Tag Archives: Faber Editions

The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson

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As I have mentioned before, there is a long tradition of women writers depicting crushing mental health conditions in fiction, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s unforgettable short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) to Emily Holmes Coleman’s account of a woman’s experiences of post-partum psychosis in The Shutter of Snow, to Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963), surely the most widely read novel in this genre. Now we can add Jennifer Dawson’s The Ha-Ha (1961) to this list, a striking modernist novella which explores society’s treatment of a young woman who simply doesn’t fit in – someone who finds social interactions and the rules of life a complete mystery and whose behaviour is considered odd or grossly inappropriate by conventional societal standards. In today’s language, some might consider Dawson’s protagonist, Josephine Traughton, to be neurodivergent or ‘on the spectrum’; but in 1961, the year of the novella’s publication, such women often found themselves in mental institutions undergoing treatment with the aim of rehabilitation and a potential release back into society. (The Ha-Ha was written in the year following the introduction of the 1959 Mental Health Act, which encouraged a shift away from institutional confinement to community-based care.)

Alongside many other women writers working in this area, Dawson drew on her own life as inspiration for her fiction. While studying history at Oxford University, Dawson experienced a mental breakdown, spending several months in hospital as a result. After graduating, she worked as a teacher in France and as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital in Worcester; and it is her experiences here, alongside those as an in-patient in a similar institution, that inspired The Ha-Ha. The novella, which focuses on a young woman trying to navigate severe mental health challenges, possibly schizophrenia, was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1966 and went on to be adapted for the stage and by the BBC.

While much has changed around the specific treatment of mental illness since the book’s publication in the early ‘60s, the protagonist’s experiences of feeling out of step or disconnected from conventional societal norms remain entirely relevant today, particularly in a world where the treatment of mental health conditions remains sub-optimal and underfunded. It’s a remarkable book, capturing its protagonist’s fractured state of mind in haunting and perceptive prose.

Dawson’s story focuses on Josephine Traughton, a socially awkward twenty-three-year-old who has always been somewhat disconnected from the world around her. As the novella unfolds, we learn how her childhood was shaped by her domineering, conventionally-minded mother, now deceased following a freak accident with an electric blanket. A period at Oxford University duly follows for Josephine, but it is here that her idiosyncratic behaviour becomes problematic for polite society. While the other students find university life an enjoyable whirl of social activities, afternoons spent punting on the river, informal coffee parties, talking until midnight and frequent crises over essays, Josephine remains unsure about how to behave. For her, Oxford is a bewildering environment full of potential traps – social situations in which she simply doesn’t know how to react, where uncontrolled nervous laughter is her default response. In effect, she experiences a rupture between the reality of her private world, populated by hallucinatory visions of animals, and the socially acceptable conventions of the university environment in which she is situated.

As we sat there I could see the even-toed ungulates marching through the waste, and files of armadillos with scaly shells, and hosts of big black flies. (p. 8)

Following a particularly embarrassing incident at the Principal’s tea-party, Josephine finds herself committed to a psychiatric hospital, where, in the fullness of time, progress in her condition is made. Now the hospital is making preparations for her release back to the ‘real world’ despite its myriad of risks.

It was they, the Sister, the Doctor and the social worker who talked about getting back to the ‘real world’ as though there were two; one good and one to be avoided. To me it did not seem as though there were these two, and I would have been as pleased if instead of handing me back my private clothes and giving me town-parole, and money for lunches and bus fares, the authorities had left me to wander round the grounds all day, explore what lay beyond, or just to gaze out of my side-room window on to the other side of the hospital where everything was unfamiliar. (p. 17)

With this transition back to the community in mind, the hospital finds Josephine a part-time job helping a Colonel and his kindly wife to catalogue their sizeable collection of books. While the role offers Josephine some opportunities to step beyond the confines of the hospital, gently reconnecting her with the external world in measured steps, she remains bewildered by every social situation she encounters. For instance, a chance meeting with Helena, her only real friend from university, leads to an invitation to a cocktail party – a perfectly enjoyable situation for many young women but a minefield for someone like Josephine who struggles to converse.

It was so hot. I could feel sweat trickling down my face. The music blared and stopped. Faces popped on and off like lamps. Mouths clapped up and down; words shot in and out, but the room full of people seemed to have escaped me. I could not reach in to it. I tried to stretch out and get caught up in it, but each time my turn came to lay a contribution. I found myself catapulted into this empty space in the middle of nothing, discussing with no one but myself the longevity of badgers or Myra’s thorny spider. (p. 73)

In the end, she leaves the party early, knowing full well that her re-entry into the world she was privy to at Oxford has not been a success.

