Month: May 2020

Novella a Day in May 2020 #11

/ madamebibilophile / 25 Comments

The Suicide Shop – Jean Teule (2007, trans. Sue Dyson 2008) 169 pages

It’s a funny one this. I only post about books I recommend and I do recommend this quirky, gothic, post-apocalyptic tale, but something stopped me loving it as much as some of Gallic Books other offerings.

The titular shop is run by the Tuvache family, who for generations have offered people ways to end their lives. They are mournful in nature and bleak in outlook, apart from Alan, the youngest Tuvache who is bad for business.

“please PLEASE stop smiling! Do you want to drive away all our customers? Why do you have this mania for rolling your eyes round and wiggling your fingers either side of your ears? Do you think customers come here to see your smile?”

Poor Alan’s schoolwork is no better, failing to capture the environmental desolation that humans live with:

“A path leading to a house with a door and open windows, under a blue sky where a big sun shines! Now come on, why aren’t there any clouds or pollution in your landscape? […] Where’s the radiation? And the terrorist explosions? It’s totally unrealistic. You should come and see what Vincent and Marilyn were drawing at your age!”

Alan and his siblings are named after famous suicides: Turing, van Gogh and Monroe. Vincent refuses to eat and is planning a grisly theme park where people can die in various inventive ways, Marilyn is depressed and feels ugly and cumbersome. They are a perfect fit for their family; only Alan resolutely forges his own path, despite living in a shop where the carrier bags state: “Has your life been a failure? Let’s make your death a success!”

There isn’t a plot so much in The Suicide Shop, rather we follow the family through the years as Alan proves an irresistible sunny force, exerting more influence over his family than they initially realise. Their bafflement with Alan reminded me of The Addams Family, (which I loved as a child), completely at a loss as to what to do with someone who doesn’t share their world view.

“We force him to watch the TV news to try and demoralise him”

As you’d expect, the humour in The Suicide Shop is very dark. It sells rusty razor blades with a sign that says “even if you don’t make a deep enough cut, you’ll get tetanus” but overall it’s a gentle humour, like the woman who grows attached to the trapdoor spider she buys to end her life, names it Denise and starts knitting it booties.

Looking on goodreads, there’s plenty of people who adored this story and I’m not entirely sure why I’m not one of them.  But I still found The Suicide Shop a quick, diverting read with some entertaining touches.

“Life is the way it is. It’s worth what it’s worth! It does it’s best, within limitations. We mustn’t ask too much of life either. It’s best to look on the bright side.”

The Suicide Shop was made into an animated film in 2012, directed by Patrick Leconte. Here’s the English language trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmptL7rXJw0

Novella a Day in May 2020 #10

/ madamebibilophile / 27 Comments

The Loved One: An Anglo American Tragedy – Evelyn Waugh (1948) 127 pages

The Loved One was written following Waugh’s experience of visiting Hollywood to discuss an adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. In the novella he satirises Hollywood and how death has become a business. It’s a pretty brutal attack, particularly towards the end.

It begins with a portrait of two ageing Hollywood tycoons, Sir Ambrose Abercrombie:

“He was still on what Lady Abercrombie fatuously called the ‘right’ side of sixty, but having for many years painfully feigned youth, he now aspired to the honours of age. It was his latest quite vain wish that people should say of him: ‘Grand old boy.’”

And Sir Francis Hinsley: “His swimming-pool which had once flashed like an aquarium with the limbs of long-departed beauties was empty now and cracked and overgrown with weed.”

Dennis Barlow, a poet who was fired from a story of Shelley’s life and now works at Happier Hunting Ground pet funeral service, lives with Sir Francis. Dennis enjoys his work:

“there at the quiet limit of the world he experienced a tranquil joy”

But Sir Ambrose feels it reflects badly on the ex-pat community. When Sir Francis kills himself, no-one is particularly upset. Dennis finds discovering the body “rude and momentarily unnerving”, but it brings him into contact with Whispering Glades funeral home and fragrant cosmetician Aimee Thanatogenos.

I thought this was the strongest part of the novel, as Waugh turns his satirical eye to the façade and sentimentality that can accompany the business of death. I particularly liked the question of how Sir Francis should look in his coffin:

“ ‘shall I put him down as serene and philosophical or judicial and determined?’”

