Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge | Book Review

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Published by Bloomsbury, 2017
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

This offers a seamless blend of history, case studies, research, and personal reflection that lays bare just how deep-rooted racism is within the UK, at a structural, education, social, and cultural level. Detailed yet digestible, the book is written with clear-eyed passion, while every argument is backed up by quantifiable facts and specific examples; from Britain’s early involvement in the slave trade right up to current everyday discrimination.

It’s worth pointing out that those already of the firm belief that racism and systematic white privilege are considerable problems in the UK are unlikely to find any viewpoints that feel particularly revolutionary here. That said, this would certainly serve as a great starting point or refresher for anyone feeling galvanised by current world events, or those who are keen to dip their toe into critical race theory that doesn’t feel too academic.

I was pleased to see some intersectionality come into play, with chapters that focus on the correlation between race and feminism, and between race and class. Perhaps this could have gone even further (queer Black people face a very specific kind of prejudice, for example, and this wasn’t addressed in any depth), but then this never set out to be an entirely comprehensive text, and what it covers it covers well.

As it is, Eddo-Lodge presents an excellent overview of how and why racist attitudes in the UK have continued to simmer beneath the surface of supposed equality. This is an eloquent, well-researched, intelligent response to anyone who may suggest that “racism isn’t as bad in the UK” or that “all lives matter” when confronted with the realities of the Black Lives Matter movement. If you’re looking to pick up some non-fiction on the issue, you could do a lot worse than starting here.

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You can pick up a copy of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by clicking here.

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Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica | Book Review

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses
Published by Pushkin Press, 2020 (first published in 2017)
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

In this horrifying gem from Argentina, a virus has made all animal meat toxic to humans. In a frighteningly short span of time, the consumption of human flesh has been legalised, with breeding centres now commonplace and the public largely desensitized to what’s going on. Marcos works in one such slaughterhouse, and the novel opens with him attempting to balance increasing frustration towards his job with the heartbreak of bereavement in his personal life. When he is gifted a ‘domestic’ human to keep and later eat himself, this inner conflict will increasingly rise to the fore.

The world-building and pacing throughout this speculative, all-too-plausible dystopian are handled brilliantly. There’s no clumsy exposition, and every detail we learn about the degradation of society is more disturbing than the last. I want to keep plot details to a minimum, to allow you to experience the creeping dread and visceral horror for yourself, but suffice to say this is not for the faint of heart. It’s a book about what it means to be human, and what it means to have loved and lost. It’s also a book about power, complicity, family, and mankind’s unwavering instinct to both survive and dominate. I found it (deliberately) repellent and utterly compelling in equal measure. On that front, it’s also worth pointing out that, despite many vile scenes, it somehow never feels gratuitous. Much of the book’s success lies in its unwillingness to sugar-coat a difficult subject, thus highlighting the hypocrisy of those who are willing to support certain industries and practices without being educated about the reality of their repercussions.

Bazterrica is unflinching in her examination of this world and how worryingly plausible it feels. She repeatedly forces us to ask why, as a society and as individuals, we value some lives above others – be that from species-to-species, or from person-to-person. For all its boldness, there’s also a lot of nuance, however, with commentary on the likes of genetic modification, hunting for sport, human trafficking, and class disparity all woven in seamlessly. It was particularly interesting to read this during an actual virus-based pandemic. I thought Bazterrica did an excellent job of capturing the endurance of capitalism, the corruption of government, and manipulation of the people in an intelligent way that hit very close to home.

Easily one of my favourite threads throughout the book was its look at the power of language – a theme I adore when it’s handled well. In this society, human flesh to be consumed must never be referred to as such. It is known instead as ‘special meat’, with a whole host of other terms having been coined by the industry and the powers that be to dehumanise victims and shield people from the reality of what they are condoning. Bazterrica draws parallels with real-life examples from the meat trade which have long been used to normalise an otherwise morally and ethically fraught subject. After all, we say ‘trotters’ instead of feet, ‘offal’ instead of organs, ‘carcass’ instead of body, and so on.

As much as I loved this, there’s no denying the subject matter, and the intensity with which Bazterrica forces us to confront deeply upsetting ideas, will mean it simply doesn’t work for a lot of people. I think it’s a phenomenally well executed and multi-layered work of genius, however; one I heartily recommend to those who feel they can stomach it.

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The Easy Part of Impossible by Sarah Tomp | Book Review

The Easy Part of Impossible by Sarah Tomp
Published by HarperTeen, 2020
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

In this meaningful YA novel, Sarah Tomp juxtaposes the thrill of young love with the pain of facing abuse, shining a spotlight on the sporting world’s greatest taboo.

Teenager Ria Williams is a skilled diver. She is on track to compete at the Olympic level, but injury forces her to abandon this dream and walk away from all she’s known. With time on her hands to reevaluate what she wants, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Cotton, an old friend with autism who has a passion for cartography and cave exploration. As their friendship blossoms into something more, Ria is pushed to reflect on the dynamic she shared with her former diving coach, Benny — to finally see him for the abuser he was. When an offer comes along that could reignite her diving career — at the cost of having Benny back in her life — she struggles to separate the thing she loves most from the trauma she has endured.