The party was over, though it sounded from the noise upstairs as though it would not be over for a long time. It was just my début into the real world that was done. (p. 77)

Back at the hospital, Josephine continues to seek solace by lying in the ha-ha, a grassy slope next to the hospital wall, where she chats with fellow inmate, Alasdair, her one friend amongst the other patients. With his cavalier response to authority figures, Alasdair is rather dismissive of the hospital’s methods, pushing back against its infantile approaches while also encouraging Josephine to broaden her horizons. Somewhat inevitably, Josephine is strongly attracted to Alasdair, opening up to him about her deepest feelings and ignorance of life’s unwritten rules.

‘You asked me once why I was here and I couldn’t tell you.’ I trembled. ‘But now I see why – after going to the party I see what’s wrong. It’s because I don’t belong anywhere else. I don’t know the rules of life, and if I kept a phrase-book for twenty years I would not know the right answers. It’s a thing I shall never learn. I am odd, incorrect, illegitimate…’ (p. 87)

But Josephine is more vulnerable than Alasdair, and a day outside the hospital together ends in a breach of the trust she has placed in him. While Josephine seems to be pinning all her hopes on a future with Alisdair, her expectations are not reciprocated. As far as Alisdair sees things, their relationship is fleeting, a source of pleasure and distraction as he waits to be released.

When Alisdair is suddenly discharged, Josephine is distraught, prompting her to flee the hospital in search of the slivers of existence ignited by Alasdair. I couldn’t help but think of Barbara Loden’s critically acclaimed Wanda here, a film in which the titular working-class protagonist breaks away from a stifling marriage, only to drift from one perilous situation to the next in a state of disconnection from conventional society. There’s a similar sense of dislocation in The Ha-Ha as Josephine stumbles from one predatory encounter to another with no clear destination or objective in mind.

Sometimes as I was walking cars purred softly up in felted smoothness and men with cool velvet accents offered me lifts and cigarettes and then suggested drinks at roadhouses as we sped towards the roaring trunk roads. I thought I wanted nothing more than that, an assurance as we sped forwards that I was alive, that I was not flying through unpeopled regions and grey wastes of space, never to be touched or crossed at any point. (p. 126)

I won’t reveal how Dawson’s arresting novella plays out, save to say the ending is open to interpretation, both terrifying and empowering all at once.

The Ha-Ha is written in a candid, immediate style with Dawson conveying what it must feel like to be Josephine as her untethered thoughts flow freely despite the physical restrictions imposed on her liberty. Stylistically, the novella seems to capture the fractured, bewildered nature of Josephine’s mind – a jumble of memories and hallucinations caused by her medical condition and the reality of her vulnerability.

As a title, The Ha-Ha has a dual meaning, nodding to the uncontrollable laughter Josphine defaults to in times of stress, while also representing the barrier between the relative safety of the hospital and the hazardous world outside. As Josephine climbs up the hospital wall, we sense the precarious tension between these two states, one imposing restrictions, the other promising freedom, albeit governed by society’s unwritten rules.

Dawson uses dreamlike imagery to great effect here, particularly when depicting Josephine’s hallucinations and by lacing the text with evocative descriptions of the nearby river.

The world was broken in two by this heavy, dark grey river that stained its banks, and unfolded thickly beneath me like the slow thoughts of an old man.

It was not like the Thames, but wider and deeper and pulling strongly against its banks, fighting to be free. The banks were dark grey, and bordered with fine grey sand and powdered shell, and at the edges tough beds of white, vegetable-like celery shot up in stiff spikes towards the sky. (p. 101–102)

Like The Shutter of Snow, the experience of reading this book feels very immersive, and while there is a narrative thread of sorts, largely driven by the hospital’s attempts to rehabilitate Josephine, the book is primarily an exploration of the nature of incarceration in a psychiatric hospital in the late 1950s/early ‘60s. As the novella unfolds, there are painful explorations of how a woman’s state of mind can sometimes be defined not by a rigorously diagnosed condition but by her lack of adherence to conventional societal norms. Nevertheless, there are moments of poetic beauty here too, shards of light that contrast starkly with the fragile nature of Josephine’s existence. It’s also a book where the modernist prose style and the protagonist’s fractured state of mind fit together in perfect harmony. Very highly recommended, especially for readers with an interest in these themes.