Dennis starts courting Aimee, and she find herself torn between him and the inappropriately named Mr Joyboy, the senior mortician who is something of a celebrity in his place of work:

“As he passed among them, like an art master among his students, with a word of correction here or commendation there, sometimes laying his gentle hand on a living shoulder or a dead haunch, he was a figure of romance, a cult shared by all in common, not a prize to be appropriated by any one of them”

How the relationships play out in The Loved One is particularly vicious. Waugh is scathing about the cruel disregard human beings can demonstrate towards one another and what this means for individuals and for society as a whole. The title of this novella is bitterly ironic.

Novella a Day in May 2020 #9

/ madamebibilophile / 24 Comments

The Red Notebook – Antoine Laurain (2014, trans. Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken 2015) 159 pages

The Red Notebook walks a very thin line and I suspect for some readers it will have crossed that line, from whimsical romance at a distance, to creepy stalker tale. Looking at goodreads most seem to have gone for the former, and that’s how I read it too, but I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the latter view.

Anyway, I’ll put my psychological reservations to one side and let you know about a charming novella that conjures Paris beautifully, features a cameo from Patrick Modiano, and plays into that old romantic trope of lovers that are destined for one another.

Laure is a widow in her 40s who mugged for her mauve handbag and ends up in hospital in a coma. Bookseller Laurent – similar name, similar age to Laure – finds her bag after the mugger has dumped it having removed ID, purse and mobile phone. He tries to hand it in but police bureaucracy means he ends up holding on to it, trying to piece together the owner from its contents:

“a little fawn and violet leather bag containing make-up and accessories, including a large brush whose softness he tested against his cheek. A gold lighter, a black Montblanc ballpoint (perhaps the one used to jot down her thoughts in the notebook), a packet of licorice sweets…a small bottle of Evian, a hairclip with a blue flower on it, and a pair of red plastic dice.”

The titular notebook is part of the contents, and it is a diary which Laurent reads to try and find clues to who Laure is:

“I’m scared of red ants.

And of logging on to my bank account and clicking ‘current balance’.

I’m scared when the telephone rings first thing in the morning.

And of getting the Metro when its packed.

I’m scared of time passing.

I’m scared of electric fans, but I know why.”

Laurent has some success in piecing together Laure’s life, and in the process we learn about them both. Laurent has a teenage daughter who is brattish but loving, and a girlfriend to whom he’s not entirely committed. He likes his job and he’s interested in literature.

He’s also increasingly interested in Laure and a sequence of events lead to him collecting her dry cleaning and cat-sitting for her (!) It was at this point I thought things had gone too far, but then Laurain manages to tip the balance of power in a believable turn of events that meant the story kept me on side.

If you’re in the mood for some escapism across the channel and some gentle romance, then The Red Notebook could be just the ticket.

Novella a Day in May 2020 #8

/ madamebibilophile / 19 Comments

Where You Once Belonged – Kent Haruf (1990) 187 pages

I adore Kent Haruf. Our Souls at Night is one of my all time favourite novels (novellas). And yet Where You Once Belonged didn’t quite hit the spot for me. I can’t decide if its because it didn’t work or if its because I didn’t want it to have the ending it had, however believable. I’m writing this a few weeks after reading it and I deliberately left it a while, thinking I’d know by now, but I don’t.

Anyway, Haruf is a wonderful writer and you should definitely read Where You Once Belonged, and everything else he’s written too 😊

Set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado where Haruf sets all his work, Where You Once Belonged tells the story of Jack Burdette from the point of view of one of his school friends.

The story opens with Burdette returning to Holt as a prodigal son, the charismatic chancer who ripped everybody off and fled. There’s a wonderfully understated comic scene in which the Deputy Sheriff is alerted to Burdette’s whereabouts:

“Willard allowed his feet to droop from the desktop and slowly he sat up in the chair. He leaned forward and began to brush the fingernail clippings from his shirtfront onto the green blotter on the desk. He was making a neat pile. ‘Something bothering you, Ralph? You sound a little excited.’

‘What?’ Bird said.

He was standing behind the office counter, panting and sweating, his face red as beets and his eyes looking as though they belonged in the head of an alarmed poodle.”

This is a brilliant way to set up the drama of Jack Burdette. Holt is a small town, what does the reader care what happened there? But in this way Haruf sucks us right in to the drama of Burdette’s story.

Jack Burdette is a legend in the town. A huge, macho, charismatic man who excelled at football and it getting everyone else to make his life as easy as possible.

