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BOOKS | Reviews
FICTION SARAH WATERS The Paying Guests (Virago) ●●●●●
Four years after she was nominated for the Booker Prize with The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters has returned with her sixth novel, The Paying Guests. In a shabby but still genteel London suburb just after World War I, Frances Wray and her mother are forced to take in lodgers to survive, but neither of them can imagine the way Lilian and Leonard Barber will uproot their lives. Frances, trying to content herself with the bourgeois beige world she chose over an independent life with her former lover Christina, is reluctantly intrigued by the colourful Lilian.
Whereas Waters’ earlier novels were a mad swirl of Dickens, Wilkie Collins and the Brontës, here she draws inspiration from queer female novelists of the early 20th century, most clearly Radclyffe Hall, author of the notorious lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, with maybe a dash of du Maurier and Woolf. In fact, it’s easy to get so caught up in this quiet tale of suburban sapphic passion that you forget who’s masterminding it. Waters is at her best when she sends the plot on dizzying twists, and what seems at first to be a novel about repressed desire soon spirals madly into murder, adultery and betrayal. For readers who enjoyed the Victorian melodrama of her early
work, The Paying Guests might seem staid at first. But, while it doesn’t equal her truly brilliant The Little Stranger, it is an absorbing read, rich in period detail and complex characters. The final third of the novel rattles by, towards an ending that seems predictably foreshadowed – but where Sarah Waters is concerned, nothing is ever that simple. (Kaite Welsh) ■ Out Thu 28 Aug.
DEBUT MATTHEW THOMAS We are not Ourselves (4th Estate) ●●●●●
Eileen Tumulty, raised by hard-drinking Irish parents in 1940s New York, craves a different life. She manages to pursue a nursing career and marries Ed, a brilliant scientist, seeing in him an opportunity for a better life. But Ed isn’t as enamoured with the American Dream as his wife is and soon Eileen must revise her aspirations or risk losing everything.
Matthew Thomas’ debut opens
with a brutal image of a young boy killing a frog, then swiftly introduces Eileen’s barstool philosopher father, Mike. This section, though well drawn and full of energy, is short and too soon Eileen becomes the main focus and the narrative never fully recovers its pace. Thomas relies heavily on vignettes that, despite the book’s size, never feel like they cover enough ground. Eileen is just not interesting enough
to carry a whole novel; Ed on the other hand is fascinating, as are some of the minor characters. If Thomas had let them speak, then perhaps this sizeable novel would have satisfied its ambitions. (Kylie Grant) ■ Out Thu 28 Aug.
46 THE LIST 21 Aug–18 Sep 2014
FICTION ALAN WARNER Their Lips Talk of Mischief (Faber & Faber) ●●●●●
In the cold climate of Thatcher’s London, Douglas Cunningham meets dissolute young writer Llewellyn Smith, who lives with his baby daughter and beautiful wife Aoife in a tower block. Moving in with them, Douglas eagerly joins Llewellyn’s schemes to make it big in the literary world, even as he falls in love with his new friend’s wife. Rarely putting pen to paper, their ambitions soon break up against brute reality and alcoholic excess, and Douglas is forced to choose between this strange set-up and life back home in Scotland.
Warner has always been the contemporary Scottish writer most interested in literary style; combining slangy, stylised speech with a baroque phrasing and syntax, he is incapable of writing a dull book, and this is certainly as funny and poignant as anything he’s written. Too subdued as a critique of Thatcherism though, and too superficial as a story of innocence lost, his artistry and invention can’t disguise what is a fairly slight addition to an extraordinary body of work. (Richard W Strachan) ■ Out now.
FICTION JOHN BOYNE A History of Loneliness (Doubleday) ●●●●● BOOKER LONGLIST HOWARD JACOBSON J (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
This latest offering from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas author John Boyne deals with revelations of child abuse in the Church. It’s a powerful meditation on a deeply distressing issue from which his audience is not censored.
As the narrative darts between Odran Yates’ childhood and priesthood, the problems the plot confronts are initially domestic. The challenged priest struggles to marry everyday life in Ireland with his own social, familial and professional responsibilities. Yet, underneath the surface, there are hints and suggestions as to a darker truth surrounding his friends and colleagues, which quickly presents itself as the central conflict in the novel.
Time periods blow back and forth quickly, as stalking, suicide and sexual abuse traumatically punctuate the unstable recollection of Odran’s life that Boyne pieces together. Yet the fractured narrative drives home the true impact of the crimes in question, leaving behind a harrowing sense of instability which resonates long after reading. (Rebecca Monks) ■ Out Thu 4 Sep.
As is common in today’s crop of dystopian fiction, the world of Howard Jacobson’s J is divided between the past and current eras – demarcated by the ubiquitous undefined Event – in this case referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED. Ailinn, an orphan, and craftsman Kevern, fall in love and attempt to mine the past, a task that brings ever-present danger. Scant world-building and a fleeting attitude to characters make entering this universe a bit like dropping mid-way into a conversation. Flashes of a fascinating and rich history are peppered in but never satisfy, including glimpses of race, religion, and generational splits, with curiously little political mooring. The beating of women by men is the most resonant of these issues, but feels unrooted. In this way Jacobson’s dystopia is presented in ways most oblique – obscuring societal concerns that, language suggests, are rooted in our time. If this is literary fiction’s answer to dystopian or speculative fiction, an Orwell, a Huxley, or an Atwood it is not. (Nicola Balkind) ■ Out now.