What I read : February + March

Follow Me To Ground - Sue Rainsford

This slither of a novel is rife with bodies and their sounds; of the fleshy wet, and the unknown lurking inside you. Set in a community that lies on the fracture between folklore and reality, Ada and her father work as healers, fixing the locals in strange ways that turn the body inside out, reaching within, plucking rot and burying patients alive in a garden that rumbles with discontent. After only her father's company for years, Ada becomes close to Samson, a young man from the town and the only one who isn't afraid of the healers and their inexplicable abilities. As desire awakens in Ada, an unnerving relationship forms between the pair, touching on questions of agency and feminist theory. Rainsford takes elements of reality and blends them with the monstrous in an almost offhand way, resulting in an accomplished and deeply enjoyable body horror.

Luster - Raven Leilani

Edie is 23, struggling to make ends meet in an entry level publishing job. She seems caught up in the empty tide of her own life, waiting to break up against something, desperate to feel anything. So begins her affair with Eric - an older, married white man. Leilani's focus, however, is instead turned towards the relationship between Edie and Rebecca, Eric's wife. There are many facets to Luster; race and class obviously play a huge role in the power structures within this entanglement; within Rebecca's home, Edie has the time and space to practice her art, whilst she feels a responsibility towards their adopted Black daughter Akila. Everything I saw about Luster pushed it as a sexy novel. However, the overarching plot is more sad than sexy. Edie is struggling with self-destructive tendencies, with a need to feel something outside of herself, a longing that often swerves into violence. She is lost, desperate to be found or seen, and her narration buckles beneath her character flaws. I think Luster can best be summarised by the two words I noted down whilst reading - immediate and destructive.

Topics of Conversation - Miranda Popkey

Built off a series of conversations between an unnamed narrator and a collection of women, it's easy to see why Topics of Conversation has been compared to Rachel Cusk's novels. Over the span of nearly 2 decades, this narrator speaks with the women she crosses paths with. All have their differences - in location, age, position in life, yet each conversation is rooted in exploring desire - what women want, how they hide, or express this. It looks at a desire to be controlled, to care for or be taken care of, all through the lens of a narrator juggling a complicated relationship to herself and her own needs. This is an interesting novel, but not one that has really stuck with me after finishing.

Open Water - Caleb Azumah Nelson

You would struggle to describe Open Water as anything less than beautiful. It is the story of two best friends falling in love. One is a dancer, the other a photographer, and art is fundamental to how they see the world and to the quiet beauty of their connection. Music is central to the novel and Azumah's prose is poetic and lyrical, submerging you in the swells and breaks of this melody. Their relationship forms within the veins of London, and this city, art, and Black identity are critical parts of Open Water. Azumah Nelson examines what it means to be a man, and specifically a Black man in this space. He details the struggle to fully crack open your chest, to expose yourself and your fears to someone else. And how it feels, after struggling under rejection and isolation, to find someone who wants to see and understand you. Heartbreaking, deeply intimate and incredibly beautiful.

Sisters - Daisy Johnson

This is one of the best books I've read in ages. With gothic themes wound through a contemporary story, Sisters catches you up in its net. I found myself carrying it around the house, was distracted thinking about it whilst trying to work. The titular sisters are July and September - born just 10 months apart, they are unnervingly and unnaturally close, entangled in each other, almost as if they share a body. September is the more dominant of the pair, and July is reliant on her power. This strange relationship repels the sisters from others their age - an isolation that draws them ever closer to each other. Something awful has happened in the recent past and fragments of this unspeakable event become pieced together across the novel, after the girls and their mother are forced to move up to the Yorkshire coastline, leaving Oxford behind and their mother bundled in depression. This house is as wild as the girls, seems to hold the uncanny within its walls, and their time here takes on a dreamlike state. Sisters is breathless and heartbreaking, sits beneath the skin, unnerving in its ability to conjure a sense of sharing a body, of being controlled by someone else. I'm desperate to read everything else by Johnson.