(My thanks to the publisher for kindly providing a review copy, which I read for Karen and Simon’s #1961Club.)

Freezing Point by Anders Bodelsen (tr. Joan Tate)

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First published in Danish in 1969, Freezing Point is another thrilling entry in the Faber Editions series, an expertly curated selection of rediscovered gems dedicated to showcasing radical literary voices from the past that still speak to us today. Bodelsen made his mark with crime novels, including Think of a Number (1968), which was adapted for the screen as The Silent Partner, featuring Elliott Gould and Susannah York. In 1969, he took a bit of a departure with Freezing Point, a chilling dystopian nightmare shot through with absurdist, deadpan humour. The novella takes place at three different points in time: 1973 (which would have been the near future back then), 1995 and 2022. Reading this novella today makes many of its themes seem eerily prescient, but more of that later as we get into the story. In the meantime, it’s another knockout read from Faber Editions, an imprint that continues to go from strength to strength.  

Freezing Point revolves around Bruno, a thirty-two-year-old fiction editor who works for a weekly magazine. Bruno, who is single, has various authors on his books, and one of his main roles is to feed them ideas for stories which he can then edit and place in the magazine, assuming they are good enough to feature.

One morning in 1973, Bruno discovers a strange lump on his neck, which a biopsy confirms is malignant. Unfortunately, the cancer is incurable as it has already spread to Bruno’s liver; however, he is offered a tantalising opportunity by his physician. Recent developments in cryogenics mean that Bruno can choose to be ‘frozen down’ until such time when his cancer can be cured – maybe in twenty or thirty years’ time – or he can make the most of the few months that remain. It’s still early days for the freezing technology, and while Bruno wouldn’t be the first person to be frozen down, he’d still be something of a guinea pig for the new process. His single status and lack of close family make his participation in the experiment as simple as possible. Moreover, the researchers will cover all of Bruno’s expenses for the treatment, including the cost of storing his possessions until he is defrosted.

With the alternative being certain death within months, Bruno opts to be frozen down until a cure for his cancer can be found. But before the freezing procedure takes place, he has a one-night stand with Jenny Hollander, a lonely young ballet dancer he recently met at a dinner party, probably as a final fling. This initial section of the novella ends with Bruno being put under; then we fast-forward to 1995, when the time has come for our protagonist to be revived…

When Bruno is defrosted, his chronological age is fifty-four, but his biological age (the most important one in this new world) is still thirty-two, just as it was in 1973 when he was frozen down.

The defrosting process is bewildering and stressful for Bruno, giving rise to many questions, especially as all he can see is the inside of a hospital room and the limited view from its window. Why, for instance, is it sunny every day followed by rainfall at night? Why are there so few cars on the road? And what do those signs on nearby buildings mean? Slogans such as ONE-LIFE CO.; NOW-LIFE; and NATURAL LIFE–NATURAL DEATH? If he’s going to continue working as an editor, he really needs to understand the world around him…

Meanwhile, doctors and nurses maintain strict control over Bruno’s exposure to various elements, from his physical environment, medication and food to stimulants such as books, conversation and sex. Moreover, the medics have Bruno under constant surveillance via a camera in the ceiling of his room, monitoring his every movement for signs of stress.

Understandably, all this proves rather frustrating and frightening for Bruno, not least when he discovers that he’s been sterilised as a precautionary measure – a necessary step to arrest growth in the population, now that so many individuals are opting to live longer! Bruno’s kidneys were also ‘borrowed’ while he was under, a development that Bodelsen reveals in a deadpan tone, highlighting the absurdity of this crazy new world where body autonomy is a thing of the past.

[Doctor:] “In 1982, we had a catastrophic kidney shortage.”

[Bruno:] “A what?”

“A kidney shortage, lack of kidneys in store – it was a spare part that at that time was still indispensable. A law, a law with retroactive effect, an emergency law, allowed us to borrow kidneys from patients who were down and had no use for their kidneys. We borrowed your kidneys.”

“Did I get them back?”

“You got another pair when we found ourselves in the opposite situation – we had progressed to the synthetic computerised kidney and suddenly found ourselves with a kidney surplus.” (pp. 73–74)

Bruno also learns that Jenny Hollander is currently frozen down following a major injury to her spine. It might be another twenty years before spinal transplants will be possible, much to Bruno’s dismay.

