red hair. (Old Woman also often thinks about a prophecy voiced by one of the elders of his tribe: that entering any kind of commerce with the white settlers will spell the beginning of the end of their world, which, given the fact that they weren’t given what they were promised by the US government and were instead increasingly marginalised, turned out to be true.) But, at the same time, it’s also characterised by moments of mutual kindness and co-operation.

Events reach a tragic head as Bellman battles with the elements, dwindling resources, illness, an overwhelming homesickness and the fear that the whole journey has been a huge mistake. Old Woman averts further tragedy – whether consciously motivated to do so or not will be an interesting point of discussion – and everything ends on a bittersweet note, with its arresting final image, of Bess turning Old Woman, in her imagination, into a kind of patchwork knight: “…he would be carrying the umbrella under his arm, like a lance. The pot holder he would have tied, perhaps, onto his head, the dish cloth and apron around his shoulders. When she closed her eyes she saw them fluttering behind him in the morning breeze like a flag, and a jeweled cape.”

West is a beautifully written fable on the conflict between the quixotic and the mundane, and though it’s Bellman’s romantic tendencies that are ultimately his downfall, the story is not a condemnation but, rather, a paean; acknowledging that the unknown is as vital for the human soul as sustenance is for the body, providing a balance can be struck. As they say in La La Land, “here’s to the fools who dream.”

A long time ago, in a country where the pink scent of cherry blossoms filled the air in spring, and gingko leaves turned the ground gold in autumn, a rich man asked his daughter: “if you could ask for anything in the world, what would it be?”

    Like a tree, desire is a deep-rooted, many-branched thing; complex, not always easy to articulate and frequently changing. But to the rich man’s surprise – for the question was meant partially in jest – his daughter was able to provide him with an answer straight away.

    “A nightingale, father.”

    A strange thing for a young girl to ask for? But ever since she’d heard a nightingale singing from a bower outside her window one night, her heart had been captured.

    Her father just smiled indulgently.

    The days passed into weeks, the weeks into months. Just as the rich man’s daughter had all but forgotten about her father’s question, he returned from a trip one day with a present for her: a nightingale in a golden cage.  She was delighted and, for a while, the house was filled with happiness, merry laughter and the sound of birdsong.  She treated the little bird like royalty, even letting it out of its cage to fly about her bedroom and the cherry tree outside.

    It was her mother who, inadvertently, sowed the first seed of doubt. “You know there’s a chance it could fly away from you one day,” she remarked, “sooner rather than later with the way you keep letting it out.”

    Those words chilled the girl to the bone. She loved the nightingale and couldn’t bear the thought of it one day not being there anymore; so she stopped letting it out of its cage. For a while, nothing changed.  But the nightingale, by now used to the freedom to come and go as it pleased, gradually began to grow listless and ceased to sing.  The girl continued to shower it with love and affection, but its condition only seemed to worsen, until the day came where it looked as though it wouldn’t last much longer.  In desperation, she opened the cage door.

    When she woke the next morning, she saw that, save for a few soft brown feathers, the cage was empty.

Ghost Stories started life in 2010 as a stage play that quickly became a word-of-mouth hit. Those who attended were asked not to give away any of the twists, and for the film adaptation, written and directed by original creators Andy Nyman (known for his work with illusionist Derren Brown) and Jeremy Dyson (one quarter of The League of Gentlemen), I shall attempt to do the same, for I feel that you’ll get the most out of it if you go in knowing as little as possible.

But as the bare-bones plot summary itself isn’t a spoiler, let’s start there. Professor Philip Goodman (Nyman) is a parapsychologist and debunker of the supernatural, until one day he receives three cases from a former paranormal investigator, three cases the investigator failed to explain, that he claims are proof that the supernatural is real: a night-watchman (Paul Whitehouse) haunted by a spirit in a former women’s asylum; a teenager (Alex Lawther) who has a potentially demonic encounter while driving home through the woods; and a city banker (Martin Freeman) menaced by a poltergeist while awaiting the birth of his first child. Goodman sets out to prove there are rational explanations for each, but in doing so finds himself going from passive observer to active participant, with chilling consequences.

Of course, when it comes to horror films (especially one titled Ghost Stories), there’s only one question that really matters: is it scary? Yes. By god, yes! The DNA of M.R. James, The League of Gentlemen, British horror (and horror cinema in general) runs through it like a stick of Blackpool rock. Like all classic ghost stories, ‘Sins of the Past’ is the major theme running throughout; each character has a fatal flaw, secrets, things that come back, literally, to haunt them.

The film is brilliant at ramping up the tension to almost excruciating levels, through great use of light and dark – great use is made, as per Nyman and Dyson’s goal, of the British scenery, but the landscapes used are either decrepit or desolate, where even daytime scenes have a slightly bleached, unfriendly look– and of creative camera angles, such as keeping the subject in the foreground off to the side, so the audience’s eye is drawn to the out of focus background, waiting for something to appear; which, admittedly is not an original technique but it’s utilised effectively, helping to build atmosphere and suspense so that the scares land.

This is helped along by excellent performances from the cast. Nyman, who also played Goodman in the original play, has clearly made the part his own, but Lawther and Freeman also give affecting performances (particularly Lawther as teenager Simon Rifkind, slowly becoming unhinged by what he’s experienced); and Paul Whitehouse really shows off his straight acting chops. If you go in expecting comedy Paul Whitehouse, then get ready for a surprise – humour is present but it’s of the pitch-black variety.

So, does the brain only ever see what it wants to see, or do we make it see only what we want to see? What do you see? Whatever it is you see, if you like your horror unsettling and intelligent, and didn’t get to see the play (or even if you did) definitely go and see this.

A promising young ice skater is attacked while training for the Winter Olympics, a scheme orchestrated by the ex-husband of a fellow competitor, gaining the attention of the police and FBI, ending that competitor’s career. It’s a plot that, well, belongs in a movie. But this movie plot actually happened, and the ‘I’ in I, Tonya is also the I in ‘unreliable.’ Based on the “insane” true story of Tonya Harding and the attack on Nancy Kerrigan in the runup to the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, screenwriter Steven Rogers was inspired by a documentary about ice skating which featured Harding. Following this, he managed to arrange interviews with both Harding and ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and found that they each remembered the events of the attack differently. And so, when it came to writing the screenplay, Rogers thought: “Well, that’s my way in: to put everyone’s point of view out there, and then let the audience decide.”

