Thanks @UlldemoShul and others who have been reviewing the Women’s Prize fiction longlist. I’ve still been reading but I’ve slowed down, partly because I have some lurgy/virus that’s taking ages to recover from, ugh. (I remember you said something similar about a stubborn virus, @Terpsichore . I hope you’re feeling better now!) And partly because I think I’m getting fed up of reading a list of books I haven’t chosen myself, ha! I was loving it at the start but the novelty is wearing off a little. The fact that my teaching term started again today is the final factor. If I read for leisure, I want to enjoy what I’m reading, dammit. I’ve therefore DNF’ed more longlist titles than I thought I would.
Anyway, with my latest longlist reads are:
- And Then She Fell, Alicia Elliott 5/5
I remember
@FortunaMajor saying that this is a marmite book, and also that it reminded her of
Beloved. I agree on both counts. This is a harrowing read but very original. Intersectional feminism is one label you could apply to it, because it’s about gender AND ethnicity AND class AND mental illness. A young Mohawk mother, newly married to a white male academic, experiences postpartum depression and racial discrimination. The story gripped me because of the way reality slides into psychosis (you can’t always tell when the narrator’s grip on objective reality has weakened), and because of the inventive way it weaves Native American myth into the plot (as well as the saccharine Disney film Pocahontas!). As someone who ‘married up’ in a sense (by which I mean my partner had a more traditionally bourgeois upbringing), I identified with some of the details about social class, like the way the narrator felt pressure to dress in a way that was understated rather than ‘garish’. On the other hand, I did think the academics in the book were caricatured. (Can academics really be that snobby? Maybe, but the ones I know are not!) Still, an extraordinary book, and I was impressed by the way the magical realist ending brought different plot strands together.
- Brotherless Night, V. V. Ganeshananthan 4/5
This saga about one Tamil family (a sister and four brothers) caught up in ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka was harrowing (again!), but very much worth the read. The way the author weaves historical figures into her narrative pseudonymously (Dr Rajani Thiranagama, the feminist and human rights activist; Thileepan the hunger striker) is informative and gripping. However, there are so many events in this book that the whole narrative seems almost to move too fast.
- Restless Dolly Maunder, Kate Grenville 3/5
After two harrowing longlist reads, this novel felt like a welcome break, even though it’s not an overly cheerful story either. Kate Grenville writes beautifully, and I’m a longtime fan of Australian literature (my DH is Australian). This isn’t her best book, and Dolly is a curiously difficult figure to sympathise with. However, that in itself was the premise of the book in a way, since she is Grenville’s own grandmother, and Grenville, finding her an unsympathetic character in real life, set out to discover her story. I was particularly drawn to the ending chapters, where the author intervenes in her own voice.
- Nightbloom, Peace Adzo Medie 3/5
I liked the cultural setting of Ghana in this novel, and also the ingenious device of telling the story first from the viewpoint of one (more privileged) woman character, then from the viewpoint of her less privileged friend and counterpart. However, I felt curiously detached from both women, and from the traumatic episodes that both of them experience and that ultimately brings them both together. The writing style struck me as rather flat. The author however seems to be a very impressive woman, in terms of her academic political work.
And now for the DNFs:
The Blue, Beautiful World, Karen Lord
I think a big problem with this book, as others have said, is that it’s the third novel in a particular SF series, and doesn’t really give you any background information, so you feel plunged into a world whose characters you don’t understand. I didn’t hate it, but I gave up 100 pages in, when I felt I was just starting to get a grip on the characters, and the narrative abandoned that set of characters and introduced a squad of new ones. Too much effort!
Hangman, Maya Binham
Very literary and abstract, with no character names or place names or easily recognisable plot. Again, if I’d put the effort in, the narrative might have been rewarding, but I was TIRED and felt completely alienated by both the protagonist and the writing style, so I gave up.
A Trace of Sun, Pam Williams
Reader, I was still too tired. The writing style did not grip me and I couldn’t connect properly with the characters (a young boy abandoned by his parents for seven years as they emigrate from Grenada to the UK). There was a big leap where one moment the protagonist was a young child in Grenada saying goodbye to his mum, the next moment he was a teenager and entering the UK for the first time. The plot moved too fast and it felt as though the author was telling not showing. (FFS when did I become such a grumpy reader?)
In Defence of the Act, Effie Black
I didn’t read this because, weirdly, it was the only book of the 16 longlisted that my local library didn’t possess in any form! I wasn’t super keen to read it anyway, because I have a history of mental health struggles, and felt a little wary about a novel whose main theme was suicide. (On the other hand, I did think the opening segment of Soldier Sailor was brilliant, and it deals with a similarly dark theme.) If this novel is shortlisted, I’ll read it, but otherwise I probably won’t.