Once Bruno and other recently defrosted patients have been ‘up’ for a few days, they learn that a new class divide has emerged. In short, society now consists of two classes: firstly, members of the ‘now-life’ class, who accept death when their first organ gives out; and secondly, members of the ‘immortal’ or ‘all-life’ class, who work hard to pay for their immortality. New organs, ‘freezing down’ and spells in hibernation all cost money, which means the immortals must work themselves to the bone to fund these expensive treatments.

Now Bruno and other recently defrosted individuals face a life-changing decision. Do they opt for a ‘natural’ (i.e. a reduced) lifespan of leisure in return for mortgaging their organs, thus keeping the immortals stocked with new hearts and other vital kit? Or do they choose immortality and accept an indefinite lifetime of hard work?  It’s the only way to pay for the organ transplants, recalcification treatments and ‘freezing down’ periods which will extend their existence forever.

There are other considerations, too. Technology is advancing at such a pace that synthetically manufactured organs are starting to replace ‘organically’ harvested equivalents, meaning the potential for now-lifers to subsidise their leisurely lifestyles is starting to fall. At some point in the future, immortality might be the only viable option.

According to another recently defrosted man Bruno meets at the medical facility, this nightmarish new society is already starting to crumble.

“…They’ve been so busy with their immortality that they haven’t had time to work at anything else at all. The whole thing’s disintegrating. And now they’re going to produce synthetic spare organs and there’ll be no use for now-life people any longer. And then there’ll be a to-do, believe me.” (p. 91)

While the freezing down process stops the decay of most organs, the brain cells continue to age naturally, leading to problems with senility in otherwise youthful individuals. It’s possible that a solution to this mental degeneration might be found in the future, but for now, the decay remains an issue. Severe depression is also rife, especially amongst the recently defrosted, as they try to come to terms with the new world order and the choices they must make.

At first, the doctors attempt to get Bruno to play along. As he was one of the initial guinea pigs for the freezing down process, all his treatments have been financed by the researchers. In effect, his life has been extended for free, so now he ‘owes’ society something in return. However, Bruno’s depression, his rebellion against being confined and his overwhelming desire to see Jenny again are so strong that the doctors finally agree to another period of freezing down. If all goes well, he will be frozen until such time as Jenny can be equipped with a brand-new spine.

So, in part three, the novel fast-forwards to 2022, when Bruno and Jenny can be simultaneously defrosted and reunited. However, rather than this being the panacea that Bruno has been hoping for, new, more complex issues swiftly intervene…

He kissed her again and it really did seem as if he were kissing a doll. They had done something to her, or she must always have been like that. Did he know her at all, or had she just been his pretext for going through with two freezings – his pretext for demanding his eternity? Had they made him into a doll too? (p. 172)

One of the most impressive things about this novella is the chilling, claustrophobic atmosphere Bodelsen creates while keeping most of the action focused within the walls of Bruno’s hospital room. This sense of confinement adds greatly to the novella’s sinister mood. As the story unfolds, Bruno and others begin to rebel against the system that is trapping them. For instance, Bruno keeps asking if he can see copies of weekly magazines, partly to check that they still exist; but despite being told that this will happen ‘soon’, these magazines never appear. Other key information is also withheld from view, only to be glimpsed through the window of his room or passed on through hearsay. There are signs of agitators demonstrating outside the facility, and at one point, a break-in occurs, but the true nature of the external world is never explicitly revealed. Naturally, this allows the reader’s imagination to come into play, filling that void with all manner of nightmarish scenarios and uncertainties.

Moreover, the novella nails the sense that everything pleasurable about life has been stripped away, especially for the immortals / all-life class. What is the point in living forever if one has to work incessantly and adopt an obsessively healthy regime to pay for it all? I couldn’t help but think of all those manic fitness gurus on TikTok who advocate extreme fasting, clean living, daily journalling and punishing fitness regimes to maintain the perfect body and mind. Where is the joy in that? It’s nowhere to be seen. While many of the world’s ‘problems’, such as variations in the weather, seem to have been solved, Bruno longs for the spontaneity and pleasures of his former life, one with rain, flowers, cigarettes, books, music and delicious meals – food that looks and tastes like real food, not the squishy cubes of carefully controlled body fuel and drugs he is given now.

Bodelsen also anticipates various technological and societal developments that are either imminent or have actually taken place since the novel was published in 1969. For instance, the introduction of driverless electric cars, the proliferation of wall-sized TVs, the decline of print media (particularly weekly magazines) and society’s obsession with living longer and looking younger.