The story, therefore, plays out around a series of interviews set some time later – cleverly filmed in first person so that the interviewer is (mostly) never seen or heard and the interviewees are facing the camera, effectively making the audience the interviewer (or interrogator, depending on how you want to look at it) – cutting back to them at various instants as the interviewees react to unheard questions or interrupt, often juxtaposing how wildly the accounts differ. This ingenious approach also makes its way into the ‘traditional’ segments, with characters often breaking the fourth wall by speaking directly to camera, as if it’s their whole lives, their selves, that are being interrogated, not just their memories of some specific events.

The acting is top notch, with not one actor turning in a duff performance (special mention must be given to Paul Walter Hauser, whose portrayal of the comically delusional Sean Eckhardt, as can be seen from the snippets of the various real interview footage – which the film recreates – that play out over the credits, is spookily accurate); but it’s Margot Robbie (who also co-produced the film) and Allison Janney who deserve particular attention.

Robbie’s Harding is a delightfully sharp-tongued anti-heroine: bold and talented; brash and unapologetic; vulnerable and angry; determined and self-sabotaging. Whatever your opinion of Harding herself, it will be difficult not to be moved in some way, particularly by her struggle not to fall apart during the Lillehammer Olympics and her sincere, impassioned but futile plea as the only real vocation she has in life is taken away from her. Allison Janney is a long-time friend of Rogers, and he wrote the role of Harding’s mother Latona Golden specifically for her. And Janney deserves both that BAFTA and Oscar earned for playing the mother from HELL.

It’s interesting to compare this to Lady Bird, another recent award-winning film featuring a central mother/daughter relationship. Like LaVona, Lady Bird’s mother Marion also comes from a broken home, but whereas their relationship is a little dysfunctional but ultimately strong and rooted in love, the relationship with between Latona and Tonya is toxic. She complains that she has spent everything on Tonya, resenting her for it, but at the same time, forcing her to train harder, sabotaging her further down the road by getting her into the mindset that she needs to be enraged to skate better – as Tonya’s coach Diane warns her early on, it’s not just about presenting the right image but “how she’s growing up.” Tonya herself sums it up neatly. “You cursed me.”

As the film has been gathering accolades and gaining attention, there has been something of a small backlash, mainly from those involved in the original case. Former Oregonian sports columnist J.E. Vader, for instance, who was one of those who covered the case as it unfolded in 1994, disputed the idea that Gillooly and Harding didn’t know Kerrigan was going to be physically attacked, or that Harding herself wasn’t in on the plan, stating in an article in The Oregonian, “that bleak January 1994 Jeff Gillooly told the FBI that planning for the attack included discussions of killing Kerrigan, or cutting her Achilles’ tendon, before settling for breaking her landing leg and leaving her injured wearing a duct-tape gag in her hotel room — and that Tonya Harding was well in on the plans and impatient when Kerrigan wasn’t disabled right away. (Makes Tonya a tad less sympathetic, no?)”

It’s true that, whilst a lot of what’s portrayed in the film did mostly happen as seen, some facts have been played with. This is, after all, despite the filming choices, a film for general entertainment not a documentary. So, whilst I understand the cynicism of those involved in the case, I feel they’ve rather missed the point. Casting Harding in a more positive light is merely a by-product. The film is about so much more: Toxic relationships; obsession; fighting to gain acceptance; the unfair dichotomy between talent and image in sport; hubris; who’s to blame for our flaws, and how we allow the media to build someone up only to cut them down for our consumption. The whole point isthose discrepancies because, ultimately, we are the narrators and curators of our own lives and we are unreliable because our point of view skews everything. Harding might have had more knowledge than she claimed, but doesn’t LaVona also bear some blame, for her influence in shaping Tonya’s character? What about Eckhardt, who, it turns out, was the one who sent the original death threat that started everything?

Whilst it does succeed at pulling on your heart strings, the film doesn’t tell you what to believe. You could disregard the sympathetic portrayal of Harding completely if you chose.

To quote Tonya herself: “There’s no such thing as truth. It’s b******t. Everyone has their own truth, and life just does whatever the f**k it wants.” Not quite as elegant as John Lennon’s “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans” perhaps, but still true.

The morning quiet was broken by a distant chorus of pipes and bells.  The rooks in the ancient oak on the hill wondered what could be going on.  Concurring that whatever it was sounded interesting, they decided to find out, alighting from the tree in a flurry of cawing and feathers, soaring across the sky towards the city.

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In the city, church bells rang, musicians played in the streets and everywhere positively vibrated with joy. Not too long ago, the King and Queen, who had long wanted a child, had been blessed with the birth of a baby girl. So, to celebrate, they had declared her christening a public holiday, inviting everyone who was able to attend, from the great and the good to the ordinary citizen. That morning, the castle throne room – bedecked with banners and tapestries – was full of people, hoping for either a glimpse of the christening gifts or the baby, whose crib sat between her parents. Shafts of sunlight shone through the mullioned windows, dust motes dancing in the beams. The rooks clustered outside, peering in to watch the proceedings. As well as the people, they’d also invited the fairies who lived in the kingdom, not only to attend the ceremony but also to be godmothers to their daughter. After those among the nobility who had been invited to do so had given their gifts, the fairies clustered around the crib in preparation to give theirs, smiling and cooing at its occupant. But as they began to bless their goddaughter with gifts – beauty, courage, wisdom, virtue and the like – the rooks eyed one another knowingly, for there was another fairy who lived within the kingdom’s borders. There was no way she would have been invited – after all, who invites an evil fairy to any kind of occasion much less the christening of your first and only child? – but the rooks knew that she wouldn’t take kindly to being ignored.

    Sure enough, as the last fairy finished bestowing her blessing, the previously sunny sky began to darken, clouds pregnant with thunder and lightning making the air crackle and fizz. The doors blew open in a sudden violent burst of wind, scattering the people standing there, and in stormed the evil fairy, a furie of cheekbones and angles in black and violet, accompanied by a faint whiff of brimstone.  