Little Weirds - Jenny Slate

I'm not really sure how to categorise Little Weirds - perhaps as a series of short essays, maybe as a collection of fragmentary moments and thoughts. There is a surreal nature to most of this work, but then Slate creeps in and undercuts this humour with something so subtle and painful and careful that it takes you completely off guard. Written following her divorce, Little Weirds is, amongst other things, an exploration of being a woman, relationships and heartbreak, all tied together by Slate's strange wit. She weaves these beautiful metaphors that seem completely random, but always tie together to make perfect sense, celebrating self-acceptance and vulnerability. I really enjoyed this - it was nice to read something a bit different and quirky, something that approaches familiar subject matters in a new way.

Winter in Sokcho - Elisa Shua Duaspin

Another incredible read, this book took me completely by surprise - I'm already thinking about re-reading it. Set in Sokcho, a South Korean resort town in the depths of winter, where life seems on hold, stuck moving slowly through the frozen weather. The unnamed narrator is French Korean, a heritage that marks her out as different from Sokcho's other residents. She works in a tiny hotel, empty except for a bandaged woman recovering from plastic surgery and Kerrand, a French comic book artist who asks her to show him the real Korea. Winter in Sokcho is underpinned by an ever present sense of threat, something pulsing beneath the surface - whether that be the cold, the North Korean border or the poison of the pufferfish, a delicacy only those trained can prepare. It's hard to put my finger on what exactly make this such an incredible book - perhaps the sharp, direct language combined with the visceral - the blood and scales of the fish market, the idea of shifting bodies and the frozen landscape. Like nothing I've read before (it also has a beautiful cover).

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

I studied and adored Song of Solomon in my final year of uni and can't believe it's taken me this long to read another of Morrison's works. Morrison is renowned for a reason - her writing is breathtaking, sweeps you along in such effortless fashion. The Bluest Eye is set in 1940s Lorain in Ohio, a space we see primarily through the eyes of the Black children who call this town home. Although it follows multiple overlapping stories and characters within this community, at the heart of The Bluest Eye is Pecola, a girl who wishes, above all else, to have blue eyes. Morrison explores racial self-loathing and interrogates preconceived ideas of beauty - attempting to discover what makes a child look upon themselves and want, more than anything, to be different. Morrison is expert at positioning the narrative from a child's perspective, playing with this level of understanding to show the reality of situations, and then how they are read by the children. I'm really looking forward to continue working my way through Morrison's canon.

The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

After enjoying Miller's second novel, Circe back in 2018, I was excited to read another of her books. Miller's work seeks to reimagine the Greek myths, and in The Song of Achilles she fleshes out Achilles and Patroclus as characters with their own stories, rather than fleeting parts of a wider tale. As someone who grew up on Percy Jackson books, I love this re-examining of ancient stories. Miller focuses in particular on forgotten or sidelined voices, which results in more nuanced imaginings of these myths. The Song of Achilles is narrated by Patroclus, Achilles' closest companion since they were both young boys, and follows the two as their fates tangle. This is a very easy story to fall into - and it was a book I sped through.

History of Wolves - Emily Fridlund

At its core, History of Wolves deals with conflicts in belief and power, of the desire to push boundaries. Set in the Northern Minnesota wilderness, the plot is enclosed by the lake and great stretches of forest that make up this landscape. At the centre is Linda; 14, isolated, she lives with her parents, ex-members of a cult. The novel has two major plot strands - first there is Linda's fascination with Mr Grierson, a history teacher from school who carries with him rumours of inappropriate behaviour with her underage classmates. Then comes the arrival of Patra and her young son Paul in the cabin across the lake, and the ways Linda finds to include herself in this small pack. We know something awful will happen to Paul from the novel's opening, and there is this strange atmosphere surrounding the father figure, but if anything, I wanted it to feel more overt, darker. I felt the book lost impact as the story built, and it was weakened slightly by the dual plot structure - I wanted more depth from Linda's family, loved Fridlund's descriptions of the landscape and felt this really could have been pushed and made more integral to the plot.