The problem with automatic cars and wall-sized television is that the need for both is minimal. The all-life class is too busy earning money for their all-life and their various freezing downs to be able to invest in such things. And the now-life people are only interested in euphoria and other means of forgetting that one day they will die. (pp. 107–108)

Ongoing monitoring systems which automatically administer personalised medicines are also in existence in the novella’s 2022 timeline. The challenge of preventing dementia, or at least arresting its progression, is another pertinent issue which Bodelsen hints at, predicting perhaps one of the biggest challenges of our times.

As this excellent, thought-provoking novella draws to a close, Bodelsen reveals the true horror of a world where immortality seems to be the only option. It’s a terrifying, nightmarish finish to a thoroughly absorbing story. Very highly recommended indeed, especially to readers with an interest in dystopian fiction. Fans of Sven Holm’s Termush, also published by Faber Editions, would likely appreciate this one!

(My thanks to the publishers for kindly providing a review copy, which I read for Karen’s #ReadIndies.)

London Novels – ten favourites from my shelves

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Back in May, Faber and Faber reissued Alexander Baron’s brilliant novel The Lowlife, the entertaining, picaresque story of an amiable Jewish charmer trying to get by on his wits in seedy post-war London. The book is a welcome addition to the excellent Faber Editions series, which aims to spotlight rediscovered gems from the publisher’s archive and beyond, resurrecting radical literary voices from the past that speak to our present. To tie in with the release, Faber also posted a piece on their website listing 21 novels set in London, many of which illustrate life on the fringes of society. It’s a great list, featuring excellent novels by Iris Murdoch, Penelope Fitzgerald, Zadie Smith and many more.

I thought it would be fun to put together a post of some of my own favourite London novels while also trying to avoid too much repetition with the Faber list – Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square features in both selections, as does The Lowlife, but that feels perfectly apt! Here are my 10 picks.

The Lowlife by Alexander Baron (1963)

Baron’s 1963 novella tells the entertaining story of a likeable Jewish charmer with a penchant for Emile Zola and a somewhat tortuous past. The anti-hero in question is forty-five-year-old Harryboy Boas, a lovable rogue with a conscience who feeds his gambling addiction with occasional stints as a Hofmann presser in the East End rag trade. Harryboy likes nothing more than a bit of peace and quiet, allowing him to read Zola novels all day in his room at Mr Siskin’s Hackney boarding house, preferably untroubled by the need to work. At night, he’s usually to be found at the local dog tracks, gambling away what little money he has, but everything changes when a new family, the Deaners, move in, a development that disturbs the relative calm and familiarity of Harryboy’s world. In short, this is a marvellous addition to the boarding house genre and a wonderful evocation of post-war London life.

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (1963)

No self-respecting list of London novels would be complete without an entry by Muriel Spark, who used the capital city as a backdrop for a handful of her novellas. The Faber list already includes one of my favourites, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, so I’ve plumped for The Girls of Slender Means instead. The setting for this one is The May of Teck, a large boarding house/hostel ‘for Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty’, situated in London’s Kensington. Despite the novel’s wartime setting, there’s a wonderful boarding-school-style atmosphere in The May of Teck, with a glamorous Schiaparelli gown being passed from one girl to another for various important dates. Spark is particularly good on the social hierarchy that has developed within the hostel, with the youngest girls occupying dormitory-style rooms on the first floor, those with a little more money sharing smaller rooms on the second, while the most attractive, sophisticated girls occupy the top floor, a status that reflects their interesting jobs and active social lives. By turns sharp, witty, touching and poignant, this evocative novel explores some dark and surprising themes with a dramatic conclusion to boot.

Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton (1941)

Set largely in the seedy bars and boarding houses of London’s Earl’s Court, Patrick Hamilton’s 1941 novel Hangover Square centres on the tortured existence of George Harvey Bone, a thirty-four-year-old man who is obsessed with a beautiful yet vindictive young woman named Netta Longdon. It is an utterly brilliant portrait of a man on the edge, perfectly capturing the sudden changes in mood and mindset of a lonely and tormented soul, driven to distraction by the heartless woman he so deeply desires. Hamilton perfectly captures the inner solitude and isolation of Bone’s existence as he slopes from one crowded bar to the next, waiting for an opportunity to call or visit Netta for a few moments each day. There is great attention to detail here, particularly in the depiction of the pubs in Earl’s Court: the thick smoke; the infernal noise; the damp, claustrophobic atmosphere inside, especially during winter. In other words, the book excels in its depiction of the nightmarish world of the habitual drinker and the hopelessness of his solitary existence. One of the great London novels on the cusp on WW2.

