Tag: Books published in 2017

Logical Family: A Memoir- Armistead Maupin (2017)

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Armistead Maupin’s ground-breaking “Tales Of The City” is the book series I can’t bear to finish.  I’ve read most of them more than once but the final volume “The Last Days Of Anna Madrigal” remains unopened on my shelves .  Taken as a series its significance is phenomenal.  Written by an out gay man from the mid 70’s onwards with a diverse cast of characters it was devised initially for daily serialisation in a San Franciscan newspaper.  The type of characters Maupin created had never appeared in such a mainstream work before.  The first TV adaptation enhanced his reputation and was a thing of absolute joy and cemented his position as a LGBT+ icon.

Probably my favourite work of his is outside the “City” collection, his 1993 stand-alone “Maybe The Moon” was my favourite read of 1994.  It feels like Armistead Maupin has been with me for my whole adult life and I think that may be the reason why the last “Tales Of The City” novel remains unread.

Not everything has worked.  The 2019 Netflix reboot chose to bring his characters to the modern day alongside the next generation.  I uncharacteristically gave up on this after a couple of episodes as I could feel it tainting my memories of the original.  And it was with this experience quite fresh in my mind that I began this memoir.  Published in 2017 it’s been a bit of an under the radar book.  I don’t recall that much heralding of it on publication so I imagine it may not have been as commercially successful as the publishers would have liked.

For me, it is very much a book of two halves.  Maupin talks of a logical family which is what many of us need to find to thrive away from our biological family.  He grew up in conservative North Carolina with a racist, homophobic father and that upbringing makes tough reading.  I don’t think Maupin helps us out much here as stylistically I found it a bit of a slog.  There’s lots  of references which would resonate for those in the American South of those days but it all felt rather alien to this European reader.  I felt that when he was writing about his biological family he kept us at arm’s length and I didn’t really enjoy that distance.

It is when he moves to San Francisco that he discovers himself and the writing here took off for me as it did in his professional career.  I especially enjoyed his perspectives on others he met up with- Rock Hudson, Christopher Isherwood and his partner Don Bachardy and Harvey Milk.  I was drawn deeply into this book then.  His relationship with his parents develops a new dimension when they visit San Francisco when his mother is fading from breast cancer and they meet with his friends at the time of the assassination of Harvey Milk in what becomes a beautifully written poignant account and a point where the logical and the biological blend temporarily.

Armistead Maupin is a truly inspirational individual and as it progresses his memoir does become inspirational.  I wondered when starting it whether this might be the book I would always remember him for, as I am partial to memoirs, but it isn’t but it might encourage me to finish that almost complete series I started reading over 40 years ago.

Logical Family was published by Doubleday in 2017.

Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward (2017)

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The paperback edition of this has sat on my shelves since it was published when I was so eager to get hold of a copy and I feel bad that it has taken me so long to get round to reading it.  Mississippi resident Jesmyn Ward made history with this book when she became the first Black American writer as well as the first woman to win a second National Book Award for fiction in her home country.  It seems incredible it took until 2017 for this to be achieved.  Her earlier win came with “Salvage The Bones” (2011) which I also haven’t read.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, the title and front cover made me think I would be in similar territory to Robert Jones Jnr’s masterful “The Prophets” (2021) but this is a Southern-set contemporary novel enriched with the rhythms and the sense of folklore, rhythms, spiritual beliefs and history of the community.  This makes it a powerful read. 

At first I was a little resistant.  I thought it might be a novel about bad parenting using thirteen year old Jojo and his neglectful mother, Leonie, to narrate sections and I wasn’t sure I fancied that, despite the quality of the writing.  A road trip (which I can also be ambivalent about in fiction) to collect Jojo’s white Dad from prison surprised me by really drawing me in even as it emphasised the poor parenting skills as the adults focus on getting high .  Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, are forged closer together during this time because of their strong feelings for one another and their mother’s indifference.  They leave at home Jojo’s grandparents, Pop, who is filling the gaps Leonie creates through his care and his stories of the past and Mam, rooted in mysticism and the supernatural but now in terminal decline as cancer ravages her body.  The other side of Jojo’s family is dominated by a racist who wants nothing to do with his son’s choice of partner.  The ghosts we carry around with us become palpable as the narrative progresses leading to an extraordinary last third which so impressed but which wouldn’t have functioned had not the character development in the opening two-thirds been so strong.