“He was taller and stronger – taller and stronger than anybody else in the school. By the time we graduated the spring of 1960 he was six feet four and weighed two hundred and forty pounds… He was like a full-grown man among mere children, a colossus amongst pygmies… He was a kind of high-school boy’s high school boy: the supreme example of what was possible and absolute.”

He only graduates because Wanda, the woman who loves him – who he uses mercilessly – writes his school  papers for him. When he leaves school he works at the farmers co-op, gets quickly promoted, and remains a big fish in a small pond.

These types are always hard to create in fiction, as its hard to get the reader to buy into the charisma of the character, as so much charisma relies on the face-to-face energy of a person. But with Burdette we know things went badly wrong from the start of the story and that he is back looking bloated and jaundiced, so we are not expected to ever buy into him.

Yet his friend, Pat Arbuckle, who runs the local paper and therefore believably wants to document all that occurs in Holt, shows how people enjoyed Burdette, without really ever knowing him.

“For we had all begun to expect the unusual of him by that time, while he, for his part, had already learned – if acting on bent and sheer heedless volition  can be said to be a form of learning – not to disappoint the expectations of anyone. Least of all his own.”

Where You Once Belonged is an effective portrayal of small town life and how local legends grow up. Burdette remains unknowable, and in this way the reader is positioned in the same way as most of the town.

“the center of that constant and admiring group of backslapping men, while he told his jokes and stories and they all laughed.”

Yet unlike the townspeople, we realise that Burdette is almost evil. He causes deep, tragic hurt to more than one person and appears to care for precisely no-one. When he arrives back in Holt, the inhabitants are angry, but the reader – certainly this one – is scared as to how it will play out. Burdette is unpredictable, and he is cruel, whether intentionally or through utter disregard for other people…

As I said at the start, I didn’t like the ending of this, but I think that’s my sentimentality rather than Haruf’s misjudgement 😉 As always with Haruf, the town and its people are closely, compassionately observed and completely believable.

The writing was precise and beautiful. I only wish he’d written more.

Novella a Day in May 2020 #7

/ madamebibilophile / 24 Comments

Monsieur Linh and His Child – Philippe Claudel (2005, trans. Euan Cameron 2011) 130 pages

I only knew Philippe Claudel as a film director until Emma’s review of Monsieur Linh and His Child put his work as a novelist on my radar. Do head over to Emma’s review as she has lots of interesting things to say about this novella. She also rightly pointed out it would be a perfect read for NADIM, so here it is!

Monsieur Linh arrives in an unspecified French port town as a refugee from an East Asian war. His son and daughter-in-law were killed, and he has fled with his baby granddaughter, Sang Diû.

“Six weeks. This is how long the voyage lasts. So that when the ship arrives at its destination, the little girl has already doubled the length of her life. As for the old man, he feels as if he has aged a hundred years.”

Monsieur Linh is a lonely and isolated figure. His fellow refugees cook for him but do so without any warmth or affection. He is deeply traumatised and lives only for his granddaughter.

One day, walking in the unfamiliar town with its cars, strange food, odd smells and a language he doesn’t understand, he meets Monsieur Bark, when they sit on the same park bench. Monsieur Bark is a widower who is grieving deeply for his wife.  He smokes and talks incessantly, although Monsieur Linh cannot understand a word.

“When Monsieur Bark speaks, Monsieur Linh listens to him very attentively and looks at him, as if he understood everything and did not want to lose any of the meaning of the words. What the old man senses is that the tone of Monsieur Bark’s voice denotes sadness, a deep melancholy, a sort of wound the voice accentuates, which accompanies it beyond words and language, something that infuses it just as the sap infuses a tree without one seeing it.”

The language barrier does not mean that there is a lack of understanding between the two men. Claudel demonstrates without sentimentality how a true friendship develops between them, affectionate and accepting and full of meaning for both. These two deeply traumatised men are able to help each other heal in a way that is wholly believable and deeply moving.

Monsieur Linh and His Child is a wonderful, heartwarming story about the nature of unconditional love, friendship, and how we can help alleviate others’ pain without words. It’s about the humanity that bonds us all, and that is a timely reminder in today’s political climate. Highly recommended.