The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann (1936)

This is a sequel to Lehmann’s earlier novel, Invitation to the Waltz, in which seventeen-year-old Olivia Curtis is captivated by the dashing Rollo Spencer at her first society ball. Ten years later, a chance encounter brings Olivia back into contact with Rollo, sparking a rush of conflicting emotions – more specifically, the desire to open up vs the tendency towards self-protection. This remarkable book expertly portrays the cruelty, frustration and devastation of a doomed love affair in glittering prose. The couple’s clandestine relationship is played out in fragments of time snatched here and there, consisting of secret meetings in dark, secluded restaurants and sordid hotel rooms. Once again, Lehmann’s portrayal of this world is brilliant, the dampness of the London winter providing the perfect backdrop to the dispiriting, claustrophobic tone of the affair. The modernity of Lehmann’s approach, with its passages of stream-of-consciousness and fluid prose style, makes the novel feel fresh and alive, well ahead of its time for the mid-1930s.

The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning (1955)

This gorgeous coming-of-age novel imbued with the freshness of youth was my first experience of Olivia Manning’s work, and it remains a favourite. Eighteen-year-old Ellie Parsons comes to London in search of love, life and some much-needed independence. Once there, she finds romance in the shape of an older dilettante, Quintin Bellot, but the situation gets messy when Qunitin’s wife, the flighty, self-absorbed Petta, reappears. As ever with Manning, the settings are vividly captured, evoking the bohemian atmosphere of London life in the 1950s. The novel also touches on the theme of ageing, contrasting Ellie’s youthful enthusiasm with Petta’s resentment over her faded beauty. An underrated gem that deserves to be much better known. 

Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper by Donald Henderson (1943)

I can’t quite recall where I first heard about Donald Henderson’s excellent novel, Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper – a wickedly satirical portrayal of a murderer operating under the cloak of the London Blitz. It might have been through Backlisted, always an excellent source of lesser-known gems, or possibly during a discussion about boarding-house novels, a genre close to my heart. Either way, I’m very glad to have discovered it. That said, this pitch-black wartime novel might not be to everyone’s tastes. If you’re a fan of Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square, William Trevor’s The Boarding-House or Patricia Highsmith’s The Blunderer, chances are you’ll enjoy this book. If not, you might want to steer clear! One of the most fascinating aspects of this novel is Henderson’s focus on his protagonist’s psychology. Somewhat perversely, Mr. Bowling is not afraid of being caught and sentenced to death for his murderous actions; rather, he welcomes the prospect, seeing it as a release from the interminable suffering of life on Earth. In other words, the idea of death by hanging represents a kind of freedom for him, a deliverance from ‘the horrors of peace and war, chiefly peace’. I loved this darkly satirical portrayal of Henderson’s twisted, opportunistic killer, and the Patrick Hamilton-style vibe really drew me in. Not for the sensitive or faint-hearted, but a wickedly compelling novel nonetheless.

A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble (1963)

This thoughtful, witty debut novel features an intelligent, educated young woman trying to find her place in an evolving world. Drabble focuses on two well-educated sisters here – twenty-one-year-old Sarah Bennett and her older sister, Louise, both Oxford-educated – exploring their different values and preoccupations. While Louise opts for marriage to Stephen, a wealthy but snobbish writer, Sarah tries to figure out what to do with her life. The writing is marvellous, encompassing chic 1960s fashions, hairstyles, and lifestyles, plus glimpses of Louise’s honeymoon in Rome. Drabble also gives us some wonderfully evocative descriptions of London, from Sarah waiting in the pouring rain to catch a bus at Aldwych to the messy glamour of backstage life in the city’s West End. A witty, hugely enjoyable book, shot through with some amusing touches, always beautifully judged.

Look at Me by Anita Brookner (1983)

Perceptive, engrossing and somewhat enigmatic, Look at Me – Anita Brookner’s third novel – is something of a minor masterpiece, probing as it does the inner life of a lonely young woman who experiences a brief period of renaissance, only to be scarred by the torrid experience. Frances is drawn into the seductive world of a glamorous, bohemian couple, then cast aside like a discarded toy. Few writers can capture the acute pain of social isolation and dashed dreams quite like Anita Brookner, and this novel is surely one of her best, most nuanced explorations of these themes. London is the setting for many of Brookner’s novels, but this one is notable for a particularly haunting passage worthy of the entry price alone. Following a disastrous dinner at a restaurant, Frances is left combing the streets of London in a state of shock, fear and disorientation. It’s an extraordinary piece of writing, vividly bringing to life the protagonist’s ghostly nighttime walk. 