   The room froze. Everyone’s breath hitched; the rooks outside puffed their feathers; the princess, sensing the change, began to cry.

  “A grand occasion indeed,” the evil fairy intoned, seemingly oblivious to the effect she had, “and why was I not also invited?” Nobody dared say a word.  She smiled but it was about as reassuring as a grinning panther.  “No matter. Now that I’m here, I too shall bestow a gift upon the little princess.”  She advanced on the crib. The guards tried unsuccessfully to halt her. The good fairies rallied, but they too were easily swept aside. And so, the King and Queen stood powerless as the evil fairy summoned her power and proceeded to curse their daughter. “Before sun rises on her sixteenth birthday, the princess will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, and fall into an endless death-like sleep.” And with a triumphant cackle, a rumble of thunder and flash of green light, she vanished, and all was as it had been before.

   Except for the bitter aftershock, lingering in the air with the sulphuric odour left behind.

   The magic was too powerful for the good fairies to undo, so the King later decreed that all the spinning wheels in the kingdom were to be destroyed.  Then it was just a case of hoping for the best.

   The rooks remained unconvinced; they knew it would take more than a rather large bonfire to counter the evil fairy’s curse.  Still, they couldn’t deny that things were getting interesting; it might just to be worth sticking around to see how this story would pan out.

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And so, the years passed.  The princess grew into a girl beautiful both on the inside and out, liked by the people, adored by those closest to her. A princess is given many names, but, as she grew, the one she preferred to be addressed by was Laurel. Gradually, the evil fairy’s curse began to recede from people’s minds, for how could anything really have the power to harm someone so good? And besides, there were no more spindles or spinning wheels left in the kingdom anymore.

    It was decided, of course, that Laurel shouldn’t know.

    Then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, her sixteenth birthday approached. Preparations for the festivities turned the castle into even more of a hive of activity than usual, to the point where, the day before, everyone was rushing around like proverbial headless chickens. Hoping for a moment’s respite, Laurel used the opportunity of a break from last minute dress fittings and alterations to escape into the gardens. She made for her favourite place: the rose arbour in the centre of the maze, a profusion of red, white and pink after endless leafy green tunnels. She wasn’t alone however. Two years her senior, William was the son of her father’s most loyal knight and his oldest friend; he was also her fiance, betrothed to her from a young age. Happily, what had started out as polite and tentative progressed into a tender and genuine friendship, which was now beginning to blossom into the possibility of something deeper. Fleeing from the menaces of pins and bolts of cloth, Laurel came across him on a break from an errand of his own and convinced him to come with her. It wasn’t difficult. A brief respite from all the nervous excitement wasn’t their only reason for wanting some time alone together: that evening, he would be leaving on a trip with his father, and so this would be the last they saw of each other for a while. They burst into the arbour in a fit of breathless laughter, shattering the quiet.

    “I’m so sorry I won’t be there for your birthday tomorrow,” he said, once their amusement at doing something essentially harmless yet, at the same time, vaguely illicit, wore off, and they sat, holding hands, staring out into the serene seclusion of the garden around them.

    “I know,” she squeezed his hand, trying to reassure him, “it’s alright.”

    “It’s not.”  He shook his head and gave her a lopsided smile.  “You’re just letting me off the hook because you’re too kind for your own good.”

     She laughed, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.  “Of course I want you to be there tomorrow,” she said when she pulled away, “but it’s not as if it’s your fault, so there’s little point in me being angry with you about it.”

    He sighed.

    “What?”

    “I’m just wondering how I got so lucky as to be betrothed to you.”

    Her lips curved into a mischievous smile.  “Yes, for surely you don’t deserve to be?”

    They burst into laughter again.  For a while, they were content to just sit and watch the sky gradate from blue, to pink, to apricot, listening to the sounds of distant activity.

    “I should go; father will be looking for me by now.”

    “I know.”

     He stood. “Do you want me to take you back inside?”

    “No, I think I’ll stay a bit longer.  There’s only so much fussing about dresses one can take.

    Take care Will,” she said softly.

    He smiled, gave her a reciprocal kiss and was off.  She smiled as she watched his retreating back.  As the onset of evening caused the sky to darken and the air to chill, Laurel conceded that it was probably time to head back inside. That and, by now, she would almost certainly be being looked for. Leaving the maze, a loud caw from overhead made her look up. It was a large black bird. A raven? Crow? She followed its graceful arc across the sky.  But as it rounded a tower, something caught her eye.  Was that a…? Could it be…?  A face in the tower window?  Ghost-like, it vanished almost as soon as she saw it. Who on earth would be up there?  Knowing she should probably alert someone, but, at same time, not entirely sure what she’d seen or that she’d seen anything at all, she decided to go and have a look for herself. Curiosity won out.

   The tower was dark, steps coated with dust – in which she couldn’t see any fresh footprints – walls hung with cobwebs. It was looking increasingly likely that she was walking all the way up there for nothing, only to then face the wrath of Annie and the other maids for making herself dusty. At the top, the door creaked open to reveal… well, nothing much at all. Aside from a strange wooden contraption in the centre, the room was empty.  Both disappointed and relieved, she went to take a closer look.  It was like nothing she’d seen before, with a wheel and wickedly sharp needle.  So sharp in fact that looking at it made her uneasy.

   “Fascinated by my spinning wheel are you dearie?” said a voice like unoiled hinges frombehind her.

    Laurel jumped and spun around.  Behind her, where she was sure there had been no-one before, was an old lady. Gap-toothed, dressed in grey with grey hair and grey parchment skin, she appeared to be harmless.  But her eyes betrayed this appearance. Dark, feral and darting, they didn’t fit the picture.

   “Spinning wheel?”  She tried to look anywhere apart from into those eyes, bracing herself to try and edge around this stranger and make for the door.

    The old woman scuttled closer.

   “Yes, don’t s’pose you’ve ever seen one before, have you dearie?”

   “N-no.” She was backed up against a wall now, her escape route blocked.

    “It’s used for spinning cloth.”

    “Oh, really?” She’d thought the kingdom imported all its cloth.

    “Yes.  Wicked looking little thing isn’t it,” she said, nodding at the spindle.

    “It certainly is.”

    “Sharp as a sword.”

