What I read : ?

This isn’t truly a list of everything I’ve read since my last review post - I’ve since forgotten the plots of many of those books, so they will forever remain a few disconnected lines of notes on my phone. However, these are the titles that really stuck out and stuck with me over the last few months. Hopefully monthly reviews will be back on track from June…

Boy Parts - Eliza Clark

Frequently appearing on ‘unhinged female narrator’ book lists on TikTok, Boy Parts is intense, to say the least. It takes you by the shoulders and shakes until your mind is rattling around. When I finally put it down I felt slightly crazed, like the protagonist had found a way to slip from the pages, like I had emerged from a dream equal parts hypnotic and unsettling.

Irina is an artist, a photographer who takes explicit photos of young men she picks up on the streets of Newcastle. Beautiful and aloof, she brings these boys back to her garage studio, folding them into poses, capturing them bent to her will on camera. As interest in her work begins to build, and the London art world attempts to take her into its ranks, Irina becomes increasingly obsessed with a recent model of hers, a shy man from the local supermarket.

Boy Parts is visceral and dark, tangling sex, gender, class and power - often diving headfirst into ‘grey areas’, to interactions where it slowly becomes clear that something lurking beneath the surface isn’t ok, and introducing this creeping sense of complicity in the reader. Irina is dislikable and destructive, and the novel shocking in a way many other authors attempt, but often fail to achieve to this standard.

The Lesser Bohemians - Eimear McBride

As a huge fan of McBride’s debut, A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing, I was so pleased to find her second novel just as accomplished and enjoyable. McBride’s narrative voice is reminiscent of the texts I studied in modernism classes at uni, and just like those greats, the first few pages of her work can feel a little unnatural. Pushing through this initial discomfort is something worth doing though - once you fall into the stream of her writing, McBride will pull you along in her tide, fully immersing you in the consciousness of her characters.

The Lesser Bohemians is the story of Eily, a young Irish girl who moves to 90s London for drama school, and her subsequent relationship with a much older, troubled actor. It is a pairing that is worrying for multiple reasons, including the age gap that spans decades and the emotional weight Eily quickly shoulders upon entering this relationship. As the two become intensely and almost immediately bound together, trauma from the past creates hairline fractures that threaten to shatter this volatile connection.

McBride is an expert at conjuring up how it feels to be a young woman. She manages the boundaries between inner and outer so perfectly. It is as if we are in Eily’s head - with dialogue and thoughts blurring into one. Eily’s man becomes the one clear point of reference, whilst everything else - the city, friendships, parties and university - rushes past in a blur. TLB sums up the sense of being young and lost and in a city still so new to you, and how easy it can be to long for someone to cling to as you make sense of everything.

Notes to Self - Emilie Pine

This book straddles the border between memoir and essay, a collection that is so candid and deeply personal that I came out feeling slightly woozy. Pine writes out her darkest secrets, fears and thoughts, baring them to the world to explore a whole host of experiences; from infertility, to family tragedy, to addiction. A lot of what she writes about relates to a distinctly Irish experience and the collection is carried by Pine’s voice and her unflinching honesty, especially when writing about topics that usually remain unspoken. There is no hiding behind anything here as she goes back over the bones of her life, searching for meaning or lessons she was unable to see before.

This is a really strong collection, and one I would definitely recommend. My mum bought me Pine’s debut novel this weekend, and I am excited to read more of her work, and in particular to see how her fiction compares.

The High House - Jessie Greengrass

Jessie Greengrass is quickly becoming a favourite author of mine - I was captivated by her debut, Sight and although The High House is very different in subject matter, this is another excellent piece of fiction.

The High House dives headfirst into the climate crisis - presenting readers with a near future England that is mostly underwater, a disaster that creeps slowly forward over the start of the novel as Caro, the narrator, grows up. The title refers to a self sufficient sanctuary of sorts - a house with gardens and a barn stocked with supplies, all on high enough ground to stay above new sea levels. Caro’s dad’s partner, Francesca is a climate scientist, and the High House her idea, a way to ensure the safety of her son, Pauly, in a ruined and unrecognisable world.

In many ways this story is a careful balance between the natural and the human. Greengrass’s description of a landscape that is becoming increasingly unrecognisable and unpredictable is one of the first things that grabbed me about the book. Alongside this natural focus however, is a distinctly human fascination - of motherhood and of wanting to leave the best for those you love - questioning what is living, and what is just surviving. Greengrass is careful to keep certain details from the reader, playing into Caro’s own lack of understanding and gently nudging the plot along.

A Loving Faithful Animal - Josephine Rowe

Australia, 1990, and it’s New Years Eve - a day that bridges the gap between past and future, that forces us to reflect back, whilst holding out for a brighter path forward. Ru’s Dad has disappeared again. Her sister is attempting to lose herself in a blur of parties and drinking and a mysterious black cat threatens to pounce in backyards.

If you only read one book this year, please make it this one. It took me completely by surprise, a tender, layered story that explores familial relationships, betrayal and guilt. Just like this family, the book is fragmentary; moving through each character’s perspective to inspect stories from multiple, often conflicting angles. At once disconnected and overlapping, this narrative presents an often painful window into all the things that go unsaid in relationships.

This is a masterpiece in character creation - each member of the family is so intimately and fully developed, deep and distinct. ALAFA is a short novel, yet Rowe cracks each of these family members open to expose and explore their deepest regrets and secret thoughts, all the ways they fail those they love. Whilst most of the plot takes place over one day, Rowe immerses you fully in all the personal histories of this family, and the ways this past continues to pull their heels down. Vivid and detailed and often heart-wrenching, I loved it.

NudiBranch - Irenosen Okojie

Blending the surreal and unpredictable with bold, hypnotic imagery, these stories are unlike any collection I’ve read before.

Okojie presents you with shape shifting goddesses, time travel and strange creatures. There is always a twist here, a moment where reality falls away and what was recognisable has long disappeared. This can be a confusing collection to read at points, but it’s a confusion you have to lean into and learn to enjoy, to let yourself be carried along, never knowing what the next turn will bring.

Okojie’s imagery is what truly shines through in these stories. Her language is deeply poetic, and swoops in, cutting through the strange directly to the chest. Dizzying and always unexpected, this is a truly imaginative collection.