This Family by Kate Sawyer:

I have been an evangelist for Kate Sawyer’s first novel The Stranding since it was published eighteen months ago.  I’ve frequently described it; to people who read my blog, people in it’s general vicinity in bookshops, when I’ve been doing books of the year on local radio as: ‘the kind of book you’ll need a good lie down and a cry afterwards.  Probably both’. 

This Family is in that area where you’ll need soft furnishings and folding tissues.  It is also evidence of a writer growing not just in confidence and maturity, but someone who can play with a non-linear narrative and still maintain a reader’s interest.  

It is also a novel where it’s probably best to go in spoiler free.  So, let’s just give you the merest thread of the narrative.  Emma, Phoebe and Rosie return home for their mother’s wedding, the last event in the family home before it is sold. 

Now, if you’re erudite enough; you’ll probably have sussed the nod to at least one Chekhov play.  Well done, three points. But let’s be blunt here: tributes to Chekhov tend to be dry, tedious and an attempt by a writer to appear clever.  The only one who’s done it recently with any sort of grace or wit is Gary Shteyngart in Our Country Friends.  And he has a very strong track record of parodying Russian literature, tovarisch.  

But this is a different, more graceful kind of dance.  Sawyer shows a family in its true Larkinian state - and you can say that of most families.  She pulls and twists the narrative back and forward, with each character’s narrative being revealed through reveries, filtered through the last forty years of history. 

There is also the confidence to misdirect the reader and make them gasp - for example, the daughter’s Mother is not marring whom you think she is. Sawyer is also excellent on the small cruelties on family life as much as she is on what German’s call Weltschmerz. 

The Stranding was a CliFi novel with a human face, but it was as deft on the sensual  side of nature.  Here, there is sunlight, sunflowers, animals.  Most notably, as far as I’m aware the only use of pigs as the darkest of plot devices.  

And let’s return to those literary nods.  This novel includes the use of a pond as Chekhov’s gun.  I’ll say no more. 

But this is where the admiration ends and the recommendation begins. This Family is a gorgeous, slow-burning firework as much as a bittersweet study of family life.  As novels on homecomings go, it’s on the same street as The Green Road by Ann Enright. I’m probably going to spend the next eighteen months recommending this as much as did The Stranding.  

It’s published on May 11th. My thanks go to Kate Sawyer and Veronique Norton at Hodder for a proof copy.  

Books Of The Year: 

 

"Outside of a dog, man's best friend is a book" wrote Groucho Marx.  Adding "Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."   

 

We are always surrounded by darkness at Christmas.  This year the match of the festive spirit seems difficult to ignite.  Never mind, a book is the perfect pressie that informs, educates and entertains.  It rarely needs charging and generally delights the soul.  I read a lot of books and blog about them so you can make an educated guess as to what a distant relative might like.  It's kind of my thing.   

Christmas is always good for a ghost story, so I would recommend Small Angels by Lauren Owen, by a long branch the best thing I've read this year.  I read a proof copy in May, three months ahead of its publication and it was enough to give me nightmares then.  Sam and Kate plan their wedding in the eponymous church in Sam's childhood village and are terrorised by the spirit of the woods, Mockbeggar.  Partially about the sacrifice of love, partially about love on your own terms, but eloquently terrifying all the same.   

Marian Keyes returned with Again, Rachel.  A sort of sequel to her 1998 novel Rachel's Holiday.  Our heroine is now counsellor at the rehab she attended, and she has settled for life on her own terms. All that equilibrium is blown by the return of her ex, Luke.  Keyes has a lightness of touch that few novelists possess.  She is a comic novelist with a mellow side. The Walsh family are a deft creation of lunatics, but there is also the sense of wisdom that comes with loss. 

I'm going to cheat here, which is appropriate as Christmas is a time for mischief.  The Stranding by Kate Sawyer was originally published in 2021, but this year saw its paperback release.  It's a sadly overlooked work, which is often filed as CliFi.  But it has a growing reputation - a Radio 4 Book At Bedtime and it’s currently being adapted for the big (or small) screen.  Set at Christmas and ending at Christmas, Ruth escapes the apocalypse with a photographer in the belly of a dead whale.  The narrative is split in two, meeting at the end of the novel.  By which time, you'll probably need a lie down and a good cry.  Possibly both.   