     “I’m sure.”

     “Try it.”

     “What?”

     “Go on, give it a try, just a little prick, see how sharp it is.”

     This woman was mad.  She had to leave.  Now! She looked to the door. The old woman’s eyes narrowed, seeing this, and, before Laurel could move, seized her hand, forcing the pad of her outstretched forefinger down onto the spindle. A sudden, sharp pain gave way to a sensation akin to lead filling her veins, and mad, cackling laughter, was the last thing she heard before she fell to the floor, unconscious.

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 The world was warm and dark.  She was… floating.  Like a baby in amniotic fluid.  It was slightly unsettling; she felt heavy and insubstantial at the same time…

   Then…  What was that?  A single blot detached itself from the surrounding blackness. Gradually, it began to gain definition, becoming something recognisable.  A bird, like the one she glimpsed before.  Raven? Crow?  No, a rook…  The thought came unbidden.  It began to fly away into the distance.

   “Wait, come back!”

    She tried to run after it.  It felt like she was wading through heavy treacle at first, but her movement seemed to give her surroundings solidity, and so, after a while, it became easier.  Up ahead was a mirror. The rook flew through the glass, turning from midnight black to dove white as it did so.  But when she came to it, the glass was as solid as a wall, her own reflection staring back at her.  She turned around, only to find herself encircled in a glass prison. Her reflection began to morph, the colour draining, becoming her negative image.  She stepped back.  The woman in the mirror grinned maliciously, then began to laugh, a sound like nails on glass, exposing a mouth full of sharpened teeth.

    “I have you now,” she crowed.  “I have you now you pathetic little thing.  I’ve won, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  You’re trapped here, forever!” That laugh. That godawful laugh. Multiplied, it ricocheted off the walls in her head, thumping along in time with the blood pumping around her body – blood, red, red mist. Fists clenched, she hurled them at the glass, each hit an extension of that ‘thump-thump’ rhythm. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! At first, this did little, merely making the woman in the mirror laugh even harder.  But, slowly, cracks began to appear.

    “Wait, what are you doing?”

    The cracks joined.  Her hands were both on fire and numb, blood staining the glass.

   “Stop!”

   One last swing, and the mirror shattered.

  “NO!”

  The cry became a roaring in her ears, and the world shrank to a pinprick, as she faded into oblivion once more…

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 Laurel awoke, not on the floor of the tower room, but in her bed.  She was vaguely aware of a room full of people, but one face hovered over her that she would know anywhere, eyes wet and lined with worry.

    “William? I thought you’d left already.”

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 It turned out that, instead of what, to Laurel, felt like a few hours, she’d been asleep for several days. William and his father had barely left the castle when the news reached them. Any remedy that could be thought of was tried. Nothing worked. Everyone had begun to despair. William, increasingly afraid that Laurel would remain asleep forever, had given her what he was almost certain was to be their last kiss. And, miracle of miracles, she awoke.

   It wasn’t until some time later that Laurel noticed her torn-up knuckles. And, in all the ensuing commotion, no one noticed the rook leave through the Princess’s bedroom window.

   And so, the evil fairy’s curse had been thwarted. (Curiously, following this, the evil fairy herself was never seen or heard from again.) Everyone claimed that it was true love’s kiss that had saved her. William remained humble and, honestly, rather baffled by it, just glad that Laurel was awake and well. Laurel herself knew better, of course, but did nothing to disabuse anyone of the idea, just smiling secretly whenever it was mentioned.

   And so, they went on to live a long and, predominately, happy life together.

  And when any of the young ones questioned, as young ones will tend to do, whether the story was true, all the rook telling the story had to do, was triumphantly produce a small shard of blood-stained glass.

(Originally published at the literary journal Another Way Round: https://awrjournal.wixsite.com/anotherwayround/fiction-carolyn-percy For this and more work from others,please check it out!)

A lighthouse on a lone promontory above the waves; a smashed clock face, inner workings exposed; tape unspooling like ribbon from a cassette; steps spiralling off into oblivion; before you even open David Mitchell’s latest novel the dust-jacket reveals a little of the kaleidoscope of beautiful insanity you’ll find within its pages.

Moving on from the more straightforward, linear narratives of Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, The Bone Clocks is a return to the multiple perspectives and genre-spanning narratives of earlier works Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten. It is the tale of Holly Sykes, whom we first meet as a teenage runaway in nineteen-eighties Gravesend, and lastly, as an old woman living in a remote part of coastal Ireland. It is also the tale of a secret war, centuries old, between two factions of semi-immortals: one benevolent, the other decidedly more predatory. Holly begins as an unwitting pawn in the conflict; by the end, she will have become the key to its conclusion.

Once again, Mitchell has proven himself not only to be a versatile storyteller, but a master of both character and genre. Holly Sykes is a wonderful creation: vulnerable yet tough, with a big mouth and a heart of gold, who we see grow from a naïve and slightly self-absorbed teenager, into a woman who goes on to survive bereavement, illness and hardship, without completely losing her humour and spark.

The story is split into six different sections, each capable of standing on their own but still managing to form a cohesive whole, and whilst Holly only narrates the first and the last section, she is the sun around which the other characters, both malevolent and benign, revolve. This is not to say that other characters are shortchanged. From Hugo – Cambridge conman and lothario – to war reporter Ed – in denial about the fact that he may be addicted to the adrenaline rush of the warzone – to waspish author Crispin Hershey – fading ‘bad boy of English letters’ – Mitchell’s characters may sometimes be unlikeable, but they are always rounded and interesting, often to the point where you end up empathising with them anyway. The only characters are not as three-dimensional are the Anchorites – the group of immortals who serve as the story’s antagonists – however, there are reasons for this, which become clear as the story progresses.

Like Cloud Atlas before it, The Bone Clocks experiments with a different genre – and therefore a different style of writing – in each section, from the opening, which reads like a bildungsroman, to the ending – a coda, not only to the frenetic and ambiguous climax of the previous section, where good and evil meet for a final standoff, but to the entirety of what has come before – where Mitchell manages to conjure up a dystopian future of energy shortages and slow societal breakdown that is chillingly convincing; the real testament to technical craft and skill being that not one section feels written at the expense of another.