It is rare that I am drawn to a book both so lyrical and spiritual and on completion I experienced that shift in my perspective which you get from reading top-quality fiction.  It definitely had some difficult, challenging moments both for the characters and the reader and it cannot be consistently described as enjoyable but it certainly provided a powerful experience and it will stay with me for a long time.

Sing, Unburied, Sing, was published in the UK by Bloomsbury in 2017.

Bluebird Bluebird- Attica Locke (2017) – A Murder They Wrote Review

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Attica Locke is an American author I’ve been meaning to read for some time.  I chose to start with the 4th of her 5 novels, the first in her so far two novel series “Highway 59” which features black Texan Ranger Darren Matthews.

In this novel Darren uses a temporary suspension from duties to visit the small East Texan town of Lark where two bodies have been fished out of the Bayou in rapid succession; a black man visiting the area followed a few days later by a young mother who lived locally.  This is not the usual order for murder victims in a location where the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas still operates, historically, too often a black man has been killed in retaliation for a white woman killing so the Ranger’s interest and his local knowledge of both the black and white local communities leads him to risk his fragile marriage and stay to unravel the case, meeting up with the dead man’s widow in the process.

Tensions simmer and occasionally bubble to the surface in this oppressive atmosphere which the author very effectively conveys.  Her main character is flawed but driven by a background brought up by two uncles, one himself a Texan Ranger, the other a lawyer, and a strong sense to do the right thing.  The story behind his suspension adds another layer to the plot and feels like it will carry over to the next in the series.  Richly written, strong characterisation and subtle plot twists made this very enjoyable and I would certainly want to catch up with this author’s other novels.

Bluebird Bluebird was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2017.

Little Me: My Autobiography – Matt Lucas (2017)- A Real Life Review

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There were elements of the life story of comedy actor Matt Lucas in the 2006 publication “Inside Little Britain” written by Boyd Hilton with input from Lucas and then comedy partner David Walliams. At this point they were probably the top comedy duo around and I really loved this book placing it in the Top 5 of my best books of 2006.

A lot has happened in the 11 years between then and this, particularly for Walliams who has become a phenomenally successful and extremely wealthy children’s author publishing his own autobiography “Camp David” (which I haven’t read) in 2012. Lucas’ work is a less showy affair than either of these two aforementioned books and is an honest, at times raw account in which the author’s voice comes across so clearly it’s like having an audiobook in your head.

Lucas has eschewed the chronological approach to go alphabetically writing sections such as E is for eating, G is for Gay, J is for Jewish which gives him a chance to focus in on certain areas and leave others undeveloped. He has a right to do this, one of the shorter sections K is for Kevin focuses on his ex-civil partner who died 18 months after their split. Lucas has already told us at the outset that he will largely leave this subject alone because of the pain it causes him but because it has had such a significant effect on his life he can’t help but touch on it, especially in T is for Tardis where work on “Dr Who” became overwhelmed with Kevin’s (a huge Dr Who fan) passing. The K is for Kevin section is largely taken up with colour photos of the man who was Lucas’ love of his life and this provides a fitting, touching and thorough tribute.

There is no doubt that this event has influenced Lucas’ life and work since. He has moved to the US to escape memories and rebuild his life in a country where he is less well known. If this sounds depressing it’s not, he handles this appropriately and sensitively but much of the rest is written with his undeniable enthusiasm and vivacity. (There’s even a song with music and lyrics at the mid-way point).

The structure allows us to piece together the events in Lucas’ life and go off with him at tangents. This must be the first autobiography to rate the chocolates in a box of Celebrations in eating order (I’d get round to polishing off those Bountys for you eventually, Matt, but you’d have to do the Galaxy Caramels for me and we’d fight over the Malteser one.) It made for an unpredictable, entertaining read. There’s none of the gloss many autobiographies have which will the reader to like the subject, Lucas is happy to put in things which will no doubt rub us up the wrong way. He has a section I is for Idiot to explain some of his behaviour and often cross-references us back to this section of the text.

“Little Britain” and “Come Fly With Me”, the works most associated with Lucas and Walliams were very much of their time and he admits some elements have not dated that well and he has been accused of racism, trans and homophobia because of some characterisations and the way these were interpreted by viewers and he acknowledges that he would do things differently today. I don’t think he needs to beat himself up over this, the same could be said for his contemporary comedy heroes The League Of Gentlemen and Vic and Bob, who were central to Lucas’ early professional career but at the time we really laughed and we’d also laugh a lot today. In fact, Matt had me if not laughing then smiling throughout from the warmth within this book as well as misting up my eyes on quite a few occasions.

fourstars

Little Me was published by Canongate in 2017. I read the 2018 paperback edition.

Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)

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This was our focus text for Black History Month at Sandown Library here on the Isle Of Wight where a number of copies were purchased and a special display created which reflected some of the impact this book had on publication. It has stimulated some discussion from people who have borrowed the book so I thought I’d better get round to reading it.

Reni Eddo-Lodge, an award-winning journalist, was shrewd enough for her first full-length publication to use a striking, emotive, even provocative title, which certainly makes an impact. In her Aftermath, an extra chapter provided for the expanded paperback edition I read she acknowledges that this was the case and quite a bit of the criticism she faced was from people responding to the title rather than what she actually has to say. I have no issue whatsoever with any of the points she makes in this assured and accurate assessment of racism in Britain. She states facts with the evidence to back them up.

She begins with a concise history of blackness in Britain and how that has led to structural racism which is deep-rooted in society. As a child she was told that in order to achieve she needed to work twice as hard as a white child and that tenet proved to be extremely valuable as evidence is clear that hurdles faced by black infants continues through childhood, higher education, in the employment market and parenthood. History and society has allowed this to be.

She explores difficult areas such as white privilege, feminism and class and is powerfully convincing throughout. Liberal-minded individuals may claim that racism is largely now in the past but the global right-wing shift over the last few years says otherwise. I think this makes for a powerful read which each individual needs to internalise and make their own sense from it depending on their own background. It’s not actually something I feel I want to particularly discuss myself. It reinforced a lot of what I suspected had and was happening and does so in a way which saw this book get shortlisted for awards and win prizes. This is not political correctness- it is an important thought-provoking British work.

fourstars

Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. I read the 2018 expanded paperback version.

The Book Of Dust: Volume 1 – La Belle Sauvage – Philip Pullman (2017) – A Kid Lit Review

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The three volumes of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy have a permanent place on my bookshelves.  All three have featured in my end of year Top 10s with “Northern Lights” (1995) being my second favourite book of the year both times I’ve read it (1998 and 2001).  I last read the whole trilogy 18 years ago but I know I’ll be revisiting them again.

From this you might have thought that I would have snapped up “The Book Of Dust” when it was published in 2017.  I didn’t, not even when it  came out in paperback.  The copy I’ve just read I borrowed from the library.  My selection was motivated by two things- the publication of the second volume this month and the impending and much heralded BBC adaptation of “His Dark Materials” which begins this weekend.

But why was I put off from reading this before now?  I think it’s because it’s a prequel to the main series.  Prequels- they are never that great are they?  Immediately coming to mind was CS Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew” published five years after “The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe” which certainly, I feel, if read before the more famous book diminishes the reader’s introduction to Narnia because it is greatly inferior.  It’s more common for a different author to write a prequel (as in Jean Rhys’ 1966 “Wide Sargasso Sea” linked to “Jane Eyre” which is an acknowledged modern classic but also left me cold).  Because this is by a different author, however, it doesn’t influence my view of the Bronte novel which I love.   When you look at prequels to movies you’re in the realms of “Psycho IV – The Beginning” and “Oz; The Great & Powerful”, I’m not at all sold on this prequel idea.

In this first volume main trilogy character Lyra is a baby who is being cared for by nuns.  She becomes a source of fascination for 11 year old Malcolm Polstead who helps out at his parent’s pub and spends free time in his canoe (La Belle Sauvage) mainly bridging the watery gap between The Trout pub and the priory on the opposite bank.  When he observes a strange occurrence on the riverside a chain of events opens in which he has to take direct action to ensure Lyra’s safety.  The Oxford area is threatened by heavy rain and broken river banks making a proficient canoeist significant.  His interest in Lyra leads to his introduction to a couple of shadowy organisations.  Plot-wise this is all good, I love the presence of individual’s daemons, an idea which so enhances the trilogy.  This time around, however, I did find the pace slow in places as if Pullman is fully prepared to take his time over his narrative thread and stretch it out over a sequence of novels.  Malcolm is a very good central character and there is no doubt that this pre-teen protagonist would appeal to a quite young audience as would the structure of the adventure story which harks back to a modern take on children’s classics such as “Swallows And Amazons”, yet a couple of scenes, the language (there is the odd outburst of swearing by one particular character when pushed to the edge, which even despite this context still feels unsettling within the framework of the novel) and certainly the scientific principles demand greater maturity.  It’s probably a case of the reader taking from it what they can and letting the rest wash over, which, let’s face it, is how many of us read Victorian classics.

