Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith

Smith’s piece asks us again and again what a human right truly is.

pp.161

Publisher: Canongate, 2007

As part of the Canongate Myths series, Girl Meets Boy is a modern retelling of the myth of Iphis, one of Ovid’s ‘cheeriest metamorphoses … one of the most happily resolved of its stories about the desire for and the ramifications of change’. Girl Meets Boy is a novella which blurs gender, sexuality and identity to form a humanistic narrative on love and what it means to be human.  

Smith’s contemporary metamorphosis concerns Anthea and her sister, Imogen, as they each react to the exploitative and inhumane company that they work for. ‘Pure’ is a distributor of bottled water, greedily exploring marketing strategies and exploiting areas of poorer countries by blocking their access to fresh water. Smith’s piece asks us again and again what a human right truly is, despite racial differences, despite gender differences, despite differences in sexuality.

Alongside, and indeed informing, this part of the narrative is Anthea’s love affair with a female human rights activist. When Imogen finds out that her sister is gay (a word ‘worse than the word cancer’), her inner monologue as she comes to terms with this fact is funny and shocking. She tries desperately to overcome a homophobia deeply embedded within her consciousness by the social norms of the time. She considers moving house because the neighbours might know. The oblivious gay jokes that Imogen suffers at the pub from her friends Dominic and Norman turn her on the defensive, and from there we can see that she is sympathetic after all. This contributes to Imogen’s social awakening at the end of the book, where she becomes aware of the corruption that surrounds her.

Ali reworks this myth intricately and bravely, tackling very modern concerns with her succinct and compulsive writing. Whiz through this short book and enjoy an intelligent literary mind at work, as it weaves our contemporary concerns into a classical narrative.      

Reasons She Goes to the Woods - Deborah Kay Davies

Everything will come crashing down.

pp.249

Publisher: Oneworld, 2014

Told in a series of single-page lyrical vignettes, with the title of each vignette on the facing page, Deborah Kay Davies’ latest novel is a tightly drawn and impressive read. It is about a strange young girl, Pearl, growing up amid the internal fury of her family home. Her erratically behaved mother is often struck down by a mysterious illness that confines her to bed or results in her acting violently towards Pearl and The Blob (an unaffectionate nickname Pearl gives to her younger brother). Pearl’s disdainful behaviour towards her mother in return creates a significant division through the family, and when Pearl becomes overly affectionate towards her father and tries to get her mother out of the picture, their world very quickly collapses.

Pearl is one of the most fascinating characters I have come across this year. She is tremendously cruel and vindictive. Upon meeting a girl called Honey, Pearl wrestles her to the ground, tells her to open her mouth and ‘gathers spit with her tongue and allows it to fall in a series of slow bubbles into Honey’s mouth. Now swallow, she tells her, or else.’ This is a rite of passage Pearl puts the girl through in order for them to become friends. There seems no end to Pearl’s pointlessly cruel antics, and yet very occasionally she shows traits of kindness (particularly to her brother), deep yearning desire (directed at her father), or deflated regret (at suddenly ending the relationship with her boyfriend, Will).

It is easy to find oneself hating Pearl and then feeling a quick pang of sorrow or sadness for her. In the section entitled ‘Shed’, there is a particularly heart-breaking image painted of the girl looking after her brother during one of her mother’s manic breakdowns. Pearl steals food from the kitchen and she and her brother sit eating in the shed in the garden. Their mother bursts out wielding a knife and Pearl shields her brother, waiting for their father ‘to come and save them’.

A risk Davies takes with the form is how she can make all the separate parts of this novel cohere, yet she manages it elegantly. The progression from beginning to end is tense and interesting. As we try to work out the meaning of Pearl’s cruelty, and of the little skeleton girl she sees from time to time, we suddenly realise that Davies is building up to something intensely moving, a denouement where everything will come crashing down.

Easily read in one or two sittings, this short novel will compel you to read just another section, and then another, and then another. It is beautifully written as it portrays the arc of a girl’s childhood as she struggles with the dark reality of the family unit.      

The Gar Diaries - Louis Bourgeois

Certain images will sit with you for a while after reading, their impact deeply felt and difficult to get rid of.

pp.263

Published: The Other Publishing Company, 2014

(This book was given to me for free in exchange for an honest review)

A gar is a fish commonly found in the waters of Eastern North America. It is a fish that has great significance for Louis Bourgeois in its frequent appearances throughout his childhood, particularly in the one-page story ‘Epilepsy Has a Cause’, which attributes his recurrent epileptic seizures to his very first sighting of a garfish. In The Gar Diaries, Bourgeois offers a series of quick glimpses into the world of his youth, a world of poverty, class separation, brutality, abuse and loss.

Some of the pieces in this collection will disturb the reader. Certain images will sit with you for a while after reading, their impact deeply felt and difficult to get rid of. The south-eastern Louisiana setting provides a rich backdrop for some very strange and vivid occurrences.    

One thing concerning me about this book is not an aspect the author can have any control over. But one critical comment on the cover attests to the poetic nature of the prose inside. What struck me, conversely, is the book’s lack of poesy, considering it is written by a poet. The prose is distinctly clear, simple and lacking in frills. The narrator’s voice is intensely sober and laser-sharp. It is disappointing in this sense, however the content often takes over any concerns about language or form, and one is taken away with the plot. There is one identifiable purpose in the author’s no-nonsense attempt to illuminate his youth, and it is just that – to set before us, without judgement on his behalf, his youthful days as he remembers them.

There are stories that will have you sympathising with Lucas, the narrator, and stories that will have you hating him. Yet the two extremes fuse well in this array of short pieces. Sometimes nostalgic, often cold and indecipherable, the author does not try to redeem or uplift. He does not try hard to find beauty or ugliness, but only portrays what is there. And this is another aspect where Bourgeois lacks poesy, and not in the bad sense. He does not try to be poetic, but unequivocally honest. His earnestness and integrity are striking.

Aside from the occasional puerile and ridiculous opinion, such as the idea that people who have children are ‘not courageous to face life alone’ or that they lack ‘the discipline to keep their pants on when they should be concerned with doing great things in the world’, this is a very reasonable book in its depiction of the author’s childhood. At times it suffers from an inflated sense of ego as Bourgeois purports to be placing its characters into the annals of history merely by mentioning them. I don’t think this book will be wide-reaching or significant enough to warrant such noble opinions of itself, but nevertheless it is well worth a read. The very short stories inside that build up a picture of the American Deep South are unrelated yet they complement each other well.

A common thread running through these stories is the author’s keen sense of class separation. He has an affinity with working class people as he grew up amongst them. In the story ‘Party’, for example, a four year old Lucas ruins a lawn party by defecating in his pants and then staring at a war veteran’s fingerless hands. The closing line of the piece is one of sorrow for the working class partygoers – ‘Poor working class people, I didn’t mean to do this to you.’ As the book progresses, Lucas’ hatred for the middle classes borders on brutality, and seems wildly unjust in its indiscriminate nature.

A book of great characterisation, fascinating events and horrendously honest narration. Brief moments of egotism and even juvenility on the part of the author often destroy the illusion of narrative aloofness but nevertheless this remains an interesting group of stories.