Like his earlier works, The Bone Clocks is sprinkled with references to previous novels – usually in the form of recurring characters – and is particularly resonant here with the novel’s theme of interconnectedness. The Bone Clocks can be read and understood in isolation without having read any of Mitchell’s previous novels, but provides some nice little Easter eggs for those who have.

Ultimately, The Bone Clocks is not only the story of the life of an exceptional individual, but a gripping tale of humanity’s rapaciousness and greed, not only our greed for resources but our greed for life. Admittedly, the science fiction elements could be seen by some as silly or pretentious, so if you are not able to suspend disbelief, or you have trouble with narratives that use multiple perspectives or straddle more than one genre, then this will be a book that might give you trouble. But look past all that, invest yourself in the novel’s world, absurdities and all, and you are in for a wonderfully immersive treat.

Early Medieval Britain: the Romans have gone, their roads and villas long reclaimed by the landscape; King Arthur is dead, and across a bleak land of moors and valleys, through which ogres maraud and pixies ensnare, a strange mist has descended. A mist that robs people of their memory.

In a manner similar to his last novel Never Let Me Go (in which Ishiguro used cloning and the ethical questions/problems it produces – a staple motif of the science fiction genre – to explore themes of identity), The Buried Giant uses a mythical setting and elements of the fantasy genre – mythical creatures, knights, quests – to explore the theme of memory, in particular that of collective memory and its relationship with conflict and personal identity. How do we, as different tribes, as a species, remember atrocities? And how do these memories shape us as individuals?

The story starts out fairly simply: Axl and Beatrice, an elderly Briton couple, decide one day to visit their son’s village, a journey long delayed though for why they cannot recall.

Along the way they’re joined by Wistan, a mysterious Saxon warrior from the Fens, Edwin, a young Saxon boy rescued from ogres, and Sir Gawain, knight and nephew of the illustrious Arthur, who is seemingly an old and garrulous shadow of his former glory. Over the course of their journey, they discover the cause of the memory-devouring mist and layers are peeled back to reveal dark, fleeting glimpses of betrayal and crimes unpunished: the ‘buried giant’ of the title. A giant that, if it were to be unleashed, would tear the country apart.

Some difficult, even uncomfortable, questions are posed: should some grievances be buried and crimes unpunished for the sake of the greater good? Where should the cycle of reparation and vengeance stop? Should peace be ensured by any means necessary, even if those means are distinctly dubious? And is a peace bought with blood and deceit even worth preserving? The book doesn’t offer any definitive answers to these questions, nor does it even attempt to. And therein lies the story’s power: by not undermining the narrative’s moral complexity with trite attempts to tie everything up in a nice neat bow, the reader is left with plenty to think about.

The book’s pull is a quiet one; it won’t have you racing to turn the pages. Instead it gently tugs you deeper, slowly but as inexorably as the tide. This is largely due to Ishiguro’s trademark prose: simple and elegantly restrained yet still evocative, playing the fantasy elements straight and taking them in its stride.

During the pre-publicity for the book, Ishiguro stated that, originally, he’d tried setting the story in the aftermath of several real-world conflicts – including the Second World War and the breakup of Yugoslavia – but that none of these seemed right: it all became too rooted in the particular times and circumstances of these events. Only when he happened upon the idea of setting it in an imagined past did it begin to work. It has worked: by freeing it of any associations to modern conflicts the story gains a universality that gives it an almost fairytale-like resonance.

Long-time fans of Ishiguro’s work may be a little hesitant at first when confronted with such a stark change in setting and genre, but should soon find the familiar themes and rhythms of his storytelling, whilst those who are new will be provided with a truly powerful and affecting tale. A welcome return indeed.

Christian pastor Peter Leigh and his wife Bea are driving down the dark and lonely motorway towards Heathrow, where a plane will take him to America and the job opportunity of a lifetime. But beneath the anticipation is a melancholic tension, an unmentionable elephant in the room; for not only is it the first time this husband and wife team are to be separated, there is a very real chance they will never see each other again.

The Book of Strange New Things leaves the omniscient narration and historical setting of Faber’s Victorian epic, The Crimson Petal and the White, behind, providing us instead with a more intimate first person narration, and returning to the Science Fiction of earlier novel Under the Skin; only whereas then it was the aliens who had come to earth, this time it’s humanity who are the aliens.

Peter is recruited by the shadowy USIC – a global megacorporation with many fingers in many pies but no clear purpose – to be pastor to the indigenous population of ‘Oasis’ – a newly discovered planet at the furthest reaches of space that USIC is in the tentative first stages of colonising – who are strangely eager for the teachings of Christ and the Bible – the aforementioned ‘book of strange new things’. This is not, however, a story about organised religion’s ideological destruction and assimilation of another culture, nor is it a polemic or a simple denouncement; it’s not even a Science Fiction thriller about the human colonisation of another planet. The Book of Strange New Things is a book, first and foremost, about communication: how do you begin to communicate with a species so far removed from our own, whose throats aren‘t even designed to speak like ours? One of the brilliant little devices Faber employs is to occasionally intersperse the dialogue of the Oasans – who are, incidentally, one of the most original alien species I’ve come across in fiction: in an era of prolific exposure to Sci-Fi, it can be difficult to come up with anything new, but I think to say that Faber has managed to is a reasonable claim – with the strange symbols of their own language. These symbols remain untranslated; different beings can work to adapt to the others’ dissimilarities but some things will always remain unknowable.

Peter and Bea’s only means of communication on Oasis is a device called the ‘Shoot’ – a sort of very long range e-mail device. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but as their experiences – already so far removed from each other – begin to transcend their ability to communicate them, so too does the distance between them become an emotional as well as physical one. The USIC base personnel are a mostly uncommunicative lot, deliberately chosen for their lack of ties to home and happily wrapped up in their individual professions, and USIC themselves, like a lot of big corporations, are practised at withholding and censoring information.

The book’s portrayal of Christianity and its practitioners are truly a breath of fresh air: both Peter and Bea are likeable and sincere despite being flawed and the relationship between them is genuinely touching. Both have come to Christianity through difficult circumstances: Peter through a youth full of drug and alcohol abuse and Bea through what is heavily hinted to have been an abusive childhood. They don’t consider themselves superior to anyone else and are not immune to doubt. Agnostics, atheists and believers alike should be able to find something to enjoy in this book.