Here is the French cover, because as Emma rightly pointed out, the UK edition is ugly:

Novella a Day in May 2020 #6

/ madamebibilophile / 29 Comments

Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss (2018) 149 pages

Trigger warning: discusses domestic abuse

Ghost Wall is the first of Sarah Moss’ work that I’ve read, despite hearing wonderful things about her in the blogosphere. My excuse is I kept getting her confused with another author with whom I’ve had a mixed experience, in other words, I’m an idiot 😀 Turns out the blogosphere was absolutely right, Moss is an immensely skilful writer.

Ghost Wall begins with a young woman being sacrificed, probably in pre-Christian England. That brief but deeply disturbing description over, the story picks up in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Silvie is spending the summer with her parents and some students re-enacting Iron Age life: living in a hut, cooking foraged food over fires.

“When I woke up there was light seeping around the sheepskin hanging over the door. They probably didn’t actually have sheep, the Professor had said, but since we weren’t allowed to kill animals using Iron Age technologies we would have to take what we could get and sheepskins are a lot easier to pick up on the open market than deerskins. While I was glad…I thought the Professor’s dodging of bloodshed pretty thoroughly messed up the idea that our experiences that summer were going to rediscover the lifeways of pre-modern hunter gatherers.”

Silvie’s teenage scepticism brings a dry humour to what would otherwise be a very bleak tale. Her father is a bus driver obsessed with British pre-history. He is a misogynist and domestically violent, and he uses this period in history to justify his beliefs and actions:

“women in the family way and feeding babies the way nature intended as long as they could, which was also what he said whenever he caught me or Mum buying sanitary protection. Women managed well enough, he said, back in the day, without spending money on all that, ends up on the beaches in the end, right mucky.  Or they died, I said, in childbirth, what with rickets and no caesarians, but you won’t be wanting me pregnant, Dad, for authenticity’s sake? … Hush, said Mum, cheek, but she was too late, the slap already airborne.”

The experiment simultaneously excites and challenges Sylvie’s father. He is not wholly unsympathetic – Moss shows how it is the limitations placed on him that lead to his frustration, but plenty of people have those without beating their nearest and dearest. He is a racist and a fantasist:

“He wanted his own ancestry, wanted a lineage, a claim on something. Not people from Ireland or Rome or Germania or Syria but some tribe sprung from English soil like mushrooms.”

Yet Silvie shares her father’s interest in history, and his intelligence. She doesn’t despise everything about the experiment and she has better knowledge than the slightly disengaged archaeology students who are helping out.

 “The edges of the wooden steps over the stile touch your bones, an unseen pebble catches your breath. You can imagine how a person might learn a landscape with her feet. But we hadn’t yet crossed any bog and I was pretty sure it would feel different in winter.”

Silvie’s mother is utterly cowed – as far as we can tell – by the man she married.

“Mum often spoke of sitting down as a goal, a prize she might win by hard work, but so rarely achieved that the appeal remained unclear to me.”

Although in some ways a resolutely domestic tale – albeit in a replica Iron Age hut – what emerges from the context of the human sacrifice at the beginning to Silvie and her mother’s subservient roles in the experiment, is how women have frequently paid the price of the systems and structures that powerful men erect to serve their own ends while claiming a higher purpose.

Moss slowly builds the tension in this novel as the experiment exerts pressure on the family and exposes its faultlines. I found it unbearably tense and a perfect example of the power of a novella which is tautly written.

It is this power which means this could be a very triggering read for people and I do advise to proceed with caution, but if you’re in a position to read it, Ghost Wall is an immersive and gut-wrenching read.

Novella a Day in May 2020 #5

/ madamebibilophile / 16 Comments

The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino – Hiromi Kawakami (1995, trans. Allison Markin Powell 2019) 195 pages

I really enjoyed the previous novels by Hiromi Kawakami that I’ve read, Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop, so I approached The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino with high expectations. Although this was still highly readable and full of well-realised, idiosyncratic characters, I didn’t find it quite as satisfying as the others. I think this is because I misunderstood the title. I thought Nishino was the subject and the Loves were the object. But, in having the Ten Loves tell their stories in individual chapters, it turns out they are the subject, Nishino the object – an enigmatic object who remains mysterious to the end.

This is not a novella about the romance of love, though it is about the impact of romantic encounters. Kawakami is interested in how people relate to each other and the effect that we have on people’s lives that we can’t recognise or fully comprehend. She’s not interested – at least not here – on rose-tinted explorations of romantic love. The first chapter is from the point of view of a married woman who has an affair with Nishino:

“What is love, really? People have the right to fall in love, but not the right to be loved. I fell in love with Nishino, but that’s not to say he was required to fall in love with me. I knew this, but what was so painful was that my feelings for Nishino had no effect on his feelings for me. Despite this pain, I longed for him more and more.”

