BOOKS | Reviews
POLITICAL NOVEL JONATHAN LETHEM Dissident Gardens (Vintage) ●●●●●
This wonderful novel revolves around the relationship between Rose Zimmer, a communist of the pre- and post-war years who is angry that the 20th century has ‘ripped her off’, and her daughter Miriam, who feels like she has ‘older-sistered’ the 1960s counterculture. Lethem’s vivid, imagistic prose is a paean less to the American Communist Party itself than to the possibility of belief in it held by the immigrant workers from Eastern
Europe, Russia, Ireland and beyond who came to New York in the first part of the century. He shifts the turning point of post-war American history back nearly a decade, placing it not in the 1960s, as so many other stories do, but on 5 June 1956 – the day The New York Times reported Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ which revealed Stalin’s crimes – and the disillusions of the American left that followed.
It is in many ways a mournful book, with Rose’s rage and disappointment released in unstoppable rants, and a book that asks what people do when their beliefs have been shattered but they can’t let go. Thankfully, it is also wryly funny, particularly when Lethem voices both mother and daughter’s withering assessments of the arrogant and misguided men in their lives. Dissident Gardens is ultimately a hopeful book, and although
resuscitating old slogans reveals the state of their disrepair, Lethem finds beauty in the bittersweet attempt to reclaim political faith in a cynical age: ‘we believed, and that in itself is worth remembering’. (Mark West)
DARK HUMOUR NATALIE YOUNG Season to Taste; or How to Eat Your Husband (Tinder Press) ●●●●● FANTASY SARAH PINBOROUGH The Language of Dying (Jo Fletcher Books) ●●●●●
DEBUT NOVEL MICHELE FORBES Ghost Moth (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) ●●●●●
Natalie Young reveals an appetite for the grotesque in her new novel, a darkly comic tale about a disillusioned fiftysomething who kills her husband – then gradually cooks and eats him to hide the evidence. The murdering wife, Lizzie Prain, isn’t the victim of abuse or adultery. Instead, simmering resentments gnaw away at her marriage until after 30 years, she’s driven to smash in her spouse’s skull. Young, also a journalist, showcased
some of this dark imagination in her debut novel, 2011’s We All Ran Into the Sunlight. And in Season to Taste, she brings out a gruesome sense of humour, too: the colourful descriptions of Lizzie’s ‘meals’ could come right out of the mouth of Delia Smith.
But while the book hits the right note of morbid amusement, there’s not quite enough blood and guts to keep horror lovers satisfied, and the pace isn’t quick enough to live up to the thriller it’s pitched to be. But Young delivers an authentic portrait of a neglected marriage, and her light and compelling prose carries this macabre tale along. (Yasmin Sulaiman)
64 THE LIST 12 Dec 2013–23 Jan 2014
As a man slowly dies in bed, his daughter must deal with her grief, her dysfunctional family and years of traumatic memories. The book depicts the minutiae of her father’s final few days, revealing their shared past through her inner monologue. It's a frustrating read, sometimes emotionally charged and powerful, often pretentious and irritating. Heartbreaking moments and well- observed details are mixed with clunky symbolism and the lead character’s endless, inane musings. For example, she sees an old man in the supermarket and wonders whether his shuffling walk is due to age or ‘sheer soul-weariness’; she wonders about the profound meaning behind her sister’s every action, from tidying the house to having a bath; she wonders about the ivy on the garden wall and how it grew so fast.
The relationships between the various siblings are handled well, and much of it will ring true to anyone who has lost a loved one. Ultimately, however, the tedious prose may leave the reader cold. (Ally Nicholl)
This Belfast-set debut novel is initially underwhelming: its story of Katherine, a wife and mother in 1969, struck by memories of a defining romantic encounter 20 years earlier, is beautifully written, but not gripping. But Forbes’ writing possesses a stealthy power, and her patient layering of the story results in a surprising emotional impact by the time the final page is turned.
On the surface, Ghost Moth is about Katherine’s relationship with her devoted husband George, and how their suppressed knowledge of the past persists in seeping into their life together. But pursuing a plot is not Forbes’ primary concern, and it is in the carefully drawn details that this novel comes alive. The strongest element is Forbes’ heartfelt evocation of parental love, as she dwells on simple domestic scenes that powerfully convey the connection between Katherine and her four children. This is a novel of lived moments captured and explored: moments that become all the more poignant as the story turns to tragedy. (Paul Gallagher)
FICTION FIONA MCFARLANE The Night Guest (Sceptre) ●●●●●
As widower Ruth hears the padding footsteps of a tiger prowling her living room at night, the reader is being wrong-footed. The opening pages of this debut novel from Sydney’s Fiona McFarlane are full of magical realist promise; the imagined jungle creature is Ruth’s brain rebelling, craving something exotic to snap her out of her boredom and loneliness.
In fact, McFarlane’s fantasy device shies back into the shadows for most of the book, like Ruth’s tiger melting away as the sun comes up. Instead, The Night Guest is a combination of suspenseful whodunit and tender portrait of an ageing relative.
Long empty-nested by her sons, grandmother Ruth is in the early stages of dementia, and has taken to making decisions by arbitrary things. The arrival of an uninvited home- help, then an octogenarian romance, awaken long-assumed dead feelings in Ruth, in a touching, and often beautifully observed study of old age. But like Ruth’s afternoons, there’s a nagging yearning here for some odd or surreal element to break from the reality. (Claire Sawers)