Faber has said in interviews that it is highly likely The Book of Strange New Things will be his last novel, feeling that he has created as many novels that are original and different from each other as possible. One hopes this isn’t the case, but if it is, what a brilliant note to go out on: definitely not a whimper but a bang.

Have you ever felt like you don’t fit in?  Meet Vivian Lawlor, heroine of Irish author Catriona Lally’s debut novel Eggshells, a woman for whom the adjective ‘idiosyncratic’ – and all its thesaurus alternatives – may have been invented.  Vivian doesn’t just feel like she doesn’t fit in, she knows she doesn’t; before they died, her parents were constantly telling her that she was a changeling and trying to send her back to the world she came from.  Vivian too wants to return to the world where she belongs.  So she sets out to do just that, by searching for hidden code in blued-out street signs, visiting all of Dublin’s ‘thin places’ – places, in Celtic mythology, that were believed to contain portals to the Otherworld – she hopes to be spirited away to the place where everything will finally make sense. Or, failing that, she’ll advertise for a friend:

Wanted: Friend Called Penelope.  Must Enjoy Talking Because I Don’t Have Much to Say.  Good Sense of Humour Not Required Because My Laugh Is A Work in Progress. Must Answer to Penelope: Pennies Need Not Apply.

Unoriginal characters are a common complaint to be levied against Fiction, but in Catriona Lally has created a character of almost maddening originality. In an article for The Irish Times, Lally explained that the genesis of Vivian’s character lay in the insecurity and loneliness she felt during her long hours of fruitless job hunting after being made redundant in from her abstract writing job in the summer of 2011:

I’d never been drawn to job status…  I don’t particularly identify my sense of self with a career, but I still felt unmoored by the lack of stability… so I decided to write a novel…  I decided my main character, Vivian, was a woman who believed she was a changeling and was seeking a way back to her original word.  Vivian is an outsider who wants to belong…

This sense of otherness is present right from the start, as Vivian’s distinctive voice – and world-view – sings out from page one, turning, for example, something as potentially mundane as a description of her recently deceased great-aunt’s collection of chairs into something quirky and humorous:

The four chairs on the landing are lined up like chairs in a waiting room.  I sometimes sit on one and imagine that I’m waiting for an appointment with the doctor, or confession with the priest.  Then I nod to the chair beside me and say, ‘He’s in there a long time, must have an awful lot of diseases or sins, hah.’

Plot in Eggshells could be considered coming secondary to character.  Indeed, it can be argued that there isn’t much of a plot at all: Vivian walks around Dublin, writes numerous lists, searches for her elusive portal to another world, muses randomly on a variety of different subjects, makes various indirect attempts to try and connect with others – such as leaving five euro notes in the pockets of shop cardigans and inscribing bizarre messages in second hand books – and generally amuses, baffles or exasperates everyone she comes into contact with.  The story ends as suddenly as it begins, and it is Vivian who is the novel’s driving force.

However, as well as a strength, this originality could also be considered something of a weakness.  Because Vivian is such a strange character – like the inhabitants of Wonderland, a lot of what she says does make a kind of sense but only when viewed through the prism of a rather whimsical circular logic – and this strangeness is so consistently upheld, it can be tricky to spend large amounts of time in her head, with the potential to irritate the reader rather than charm, something even Lally herself alluded to:

Shaking off the character of Vivian after the book was finished was a relief tinged with sadness.  I enjoyed writing her, but interpreting the city through her strange mind was intense.  I walked Dublin with my legs and Vivian’s eyes, and sometimes it was hard to distinguish between the two.

Flaws aside however, in Eggshells Lally has managed to create something truly unique, and it will interesting to see where she goes from here.

To read a Murakami novel is to cross the threshold into another reality – a reality that looks like this one, where surreal phenomena goes unexplained, dreams may not just be dreams and wherein pervades an often unquantifiable sense of ennui, nostalgia or alienation – as easily as immersing yourself in a warm bath.  Or, as Tsukuru Tazaki, protagonist of Murakami’s latest novel, contemplates, ‘easier than swallowing down a slick, raw egg.’

I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that, in terms of following, Haruki Murakami is something of a literary superstar.  Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and Years of Pilgrimage became Amazon.co.jp’s fastest selling book of 2013 – with ten thousand pre-orders within only eleven days of the publication date being announced and one million copies printed seven days after release – and was met with similar anticipation when it was published in English just over a year later.  The English edition was released in paperback in July this year, and then in August, Murakami’s English-speaking fans were rewarded with another release.  His first two novellas – Hear the Wind Sing & Pinball, 1973, originally published in 1979 & 1980 respectively – were to be published in English for the first time outside of Japan in a reversible hardback edition entitled Wind/Pinball, with an introduction written by Murakami himself, talking about the unique gestation of these, his ‘kitchen table’ novels (as in they were written, literally, at the kitchen table) and their impact on his career as a writer.

The two books, along with A Wild Sheep Chase published in 1982 (the book Murakami himself, and a lot of his fans, consider to be the true start of his writing career) comprise a loose trilogy, linked by character, known as ‘the trilogy of the Rat’ (it’s not necessary to have read the former in order to understand the latter, or vice versa, but, for those who have read A Wild Sheep Chase, Wind/Pinball will probably offer up some illuminating ‘aha’ moments), and though they may lack some of the technical and narrative proficiency of his later work, you can see in them the DNA for what would become known as a ‘Murakami novel’.

Hear the Wind Sing follows its unnamed narrator through the summer of 1970 as he spends his nights in J’s bar drinking and smoking with his friend – known only by the nickname ‘the Rat’ – and his days ruminating about writing, the women he’s slept with and pursuing a relationship with a mysterious woman with nine fingers. Pinball, 1973 takes place three years later, the narrator having moved to Tokyo, when he becomes obsessed down tracking the exact model of pinball machine that he used to play.  Meanwhile the Rat has been left behind in their hometown, despite his best efforts to leave it behind.

