BOOKS | REVIEWS
P H O T O :
H E L E N C L Y N E
CRIME NOVEL KATE ATKINSON Big Sky (Doubleday) ●●●●●
Fans have been clamouring for the return of Kate Atkinson’s private eye Jackson Brodie ever since Started Early, Took My Dog ended with a massive cliffhanger in 2010. Luckily the fifth appearance of this former policeman with a big heart doesn’t disappoint. As always, the story is not Brodie-centric.
While he’s often at the eye of the storm, the novel features a familiar face or two as well as a full roster of new characters. At the forefront, we have the unfortunate Vince Ives, whose humdrum existence disintegrates in a spectacular way, and Crystal Holroyd, who’s made the perfect life for herself against all odds and now must fight to keep her daughter safe. Reggie Chase also makes a welcome appearance, as do Brodie’s familial responsibilities and entanglements. The various storylines inevitably intertwine to create a weave that’s both tight in terms of plotting and expansive in its exploration of human nature.
Atkinson excels in couching unlikely turns of events in such a way that they become a signpost to the fickleness of fate, rather than a reminder of the authorial hand. Wry asides give us not only welcome moments of levity, but also the kind of interior thoughts that evoke sympathy even where it’s least deserved. The competing and complicated facets that make up a person are a central theme, embodied by the ever-empathetic and occasionally morally compromised Brodie. Join him in this tour de force of a detective novel; you’ll be glad you did. (Lynsey May) ■ Out Tue 18 Jun.
CONTEMPORARY FICTION ARIANA HARWICZ Feebleminded (Translated by Annie McDermott and Carolina Orloff) (Charco Press) ●●●●● CONTEMPORARY FICTION POLLY CLARK Tiger (Quercus) ●●●●●
Feebleminded follows Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker International 2018. As part of what the author describes as an ‘involuntary trilogy’, there is certainly a similarity in the violence of the prose and extremity of emotion. Feebleminded is the story of a mother and daughter drinking, laughing, fighting and courting the darkest kind of ruin.
Harwicz is already a big name in contemporary Argentinian literature and this is Feebleminded’s first outing in English translation. It’s a novel with no sugar-coating, where you’re immediately thrust into a stream of consciousness that is both slightly bewildering and undeniably powerful. Fittingly, for a book that interrogates unhealthy relationships and blurred boundaries, even the protagonist is hard to define: ‘Now I’m a mass of nocturnal birds. Now I’m an impossible horrible wonderful night. Now, a hollow avalanche.’
The book’s complex lyricism makes its sudden stabs of clarity all the more vicious and there’s a feeling of exhilaration in receiving these hard-won insights. Without a great focus on plot, readers will be left feeling that they, like the characters, are being driven towards an inevitable crescendo. If you’re looking for fiction that challenges and provokes, leaving you occasionally frustrated and slightly destabilised, Feebleminded is for you. (Lynsey May) ■ Out now.
83 THE LIST 1 Jun–31 Aug 2019
If you read Polly Clark’s Helensburgh-set debut novel Larchfield and fell for her tale about a mother and WH Auden, then you might be surprised that her second offering focuses on a fierce predator. The story begins with a prologue located in the Russian taiga region in 1992, depicting a hunter who is taught a lesson about the forest’s natural order. This leads the novel to unfold in three individual parts, all unique in place and character but connected through the force of one tiger and the universal fight for survival.
Firstly there’s Freida, an ex-Bonobo researcher
who’s been fired from her post for stealing morphine to help in the aftermath of a terrible assault. She finds herself at the unconventional Torbet Zoo, where keepers are encouraged to go in with the animals. A Siberian tiger-breeding programme has been launched there and a one-eyed tigress named Luna rattles into Frieda’s life to change the course of her self-destructive path. We then switch to a Russian conservationist living with his father and colleagues in one of the world’s harshest environments. While working to preserve the wild tigers, he comes across a native family trying to survive in the natural world. As the book comes full-circle and the separate
worlds collide, the fundamental differences between humans and animals are reinforced. The level of detail and knowledge in the book is impressive and although the three tales don’t completely gel, this is a compelling and imaginative read. (Katharine Gemmell) ■ Out now.
POETRY NIALL CAMPBELL Noctuary (Bloodaxe Books) ●●●●●
Niall Campbell’s second poetry collection is at its best when turning small, intimate aspects of fatherhood into transcendental wonders, but loses its way when it drifts from this narrow focus. This is not intended as a thorough exploration of parenthood’s ups and downs, more a poet’s realm of silent, snowy nights shared between father and son. When it drifts, there are a few provocative
pieces (‘Poacher’, for example, revels in rather than dissects ‘secondary violence’), and later in the collection the blurb on the back acts as a necessary guide. These detours feel insubstantial, with a few exceptions where Campbell is able to integrate them with his slices of fairytale fatherhood. As a consequence the book meanders, noodling amid themes without bridging gaps.
While this approach produces undeniable beauty there are questions begged by the absences: what is Campbell’s thinking behind his partner being a peripheral, almost completely absent figure? Is the contrast between the selected truths of this collection and the rural, island landscapes the most effective one that could be made? Is the dream-like world concocted here, teetering on the verge of repetition then expanding into new forms, substantial or decorative? There’s skill and wonder here to be sure, but the dynamics of the collection feel skewed, dulling the overall potency of its crescendos. (Andrew Blair) ■ Out now.