Rather than exposing the reader to repeated examples of Ria’s physical and mental suffering, the abuse looms on the periphery of the narrative for much of the novel, and this is effective on a number of levels.

You can read my full review over on BookBrowse. I also wrote a piece about the benefits of sport for people living with ADHD to go alongside it, which you can read here.

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The Body Lies by Jo Baker | Book Review

The Body Lies by Jo Baker
Published by Doubleday, 2019
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

While The Body Lies is indeed a thriller, it also functions as an examination of the genre itself. Our unnamed narrator is a published novelist who accepts a job at a remote university in an attempt to escape the trauma of a random attack she suffered several years prior. Once there, she must attempt to balance the strain of a long-distance marriage, parenting a toddler, assimilating into a new community, and mediating heated debates in her MA writing course. Things take a sinister turn when it becomes clear she is the focus of the novel being written by one of her students; a student who seems to be unhealthily fixated on her.

Though this has all the hallmarks of a typical thriller (a mystery to be solved, a dangerous adversary to be thwarted, and a sense of mounting tension that builds towards a breathless climax), it’s important to be aware that much of the novel is slower, more ruminative, and character focussed than typical examples of the genre. This is deliberate, with Baker primarily focussed on dissecting and subverting the common trope of thrillers opening with the body of a woman. The narrator and her students have several discussions about the topic, bemoaning the victimisation of women, the objectification of their bodies, and the use of female figures as plot devices devoid of context or agency, used to further the stories of men. Baker’s novel opens with the same motif, but not only does she go on to uncover who this girl was – and who she could have been – she also takes the time to craft a complex, believable heroine who is never defined by her relationship to a man despite the attempts of those around her to quash her sense of control.

Baker shrewdly suggests why women in thrillers are typically presented the way they are, highlighting the parallel struggles they face in the real world to rid themselves of the male gaze; to retain true autonomy and live without fear in a society that constantly puts them at risk. The narrator’s job as a creative writing teacher allows the book to organically discuss its own themes in a pleasingly meta way – often playing with the line between reality and fiction – while also providing commentary on the treatment of women in academia.

It’s not a perfect read, however. Though it invites lots of discussion around the role of women in genre fiction, it is guilty of falling back on a couple of equally common mental health tropes that go disappointingly undeveloped. It also falls into the trap of providing a rather twee concluding chapter that reads like a checklist of loose ends that need to be wrapped up. That said, this is definitely one of the more interesting thrillers I’ve read in a long time, with strong prose and thematic depth that should see it appeal to fans of genre fiction and literary fiction alike.

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You can pick up a copy of The Body Lies from Book Depository by clicking here.

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Loyalties by Delphine de Vigan | Book Review

Loyalties by Delphine de Vigan, translated from the French by George Miller
Published by Bloomsbury, 2020 (first published in 2018)
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

This is one of those books that has been on my radar for a while, despite not hearing many people talk about it. Having finally picked it up, I’m delighted to say it exceeded my every expectation. We follow four perspectives: Théo, an adolescent boy from a broken family who finds himself increasingly reliant on the escapism offered by alcohol; Mathis, his friend, who is growing ever more concerned about Théo’s behaviour; Hélène, their teacher, who is convinced Théo is being abused at home; and Cécile, Mathis’s mother, who has recently discovered a distressing secret about her husband.

As the title suggests, the book is primarily a look at the concept of loyalty in its various forms. I want to avoid specifics to let you experience the unfolding of the plot for yourself, but each of the four characters is attempting to keep a secret to protect someone else. Though they all have valid reasons for wishing to remain loyal, we see the negative implications their well-meaning lies have on all parties involved. As such, de Vigan is able to explore the idea that sometimes, the best thing you can do for someone you care about is in fact to breach their trust and reach out for help – before it’s too late.

The book isn’t a thriller in the traditional sense, but the undercurrent of tension and claustrophobia that builds throughout had me enthralled. The weaving together of the four narrative threads is handled with such skill, and though there is a palpable sense of inevitable tragedy looming over the whole thing, it’s no less impactful and emotionally devastating when everything starts to come to a head. I will say, the ending is left deliberately open in certain respects (though there is simultaneously a subtle victory that I think is so beautifully handled). This will undoubtedly frustrate some readers, but for me, within the context of the climax’s breathless execution and the book’s wider themes, it really worked. Anything too neat would have felt like a contradiction, and would have been to the detriment of the book’s lasting impact.

There was some very clever, nuanced commentary on sexism throughout that I loved. There are direct instances of this (like Cécile being belittled for being a housewife), and understated examples, like the fact that our four narrators are all women and children, lying (and suffering) to protect a man in their life. With this, I thought de Vigan offered a subtle yet incisive critique of our patriarchal society, highlighting the ways we have all been conditioned to uphold the position and reputation of men ahead of securing our own physical and mental wellbeing.