I did enjoy this book and will read the next volume more quickly than I got round to this one (I have already reserved a library copy) but it is unlikely to make my Year End Top 10 and that fact alone makes me feel a little disappointed by it, and I would very much urge readers discovering Philip Pullman for the first time to read “His Dark Materials” and approach this as a separate introductory and related series.

fourstars

The Book Of Dust: Volume 1 – La Belle Sauvage was published by David Fickling Books in 2017.

 

 

McGlue -Ottessa Moshfegh (2017) – A Murder They Wrote Review

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I first encountered the fabulously-monikered Ottessa Moshfegh when I read her 2016 Man Booker shortlisted “Eileen”, a dark tale, with a fairly unforgettable title character who manages to do the difficult thing of both revolting the reader and eliciting sympathy. This novella is an earlier work which first appeared in the US in 2014 and made its UK debut three years later following the success of “Eileen”.

In 2018 Moshfegh brought out her new novel “My Year Of Rest And Relaxation” which also attracted considerable attention but I thought before I read that I’d give this short novel a go.

I’m never totally convinced by the novella as a literary from (here coming in at 118 pages), fitting mid-way between the short-story and full-length novel can mean that it can fail to have the best qualities of both. Too long to be tied up succinctly and not long enough to be fully realised they can tend to waver along “experimental” lines.
This isn’t quite stream of consciousness but it is writing that feels very open to interpretation and which can seem reluctant to give up its meaning. Critics often really like these types of book. In fact, the last I read with a similar feel was the 2017 Man Booker winning “Lincoln In The Bardo” by George Saunders, a novel I certainly didn’t love, and I feel the same way about this, which is not as good as “Eileen”.

I can appreciate it as writing but it does not satisfy me in the way that I feel a novel should. Basically, here its mid-nineteenth century America (although I don’t think I picked the date up from the text, the back of the book informs me it is set in 1851) and title character McGlue, a drunken sailor, is accused of murdering his friend/lover Johnson during an alcoholic spree. McGlue is held on the ship unti he can be handed over to the authorities and sent for trial in Salem. He has a severe long-standing head injury which together with his alcohol addiction makes for feverish, hallucinatory observations throughout his narrative and that’s basically why I wasn’t always totally sure what was going on. And well-written in vibrant, powerful and earthy language it may be, but I found that I didn’t care that much. McGlue, despite his constant state of confusion, comes across as fairly one-dimensional, especially compared to the enigmatic Eileen whose characterisation was the strength of Moshfegh’s subsequent novel. Part of me wishes that it could have been expanded by perhaps adding another narrative alongside McGlue’s to add variety but then the other part of me was probably glad it didn’t go on for too long, because as it stands I think Moshfegh just gets away with producing a text which is impressive rather than entertaining. It may just be me, but I think I can really struggle with this type of American fiction.

threestars

McGlue was published in the UK by Vintage in 2017.

This Is Going To Hurt – Adam Kay (2017)- a Real Life Review

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….And it very probably will. This book certainly had me squirming (Top Tip: it’s not the best book to read during your lunch break!).  I haven’t read anything before with so much bodily fluids sloshing around (Top Tip 2: you might not want to read this it if you are pregnant).  Adam Kay has written one of the best-selling non-fiction paperbacks of the year and at long last it seems to be dawning on people what being an NHS doctor in a hospital is actually like.

Kay wrote diaries which span over six years (2004-10) from the very first day of his appointment as a House Officer, enthusiastic but terrified, to an incident which eventually led him to hanging up his stethoscope as a Senior Registrar.  It is an extraordinary and ultimately chilling catalogue.  Since giving up the medical profession Kay has turned to comedy and it was obviously his ability to pick out the funny side of his work that kept him (more or less) sane.  Long hours, patient demands, inserted foreign objects, inexplicable IT systems, patient misunderstandings, long hours, fractious home lives caused by long hours, medical misunderstanding, oh, did I mention the long hours are all present here.  Kay’s decision to focus on obstetrics and gynaecology provides many fraught moments, quite a lot of those body fluids, and will make for difficult reading at times for the squeamish.