We then go back in time to when Nishino was at school, and learn something of his painful past:

“A strange air drifted around Nishino. An air that none of the other kids in class had. I had the impression that, if I were to try and push that air around, there would be no end to it. The more I tried to push it, the deeper I would get caught up in it. And no matter how hard I pushed, I would never reach Nishino on the other side.”

Nishino is someone who is never without a partner, and sometimes these women overlap. The women’s perspectives on each other add to the narrative; one of his loves is stunningly beautiful, but we only learn this from his subsequent girlfriend, as the woman herself would never describe herself that way.

Despite his womanising, it is Nishino who comes across as vulnerable, much more so than the women, even when he causes them pain.

“I wanted to flee from Nishino as quickly as possible. This desire welled up from the bottom of my heart. I still couldn’t put my finger on what the sense of discomfort was – all I knew for sure was that it was present. And no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn’t make it go away – that cold and awful uneasiness.

I wanted to flee. This simple thought flooded my mind. The same way that I had wished I could love him.”

Through ten very different women, we catch glimpses of Nishino but we never see him fully. This captures the central question of the novella: how much do we ever know another person? It’s not a bitter question though, or a desolate one. Rather it is one of compassion. I came away from Ten Loves… with a sense not of the importance of romantic love, but of kindness. Because at the point you touch another person’s life, you have no idea of what has gone before and what they carry with them.

Novella a Day in May 2020 #4

/ madamebibilophile / 32 Comments

Not to Disturb – Muriel Spark (1971) 96 pages

I really enjoy Muriel Spark. I like her creepy, unsettling tales, her dark humour, the ways things are not fully explained… Not to Disturb has all of this in bucketloads, but it means it’s a very hard book to review! At times I wasn’t sure what story I was reading, and now I’ve finished it I’m still not sure. I enjoyed it immensely, but in the wrong mood this could be a very frustrating read.

It’s set in a Genevan villa on a stormy night. The villa is home to the Baron and Baroness Klopstock who are locked in a room with their secretary, Vincent. The Baron’s brother lives with an unspecified affliction and is nursed in the attic. He punctuates the night with howling.

Meanwhile, the servants are in their quarters discussing the evening ahead and already referring to the Klopstocks in the past tense. Heloise, the heavily pregnant maid, is reflecting on who of many possibilities could be the father of her unborn child which may be Pablo the handyman’s, but is cut short by Monsieur Clovis:

“ ‘We have serious business on hand tonight, my girl, so shut up,’ says the chef. ‘We have business to discuss and plenty to do. Quite a vigil. Has anybody arrived yet?’ “

Quite what the business is and why the servants know about it advance is never fully specified. We know there will be a death though, because the butler tells us:

“ ‘There was sure to be something unexpected,’ says Lister. ‘But what’s done is about to be done and the future has come to pass. My memoirs up to the funeral are as a matter of fact more or less complete. At all events, its out of our hands. I place the event at about 3am so prepare to stay awake.’

‘I would say 6 ‘o’clock tomorrow morning. Right on the squeak of dawn,’ says Heloise.

‘You may well be right,’ says Lister. ‘Women in your condition are unusually intuitive.’”

There’s also the couple at the gatehouse who are completely oblivious to the machinations, three people in a car lurking around the grounds waiting for Vincent, and everyone is staying up all night so they look bedraggled and upset when the press arrive as planned in the morning.

Not to Disturb is farcical, sinister and satirical. There’s a fairly horrible almost-rape scene but generally  things verge on the metaphysical rather than the visceral. It’s baffling and unsettling and I whizzed through it with great enjoyment. If ever a novelist was ill-suited to write a novel called Not to Disturb, it’s Muriel Spark 😀

If you’ve come to the end of this post and feel I’ve not told you anything useful about the novella, I’m really sorry! But in that way I may have conveyed some of the experience of reading Not To Disturb…

Novella a Day in May 2020 #3

/ madamebibilophile / 27 Comments

Dept. of Speculation – Jenny Offill (2014) 177 pages

Dept. of Speculation chronicles the breakdown of a marriage from a wife’s perspective. It’s fragmentary, made up of short paragraphs and chapters, but still makes for a satisfying read. The structure effectively captures a sense of thoughts and memories, without someone trying to work everything out and explain it all in a clear narrative, because who thinks like that?