Both the narrator and the Rat are instantly recognisable as typical Murakami type characters.  The narrator is his male everyman protagonist: decent but often alienated and somewhat detached, which can be seen all through his work, right up to Tsukuru Tazaki, who – because he doesn’t, unlike the other members of his once close circle of friends, have a colour in his name – feels himself to be lacking substance in comparison, an empty vessel: colourless, and therefore worthless.

The Rat is charismatic and cynical, seemingly marked for trouble or tragedy, characteristics that can be seen in characters such as Kafka – titular protagonist of Kafka on the Shore – and his alter ego the boy named Crow, 1Q84’s Komatsu and Colorless Tsukuru’s Shiro (Miss White).

The female characters in Wind/Pinball are also templates for a lot (though not all) of the female characters in Murakami’s later works: they are essentially mysterious, having no proper names other than some identifying characteristic – the girl with nine fingers in Hear the Wind Sing is known only as this and the twins in Pinball, 1973 are only ever known by the numbers on their shirts, 208 & 209 – and often exert a strange magnetic influence over the male characters.  This, and the fact that Murakami isn’t shy about showing his male characters’ sexual attraction to these women – with matter-of-fact descriptions of breasts, other body parts and intercourse itself – has led him to labelled sexist by some.

Now, as a female who has never felt any of the Murakami books I’ve read to be sexist, I would like to take a moment to present my argument.  Firstly, to paraphrase Jonathan Franzen – another author often accused of sexism – in a recent Guardian interview, he ‘can’t help being a man’.  Sexual desire is, for the most part, a perfectly natural and healthy thing for men, for anyone, to express, and though he doesn’t explore female sexual desire as often, explore it he does, Aomame – the female protagonist in 1Q84 – being a prime example.

Secondly, his female characters aren’t objects, something that only has any meaning or relevance when it’s on the stage where we can see it.  Most of them do have names and they all have lives of their own, independent from the chains of narrative events their male counterparts are often a slave to – Sara, from Colorless Tsukuru, for example, works as a travel agent, and while she does all she can to help Tsukuru, it soon becomes apparent that, whilst she likes him, she doesn’t need Tsukuru the way he comes to need her.  Their mystery is the one we all know and face: the mystery of other human beings.  And yes, their lives may take place mostly off screen, but off-screen or not it is they who wield the influence – whether it be sexual, emotional or psychological – over the men, not the other way around.

Being his first, Hear the Wind Sing is, unsurpringly, the least technically accomplished of the two, with very little moving the plot forward it could almost be a series of vignettes. Pinball, 1973 is much more dynamic, with the narrator’s quest to find the three flipper spaceship pinball machine and, to a lesser extent, the Rat’s attempts to leave his girlfriend and the town, moving the story forward and providing a much more cohesively complete narrative like that of Colorless Tsukuru.  Despite this technical unevenness however, both novellas contain imagery as striking as in any of his later works – the image of the beacon on the shore in Pinball, for example, dividing the Rat’s world into the one he knows and a mysterious possibility, is just as haunting as Tsukuru’s dream in which a woman offers him her heart or her body and he is forced to choose between them.

In his introduction to Wind/Pinball Murakami mentions a Hungarian writer, Agota Kristof, who developed her unique style in a similar way to his own of initially writing everything down in his limited English and then translating, or ‘transplanting’, it back into Japanese. He describes her novels as being ‘cloaked in an air of mystery that suggested important matters hidden beneath the surface’, which is, and I’m sure most would agree with me, also a brilliant way to describe his own. And long may they continue to be so.

Four very different individuals meet at a small Massachusetts college – mercurial JB, dependable Malcolm, kind and handsome Willem and the brilliant but reserved Jude – and find, in each other, that rarest thing of all: pure and perfect friendship.  After graduation they all head to New York to pursue their dreams of adult life: JB as an artist, Malcolm an architect, Willem an actor and Jude a litigator.  The path to success, however, is not always smooth, and as relationships morph and mutate over the years, they come to realise that it won’t be their careers that are their greatest challenge but Jude himself.  Jude, whose brilliant mind pulls people into its orbit like planets, but whose past remains as mysterious to them as the contents of a Chinese box; outwardly a confident and ferociously talented litigator, inwardly an ever more broken man.  For Jude’s whole life is dogged by a shadow, the events of an inexpressibly cruel and terrible childhood that have left him scarred both in body and mind.

Finishing Hanya Yanagihara’s Booker-shortlisted second novel is an experience akin to being put through an emotional mangle, which, I’m aware, doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation, but, trust me, it is. A Little Life is a book of many facets.  It begins as a tale of four friends trying to make it through life in New York before peeling back the layers to reveal the real story, that of Jude, a gothic Dickensian fairy-tale of abuse and trauma.  What makes it work is, partly, the way the story is constructed: told from multiple viewpoints, this allows the facts about Jude’s past to be revealed piecemeal, ensuring a gradual build-up of tension and emotion rather than a tidal wave that overwhelms the reader.  Some have complained that the level of abuse depicted in the novel is unrealistic and gratuitous.  Is it?  Well, as far as unrealistic goes, it depends on your opinion.  We know that, unfortunately, institutionalised abuse does happen, and that isolated abusers also exist, and Yanagihara herself admits – in an interview with the Guardian on July 26th – that she “wanted there to be something too much about the violence in the book, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of empathy, of pity, of horror.  I wanted everything turned up a little too high.”  As for gratuitous, I have to disagree.  The events in A Little Life may veer into melodramatic territory but the prose certainly does not; it’s beautifully precise and psychologically deft.  So psychologically deft in fact, that one of the things that left me feeling unsettled weren’t the descriptions of abuse and self harm but the fact that she manages to write about self-harm in a way that manages to take you completely into the mind of someone who self-harms and make you understand – even empathise with – their motives and logic. But where there is darkness there is also light, for A Little Life is also a paean to friendship, particularly male friendship, something that’s often side-lined in fiction in favour of romantic relationships.  Willem, in fact, makes an interesting point, when he muses on society’s apparent obsession with seeing people settle down in couples, citing ‘“thousands of years of social evolution and this is still our only option?”’

But even though there is as much love and kindness as there is darkness, A Little Life, rather bravely, shows that, sometimes, no amount of love is a miraculous cure for pain, and that some things can’t be ‘fixed’, and so it comes to a rather sad end, somewhat inevitably but still managing, simultaneously, to pack a punch to the gut and contain a small, bittersweet seed of hope.