But apart from this his account serves as a testament to just how bloody marvellous people who choose to work in the NHS are.  In recent years (and remember Kay left 7 or 8 years ago, I don’t things have got any better) the government has seen fit to try and squeeze the NHS into a corset of implausible targets, an over-emphasis on accountability, uninformed choice and poor funding so that it is only through the sheer dedication of its workers that it survives.

The expectations of people to continually deliver their best in life and death situations after incredibly long shifts and with little back-up support or care for them as individuals can only bring about stress, trauma, an exodus out of the service and in alarming statistics suicide in order to escape the never ending responsibility in an increasing litigious society.

Anyone who starts to have a flicker of hesitancy when they hear a government minister or certain sections of the press claim a medic’s life is a cushy one should be forced to read this book.  And did I mention it is also very funny….

fourstars

This Is Going To Hurt was published in the UK by Picador in 2017

 

A Natural- Ross Raisin (2017)

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Published in paperback in 2018 this is Ross Raisin’s third novel in a career which has already seen considerable acclaim including the Sunday Times Young Writer Of The Year Award following the appearance of his debut “God’s Own Country.” The publication date is significant here as this book became my choice for the Sandown Library Russian Roulette Reading Challenge “Read a book published in 2017”.

 I’ve not read Ross Raisin before but was drawn to this by some excellent reviews.  It has been compared to Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” (1997) but here it’s not cowboys but the world of British professional football.  Like Proulx’s short story  which became the basis for an Oscar winning film (2005) this is a very claustrophobic piece, generally grim and paints a fairly depressing hostile environment inhabited by the characters.

 It did make me wonder who would want to be a footballer and brought home clearly the uncertainty and fear in their working lives in the world outside of the top divisions.  This in itself made for fascinating reading but the conflicted sexuality of main character Tom added another layer of misery.  It has been many years since Justin Fashanu was forced out of the closet and had a time so dire that those involved in sport chose not to follow in his footsteps for a considerable period.  Since then there have been initiatives from the FA and of course changing attitudes in the rest of society but from this novel not a lot seems to have changed in the attitudes of the other players, the fans and the clubs themselves.  It would be great to think that a book like this could change things but it all seems so entrenched and those who need to read it wouldn’t.  It gets to the point where the central relationship doesn’t seem worth it for all of those involved.

 I found the lack of joy rather grinding and I felt the same way about “Brokeback Mountain”.  Perhaps there’s some consolation in that none of the characters, whatever their sexuality, seemed happy.

 There’s a lot of football in this book.  I cannot remember reading sport-based fiction where the sport features so heavily.  I’m not a football fan (my secondary school education saw to that) so I did find myself struggling to get enthused about Tom’s world around a third of the way through.  The section of the novel between football seasons came as quite a relief.

 So then, I found it overly negative and with too much football but I actually did find myself getting really involved and this is due to Raisin’s really quite subtle skills as a story-teller and his ability to bridge the distance between what this particular reader would find interesting and draw him right in.  That is an impressive achievement gained by the sheer skill of this writer.  I cannot say I totally enjoyed this book but I was thoroughly impressed.

 fourstars

 A Natural was first published in 2017.  I read the 2018 Vintage Paperback edition.

The Visitors – Catherine Burns (Legend Press 2017)

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There’s something down in brother and sister John and Marion Zetland’s cellar and we get to find out really early on what it is in this gripping, compulsive debut.

 I’m not spoiling things by saying it’s Eastern European girls tricked into the country by John and kept as prisoners and sex slaves.  This novel focuses, however, on Marion, now in her late fifties, dominated by her brother and almost in complete denial as to what is going on in their house.  Marion has done little with her life and looks back on a past filled with regrets whilst not functioning in the horrific reality of the present.  This makes for incredibly tense reading.  It is a tale of loneliness (charity shop toys fill the role of friends) and neglect in an environment where evil lurks down the cellar steps.

 If this sounds a little too sordid the author has a masterful hand with characterisation and her depiction of Marion will remain long in my mind.  There’s dark humour amongst the dark themes which I appreciated and which kept me reading to the point where I found it very difficult to put the book down.  This is a very accomplished debut, a combination of crime and horror with a strong literary fiction feel which should make it appeal to more than those who make their reading choices from the darker areas of genre fiction.  Publishers Legend Press seem to be building up a great reputation with high quality first-time authors.  I will be fascinated to see what the author comes up with next.

vistors2Catherine Burns

 

fourstars 

The Visitors was published in hardback by Legend Press in 2017 and the paperback is due to appear on 1st June 2018.  Many thanks to the publishers for the review copy.