The narrator is a writer who somehow finds themselves subject to domestic demands and teaching rather than working on her own art:

“For years I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.”

“My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn’t even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.”

Her husband is never demonised. He’s Nice.

“He’s from Ohio. This means he never forgets to thank the bus driver or pushes in front at the baggage claim. Nor does he keep a list of those who infuriate him on a given day. People mean well. That is what he believes. How then is he married to me? I hate often and easily.”

He’s not a fully realised character, and I think this is quite deliberate. The focus is on the narrator, her thoughts, feelings and needs. Possibly its her frustration and disappointment in her life that contributes to the relationship breakdown, but we don’t know, because she can’t have that distance or perspective on it yet.

We do know that she is struggling. How she refers to herself changes from ‘I’ to ‘the wife’. Her sense of self seems as fragmented as the narrative. She loves her husband and child, but is acutely aware of her distance from them too.

“Soon everyone is asleep but me. I lie in our bed and listen to the hum of the air conditioner and the soft sound of their breathing. Amazing. Out of dark waters, this.”

Her husband’s Ohio courtesy only extends so far: he has an affair. As the couple try and pick up the pieces – and work out if they even want those pieces any more – the rage and bewilderment of the narrator is palpable. Yet there is humour in this book too:

“At night they lie in bed holding hands. It is possible if she is stealthy enough that the wife can do this while secretly giving the husband the finger.”

Uncompromising but compassionate, hopeful but real, Dept. of Speculation is a compelling short read.

Novella a Day in May 2020 #2

/ madamebibilophile / 22 Comments

From a Low and Quiet Sea  – Donal Ryan (2018) 181 pages

Last year I read The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan for NADIM and was so impressed by his writing. From a Low and Quiet Sea has absolutely confirmed this view. He is such an understated, sensitive and evocative writer, he’s fast becoming a real favourite.

The story begins with Farouk, and his decision to take his family and leave his homeland after the political situation becomes intolerable.

“He’d measured the weights of his conflicting duties carefully, he’d told his friend in the letter, and he’d measured and measured again, and he’d mourned the time when such duties weren’t in conflict one against the other but were all part of a good life and all given to the same end, but this was now how the world was, and he was left with no choice to get his daughter and his wife to safety.”

Unfortunately Farouk’s story plays out in a way that we would expect from watching the news. Ryan shows the devastation of political violence for this family without ever being mawkish or sentimental. It is unquestionably a tragedy, and it is insane that such tragedy has become predictable. Farouk’s PTSD is captured with tenderness and compassion:

“And late one evening he walked from the camp to the water’s edge and he stood beneath the smirking moon and looked out across the sea, and he wondered at the stillness of it, as though its breath were held, as though it were too ashamed to reveal anything of itself to him, to admit the violence latent in it, to the things it held”

The narrative then shifts perspective to that of Lampy, a young man living with his mother and grandfather. He is nursing a broken heart after the love of his life goes off to Dublin to study at Trinity:

“Twenty-three years old, in the name of God, and still being babied. His mother would be twisting a tea-towel in her hands, back and forth, as though trying to wring some peace from it, some way of settling herself.”

Lampy is somewhat lost. He never knew his father and doesn’t quite fit in with his family at home. His mother and grandfather adore him but are cut from very different cloth:

“His grandfather was wicked; when he was in form his tongue could slice the world in two.”

Lampy’s story is ordinary, but in his own way he is quite desperate, and this is the power of his story. Ryan demonstrates the deep pain that can lie behind the people we meet every day, leading routine lives.

Finally, John is reflecting on his past: his family’s grief for a brother who died suddenly, the bullying of his younger brother, and his life of violence and disappointment.

“My little brother Henry, who came along behind us as an afterthought, a tiny, soundless incarnation of a short renaissance in my parents’ feelings for one another. He was always scared, his smallness and his way of slinking about unseen, inhabiting the background like a soft hiss of white noise behind the ceaseless hum and hubbub of life.”

John is not likable, and nor is he meant to be. It is his story, of a man that causes disruption and disintegration wherever he goes, that brings all three men together.

Its extraordinary that in a short novel split into the three parts, the characterisation of Farouk, Lampy and John is so well developed and fully realised. The way the strands tie together is believable and not at all clunky.

From a Low and Quiet Sea is a stunning novella, perfectly crafted and intelligently written. Unflinching yet beautiful.