Yes, the subject matter is difficult.  Yes, I felt a little like a wrung-out sponge when I’d finished it.  But my God, it is satisfying.  A dark and heart-breakingly beautiful novel that well deserves to make the Booker shortlist.

Carolyn Percy chats to journalist and author Carole Burns about her debut short story collection, The Missing Woman, which was recently awarded the prestigious Ploughshares John C. Zacharas Award.

The unifying theme of your collection seems be people whose lives are missing something – be it tangible, intangible or both. How easy or difficult was it to come up with this? Do you think that there is a void in today’s society – be it spiritual or something else – that makes people more likely to feel that they are missing something, or is this an essentially human phenomenon?

The theme came about quite naturally – it wasn’t a conscious decision. As I was working on stories which I realized could become a collection, I’d been struggling to think of a title.  I came up with wonderfully entertaining titles that were completely inappropriate for the book.  The Ten Commandments for Girls, for instance – great title, but it doesn’t fit my stories.  There’s a theme there I suppose of womanhood, if you will – I was toying around with something, but it wasn’t right.

The title story was written perhaps at the midway point. It’s one of those titles that was immediately obvious – some you struggle with, but there was no other title possible for that piece. After that, I quickly realized how easily the idea of the missing woman would fit a lot of the stories – and it became the book’s title.

I don’t know if today’s world has more “missing” from it than other worlds – it would be easy to say it does.  We have a lot of things.  The arts, learning for learning’s sake, are undervalued; Donald Trump just won a primary to become president of the United States, because he’s rich, and made himself a celebrity by erecting buildings emblazoned with his name.  Not because he’s qualified to be president. But it’s too easy to think worlds we never experienced were better.  “To live is the rarest thing in the world,” Oscar Wilde said.  “Most people just exist.”  I think that’s one idea my stories are about, and that’s not unique to our age.

How did you balance making sure that the stories all kept to the same unifying theme but, at the same time, didn’t sound too similar?

Even the stories I wrote after “The Missing Woman” weren’t written with that theme in mind. I don’t think every story in a collection has to “fit” exactly anyway…  and I’d never try to force a theme into a story.  I don’t think fiction works that way – at least not for me. The stories I wrote after I had my title just happened to fit – strangely, two of the Imagistic stories, where the inspiration was the image only, carry that theme the most strongly.  I think theme works on a subconscious level.  Which is not to say I don’t tease it out more once I have a first draft, once I know what a story is about. I absolutely do.  But it can’t be pre-supposed, or superimposed.

A lot of the stories seem to be set in America. Was there a particular reason for this, or is the advantage of a good short story that it can be set anywhere?

Of course a good story can be set anywhere! But the answer to Why America? is simply that I’m American, although I’ve lived in the UK now twelve years. The novel I’ve just finished is set in America; the new one I’m starting is, too.  I’ve never felt as American as I have since moving here.  I’m very aware of my nationality, and my American characteristics, because they’re now set against a contrasting background.  So I suppose that’s still an obsession, more so perhaps than when I was living there.

What are the differences between writing a short story, or a collection of them, and a novel? Do you think there are any similarities?

It’s so different I don’t even know where to begin. First there’s just the time required – with luck, I might write a first draft of a story in a month or so.  You just can’t do that with a novel. Well, I can’t.  And there’s the hugeness of a novel itself. My first novel was at one point 400 double-spaced pages. Imagine laying out all those pages end to end – it felt like that’s how much space I needed in my head to make it work.  A story is intricate, and huge in its own way, but not like that.  And of course there’s tons of similarities – structure and character and themes you try to connect without letting the reader know you’re connecting them. All that craft is required no matter what form you’re working in.

Did you have a favourite story to write?

I do remember having a blast writing “The One I Will,” though it’s not my favorite story now. This voice just came into my head, this angry, challenging, playful voice, completely unlike my own, and I was pushing myself not to do the obvious thing with the plot, I just kept trying to upend my own expectations. It was really fun. I liked the way some of the other, more delicate stories came in little sections that I then needed to put together like a puzzle with pieces that float around one another instead of snapping into place.  And then I loved writing the Imagistic stories. I don’t usually set myself writing exercises – maybe I should – but these were a bit like that. Paul Edwards and I paired writers and artists for this project, and once paired, the writers had about a month to respond to the images with a new flash fiction, and of course I had the same deadline. Did the unknown story inside prompt me to choose the image, or would it never have existed without the image? Maybe it preexisted in some way, but I wouldn’t have written it, and certainly not in that way, without the image, and I like knowing that.

Do you have a particular writing routine?

On a good day, I get up, have breakfast, and write as much as I can until lunch, and I try to push lunch as late as I can (partly because I’m not the earliest riser). The less interference I have between waking and writing, the better – I don’t put on the radio, or read the newspaper, though sometimes, when I’m stuck, I might read, but only an absolutely fabulous book. God forbid if I check email – always a mistake.  It’s harder when my partner is around – he’s distracting because I like talking to him, and being British he can’t not turn on the BBC. This summer, since I was at the very beginning of my new novel, when I don’t use a computer, I began escaping to the Canton library with my notebook, a few pens, and a book or two, and writing there. It was a glorious few weeks! They throw you out at one, and so I had an excuse to stop, and have lunch with a friend. In the afternoons, I’ll read, or do some freelancing, or exercise… when I’m teaching, all this goes to pot, though I did write this morning, if not for long.

Any advice for aspiring writers?

Read and write, read and write, read and write. See if you can find a job that’s self-contained, that doesn’t seep out of the hours you’re working and into the hours where you might be able to write. And don’t keep too busy.  Henry James said a writer is one upon whom nothing is lost. I’m too busy now. I’m losing too much.  Make sure there’s time to notice things.

What’s next for you?

As I mentioned, I’ve finished a novel, which I’m sending around, and I’ve started a new one. It’s hard to find the time and the headspace for a novel while I’m teaching (think of all those pages!) so this morning I was working on a short personal essay about Mrs. Dalloway. I’m teaching a narrative non-fiction module now, and thought that short non-fiction pieces might be do-able in the middle of the semester – though occasionally those turn into fiction after all.