The book also asks us to consider what constitutes abuse. Hélène, having been beaten by her father as a child, wrongly assumes that Théo is going through the same ordeal, and it’s this that pushes her to increasingly test the boundaries of professional intervention. Though we know she’s technically mistaken, it’s arguable that the neglect and mental strain Théo is suffering as a result of his parents’ behaviour is proving just as harmful as if he was being abused.

It’s interesting to note that the two women’s perspectives are written in first-person, while the adolescent boys’ sections are written in third-person. At surface level, this helps to further differentiate the four POVs, but I think it also hinted at something greater. As adults, Hélène and Cécile both have command over their own voice and fate, while as children, Théo and Mathis lack the same agency. Without ever being heavy-handed, I think de Vigan was able to say a lot about the need for adults to recognise when children are struggling, and to interject accordingly.

I could keep rambling about the various ways this slim gem of a novel worked for me, but suffice to say I think it was expertly crafted. It’s the kind of book that functions at face value as a gripping read with characters you feel truly invested in, and the kind of book which only improves the more time you take to analyse its vast thematic depth and the unassuming skill of its construction. I can’t wait to read more from this author.

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You can pick up a copy of Loyalties from Book Depository by clicking here.

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Sea Wife by Amity Gaige | Book Review

Sea Wife by Amity Gaige
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2020
My rating: ⭐ ⭐

This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and it’s very possible that such high expectations contributed to my unfortunate disappointment. We follow a family embarking on a year at sea. The contrast between their isolation from society and their claustrophobic family dynamic exposes underlying issues between the parents. Namely, fundamentally different political beliefs, the lasting impact of childhood trauma, and resentment concerning gender roles.

I love this narrative setup and the vast thematic potential it presents. Sadly, much of the novel is spent meandering around these topics with little sense of drive or direction. The plot itself is presented to us via both parents’ perspectives; the journal Michael kept during their journey, and Juliet’s first-person narration in the present day. Because of this framing device, there’s little tension regarding how everything will turn out, as it’s all pretty clear from the off. But with commentary on the book’s many themes also largely surface level, I was often left to wonder what point the author was even trying to make.

Indeed, I think one of the book’s greatest issues is that it doesn’t know what kind of novel it wants to be. Its marketing sets it up as a thrilling page-turner, but I found this to be far from true, with much of the book given over to rather pedestrian descriptions of the practicalities of life at sea. It tries to offer meaningful social commentary on the impact that politics can have on relationships, but never seems to stick any kind of landing on this front. It tries to examine the difficulty of overcoming supressed childhood trauma, but again, it introduces the idea too late and fails to dive very deep. At one point, it takes a rather bizarre shift towards murder-mystery, though this thread wraps up just as quickly (and anti-climactically) as it appears. And to top it off, the final chapter is a somewhat experimental multi-media affair that felt like a bizarrely dry and unsatisfying note to end on.

Overcoming frustrations with the plot may have been easier had the characters really shone (I do think it also wants to be a character study, after all), but they often suffered from the common issue of not sounding like real people (especially the 7-year-old daughter). This, coupled with a lack of a satisfying end for most of their arcs, stopped me from ever feeling invested in them or their problems.

On a more positive note, I will say the author’s prose is very readable, she paints vivid pictures of life at sea, and though she failed to explore them with the kind of depth and impact I hoped for, the themes she touches on are very interesting and topical. However, I can’t deny feeling distinctly underwhelmed overall, left to ponder what could have been.

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Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. You can pre-order Sea Wife by clicking here.

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Marguerite by Marina Kemp | Book Review

Marguerite by Marina Kemp
Published by Viking, 2020
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

In her impressively nuanced debut novel, Marina Kemp explores the destructive pain of guilt, the search for redemption, and the deceptively fine lines between life and death, and love and hate.

Marguerite Demers arrives in Saint Sulpice, a sleepy farming village in the south of France, to commence her role as Jerome Lanvier’s live-in nurse. Once the most powerful and revered man in town, an elderly Jerome now languishes in his large, secluded home, embittered by his fall from grace. The surrounding community is not used to outsiders, and Marguerite’s arrival disturbs the balance in a way that will force long-suppressed tensions to rise to the fore. But she is guarding secrets of her own; her cool and professional demeanor masking years’ worth of sorrow.

Though the novel appears to be set in the early 2000s, the atmosphere and setting are such that it often feels as though the action is taking place much further in the past. This is effective on two fronts. Firstly, it allows Kemp to pay homage in subtle ways to the classics of gothic fiction. Secondly, it serves as a successful reminder that small rural communities like Saint Sulpice often lag behind the times when it comes to the progression of liberal social views – hence why everyone is so keen to guard their secrets, lest they be judged and ostracized.

You can read my full review over on BookBrowse. I also wrote a piece about the corruption of home in gothic literature to go alongside it, which you can read here.

You can pick up a copy of Marguerite (also published under the title, Nightingale) from Book Depository by clicking here.

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