In non-fiction, let's start with The Slow Road to Tehran, Rebecca Lowe's journal of her bike ride across The Middle East.  It's full of delicious details, but tautly written enough to make the mouth gape at bike crashes and broken laptops.  It's expansive enough to explain the politics and culture of the area, but with the human touch of people just wanting to be happy.  

Anthony Beevor's book take roughly four years to write and research.  They are always grimly fascinating, but with a strangely addictive quality.  Russia suggests topical connotations but looks at The Russian Civil War following The October Revolution. Beevor doesn't stint on the gore and lunacy of conflict, but also throws details into his prose that are incredible - such as The Tsar having a military band in one room of his palace, which played The National Anthem when he walked in.  

Janina Ramirez is the smiley face of TV history.  Feminina looked at the woman of the Middle Ages, erased from history by The Reformation (the title was written on documents created by women).  In some small part, Ramirez is returning them to our collective consciousness. It's well-researched enough to stand as an academic work but is engagingly written to work as something that can be read in chapters, with one woman, lost from history in each.   

Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries was everything I thought it would be.  Rickman is a still a great loss to the acting world. Alan Taylor edits his thoughts and elegantly scripted journals into a cohesive whole.  A man who is quietly proud of his films, but actively hates the boy wizard who conjures up the fame and fortune he secretly craves.  It's a classic of the genre, up there with the diaries of Richard Burton and Alec Guinness.  

Finally, A Pocketful Of Happiness is Richard E Grant's account of losing his wife Joan.  It's easy to dismiss it as a light, frothy, insubstantial read.  But there is real weight in here.  He's starry-eyed as ever, but it portrays grief and loss in a more deeply personal way than Kubler-Ross ever could.   

Merry Christmas.  Buy your books locally.  Know that better, brighter times and days are coming for us all.   

 Book Review: Wildest Hunger by Laura Laakso 

Crime novels.  Everyone is either writing them, or reading them.  Personally, in this age of constant content I'm addicted to the idea of a morally-conflicted individual, dressed in charity shop donations entertaining me on Sunday night TV.   

Yannia Wilde is your atypical, defective detective.  She has an on/off boyfriend, a fixer and a snout. She has a contact in the police, but her methods are regarded as both eldritch and unconventional.   Her cases are gory, steeped in sex, mystery and murder.   

So far, so-so.  Now, let’s flip the script. Wildest Hunger is set in a world where supernatural beings co-exist uneasily with humans.  Wilde is one such, her beloved Dearon is another.  Her fixer is Karrion, a bird shaman.  Her snout runs a magical shop.  This is Wilde's third case and a series of dismembered bodies lead to a conspiracy at the dark hearth of the magical world.   

Wildest Hunger will tick a lot of boxes for crime fans.  It's also got enough sleaze and gore to satisfy Scandi crime fans.  Wilde is certainly as dysfunctional and damaged as let's say, Rebus or Holy.  What raises it, is the purely realised and well thought-out magical world.  There is a bare minimum of my own personal hate: info dumping.  That is real skill, even when reading the third book in a series out of sequence.  

There are also sudden and thrilling shifts, particularly when Wilde can "borrow" the abilities of animals.  There is a thrilling and gory dénouement between Wilde and the killer. There's also dashes of dark humour - Karrion loves a fried breakfast, but don't give him eggs.    

It's an involving read and enough to sink you fangs into, even if you haven't read the other two books and the novella that Wilde features in. Plus, the novel finishes on a blue note tha will lead into the next one.     

What is surprising is that Laakso has created a magical world that is acceptant of sub-culture, diversity and difference.  In a world where fantasy can be... shall we say, divisive - Laakso has created a fictional world where everyone belongs.  As society grows ever darker, it's a mystery why some magical kingdoms (both spiritual and temporal) seem less diverse than others.  Wildest Hunger is a thrilling, magical ride.