Fred Vargas

A big thank you to whoever it was who recommended Fred Vargas to me. I'm reading her at the moment, This Night's Foul Work, and it's terrific, full of intriguing and appealing characters, not least the hero, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, whose reactions to everything are unexpected and endearing. He's small and vague and really rather wonderful. The first time in ages that I've found a new writer I like in this genre. Fred (short for Frédérique) Vargas is an historian turned writer, with an acute attention to detail, wit and imagination. I'm only a third of the way into this book but already I'm hooked on her unusual eye for character and intrigue. The police call in an archaeologist to help exhume a grave as the soil structure baffles them; the expert digs with his hands and from touch alone tells them how the grave was dug by two men, in turns, with distinctive ways of holding the pick-axe. The whole section was brilliantly done, with humour and cleverness that didn't run to ego. I hope her other books are as good. I've ordered two more, including the one that preceded This Night's Foul Work, as it alludes to terrible trauma for our hero. Can't wait!

Pedestal Magazine

The new issue of Pedestal Magazine is out today, and has my review of Mariana Dietl's Argentinos.

Reading this collection, I wished I was Argentinian—not because the stories made me yearn for a country the author describes as “impulsive and erratic,” but because I so often sensed that so much had been lost in translation.

Exposure

Isn't the cover great for this new Cinnamon Press anthology of microfiction? The collection includes work by writers from all over the place (and me!).

"Ranging across love, loss, hate, journeys and other oddities these finely written pieces constantly surprise, delight and challenge. With a powerful title piece from Bill Trüb this is an innovative anthology full of difference."

It will be published in November and is available for pre-order.

Who tells your story? POV changes everything

I was interested to read James Wood in the London Review of Books today, on the difficulties of the narrative voice in Emma Donoghue's Booker shortlisted novel, Room. The story takes its prompt from the real-life case of Josef Fritzel, and is told through the eyes of its five year old hero, Jack. Wood states very lucidly the difficulty posed by this narrative choice, for the author but also for the reader:

"... unfortunately Jack is a child, and unfortunately Jack narrates the novel, and unfortunately Jack is a pretty cute kid, which means that the book itself is never far from cuteness – more Adrian Mole than Ivan Denisovich – which may explain the endorsements of Room provided by sentimental popular novelists like Anita Shreve and Audrey Niffenegger. Where is Mark Haddon’s imprimatur? And of course, a novel narrated by a five-year-old kid stretches to breaking point the already uneasy tension in first-person narration between the supposed orality of the recitation and its actual writtenness."

I think Wood makes a very good point. Even if our primary interest in the story is its psychological impact on the hero, the narrative doesn't quite capture - convincingly, consistently - the extent of that impact. Because no 5 year old can be expected to articulate an experience of this kind, let alone in a manner that extracts the nuances and the socio-political subtext which would have made this a richer, more thought-provoking work. I absolutely understand Donoghue's attraction to the subject matter, as a writer, but I wonder if she took the easy route through, by avoiding anything approaching an adult commentary.

The narrator in The Lovely Bones is older, and manages to combine a childish wonder with an emerging adult instinct for danger and despair - we don't lose anything by seeing the story through her eyes. In any case, Sebold's novel is not (to my knowledge) based on a real-life crime. The prude in me (if that's what it is) wants to demand that fiction inspired by real-life crime takes its responsibilities very seriously, thinks about what is important in the narrative, what responses readers should feel, the questions we should ask about a world that contains this kind of crime. I don't believe this was ever going to be possible through the narrative POV of a 5 year old, and I wonder whether Donoghue believed it to be possible.

Ultimately, I think my disappointment with the novel is its light-weight treatment of what is a deeply disturbing and morally challenging subject matter. I'm not squeamish but even if I was, I wouldn't want my reaction to a story inspired by the crimes of Josef Fritzel to be "Aww, how sweet!"

The Short Review

The October issue is out, and carries my review of Man Receives a Letter by Peter Gordon:

Beautifully described moments in the lives of complex characters, told without drama but with a close attention to the detail of what’s most remarkable in the human condition

I'm looking forward to reading Metrophilias by Brendan Connell, and The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis.

This time of year

I'm always at my best in the Autumn. All the things we're meant to feel in Spring - refreshed, awake - I get at this time of year. Plus I love the colours of Autumn, and the textures (nubby tweed and Shetland wool and frothy alpaca...). Oh and there's Christmas at the end of it all, which still manages to make me happy and not frazzled, mainly because I avoid the high-end trappings and concentrate on indulgences, curling up with good books and people. I feel I might start writing something new (a short story, maybe a flash) in a week or so. But for now I'm reading (Toby Litt) and walking and enjoying having not very much to do and the space in which to do it. Happy Autumn, bloggers!