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy (1953)

By turns witty, playful, beautiful and sad, this highly original novella is a provocative exploration of man’s treatment of animals, particularly those closest to him on the evolutionary scale – the ape. For a book originally published in 1953, Hackenfeller’s feels eerily prescient, particularly in a world where animal rights, sustainability and various environmental issues have risen in importance in recent years. Brophy’s mischievous story revolves around Professor Clement Darrelhyde, a scientist specialising in studying apes, but to say any more about the plot might spoil the fun – just read it for yourself! (London Zoo plays a significant role in the story, prompting its inclusion in this list.) Central to the novella are questions about which species is more absurd: the human or the ape? And conversely, which of the two is more deserving of our sympathy? I doubt it will surprise you to hear that Brophy, through her razor-sharp intelligence and playful wit, shows man to be more dysfunctional, foolish and mercenary than his animal counterparts by quite some distance. A nimble, playful novella in which Brophy tackles some big themes with a light but thought-provoking touch.

My Friends by Hisham Matar (2024)

Meditative, moving and beautifully written, My Friends is a story of loss and friendship in exile, of having to construct a new life for oneself when everything previously imagined is swept away in an instant. It’s also a story of ‘what ifs’, subtly showing how a person’s path through life can be shaped not only by their personal choices but also by their political beliefs. Matar has written a deeply affecting work of fiction here that also intersects with real-life events, using a fatal shooting at the Libyan Embassy in London as a springboard for his exploration of exile. Alongside this thoughtful, nuanced study of friendship, separation and the meaning of home, My Friends is also a novel about London, the streets and landmarks that remind Matar’s protagonist, Kahled, of his past and those of his literary touchstones from Virginia Woolf to T. S. Eliot to Ford Madox Ford. There is some beautiful writing about London here as Khaled traverses the city at night. In particular, he values the city’s anonymity, the ‘maze-like streets turning upon one another as though designed for the purpose of keeping secrets’. All the other novels featured on my list were first published in the 20th century, but My Friends appeared in 2024, securing a spot on the Booker Prize longlist later that year.

Do let me know your thoughts on these books if you’ve read any of them or are thinking of doing so. Or maybe you have some favourite London novels of your own – if so, feel free to mention them in the comments below, especially those from the 20th century.

My favourite books from the Faber Editions series

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One of the most exciting literary developments in recent years has been the emergence of new imprints specialising in rediscovered gems – lesser-known or neglected writers given a new lease of life through carefully selected reissues. The Faber Editions series from Faber and Faber is proving to be one of my favourites, mainly due to the excellent hit-rate they’ve achieved so far. I think I’ve read eleven books from this series and they’ve all had something thrilling and/or original to offer. Clearly a lot of work has gone into the curation of this this list, which feels thought-provoking and exciting.

The aim behind Faber Editions is to spotlight rediscovered gems from the Faber archive and beyond, resurrecting radical literary voices from the past that speak to our present. Each reissue includes a new introduction by a highly regarded author (e.g. Sarah Hall, Jeff VanderMeer and Iain Sinclair) to champion the book while also placing it into a broader context. Their latest release is Alexander Baron’s brilliant novel The Lowlife, an entertaining, picaresque story of a likeable Jewish charmer, trying to get by on his wits in seedy post-war London. I read it a couple of years ago in a different (out-of-print) edition, so I’m delighted to see it back in print with Faber.

So, with The Lowlife (1963) fresh out of the traps, I thought I would look back at my favourites from the Faber Editions series over the past four years.

Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls (1982)

The first Faber Editions reissue is an utterly captivating book, a subversive feminist fable that neatly combines the everyday and the extraordinary to thrilling effect. The premise sounds wild, but trust me, you just have to run with it! Central to the story is Mrs Dorothy Caliban, a middle-aged grieving housewife whose marriage is stagnating. Into her life comes an escapee, Larry the amphibian, a magical half-man, half-frog creature, who captures her imagination with his curiosity and tenderness. As the authorities close in on Larry, he and Mrs C embark on an adventure beyond their wildest dreams. I loved this tender, slyly subversive story, which Ingalls underscores with a wry seam of humour. It’s a magical, otherworldly book with a sinister, unsettling edge, ideal for readers looking for something imaginative and distinctive, with a dash of ambiguity, too!

Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks (1953)

Every now and again, a book comes along that captivates the reader with its elegant form and glittering prose. Maud Martha is one such book, painting an evocative portrait of the titular character’s life from childhood to early adulthood. Over the course of the novella, which is written as a series of short vignettes, we follow Maud Martha, an African American, through childhood in Chicago’s South Side, her early romances as a teenager, to marriage and motherhood, moving seamlessly from the early 1920s to the mid-1940s. I loved this book for its gorgeous, poetic prose and beautiful use of imagery. Amazingly, this exquisitely-written novella had not been published in the UK before the Editions release in 2022, so kudos to Faber for including it in the series.

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy (1953)

By turns witty, playful, beautiful and sad, this highly original novella is a provocative exploration of man’s treatment of animals, particularly those closest to us on the evolutionary scale – the ape. For a book originally published in 1953, Hackenfeller’s feels eerily prescient, particularly in a world where animal rights, sustainability and various environmental issues have risen in importance in recent years. Brophy’s mischievous story revolves around Professor Clement Darrelhyde, a scientist specialising in studying apes, but to say any more about the plot might spoil the fun – just read it for yourself! Central to the novella are questions about which species is more absurd: the human or the ape? And conversely, which of the two is more deserving of our sympathy? I doubt it will surprise you to hear that Brophy, through her razor-sharp intelligence and playful wit, shows man to be more dysfunctional, foolish and mercenary than his animal counterparts by quite some distance. A nimble, playful novella in which Brophy tackles some big themes with a light but thought-provoking touch. I loved it to bits!

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver (mostly 1965/1966)

Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, Diane Oliver was writing in the mid-1960s, a time when racial segregation in America was being challenged through the civil rights movement, but longstanding prejudices remained entrenched. Much of her work portrays life for black women – frequently young black women – in 1960s America, complete with the abuse and microaggressions that characterised these people’s days. Nevertheless, despite the undeniably powerful nature of these themes, Oliver’s fiction is subtle, taking in a range of experiences that feel authentic and true. Here we see racial discrimination, both explicit and less overt, social exclusion, abandonment, exoticisation, activism, interracial relationships and much, much more, giving a rich insight into black lives in this crucial period of history. A knockout collection that deserves to be widely read, especially as Oliver died in a motorcycle accident at the age of twenty-two, depriving the literary world of a voice with tremendous promise.

The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger (1966)

I loved this utterly gripping novel with a morally ambiguous German character at its heart. Central to the story, which is set in the mid-1960s, is Karl Braun, a cultured, mild-mannered German émigré working as a piano tuner in London. On the surface, Braun’s work colleagues and fellow lodgers assume their friend came to England to escape the Nazis. However, the more we read, the more we realise that Pressburger’s protagonist is haunted by the past. His wife and child perished in an Allied bombing raid over Hamburg – a tragic incident that might well have killed Braun himself had he not rushed to work that day to deal with pressing business. Soon, other more sinister details emerge, creating the impression that Braun is in hiding from something – or possibly someone – with a link to his past. As the narrative unfolds, this quiet story of an émigré trying to make his way in 1960s London morphs into a noirish thriller, the tension escalating with every turn of the page. A complex, deeply unnerving read that will test the reader’s sympathies in unexpected ways.

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford (1947)

If Carson McCullers and Elspeth Barker (of O Caledonia fame) had run off to the Colorado mountains to work on a novel, this rediscovered gem might have been the result! It’s a haunting, unnerving portrayal of a close but volatile brother-sister relationship, laced with an undercurrent of menace as adolescence beckons on the horizon. Stafford has created such an evocative, relatable world here, instantly recognisable to anyone who recalls the pain and awkwardness of adolescence – from the disdain we have for our parents and elders to the discomfort we feel in our bodies as they develop, to the confusion and resentments that frequently surface as we grow apart from our soulmates. She also infuses the narrative with an ominous sense of mystery, something poisonous and unknowable, especially towards the end.

The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman (1930)

There is a long tradition of women writers depicting crushing mental health conditions in fiction, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s unforgettable short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) to Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963). The Shutter of Snow – a groundbreaking modernist novella by the American writer Emily Holmes Coleman – fits firmly into this tradition, portraying its protagonist’s fractured state of mind in haunting, luminous prose. First published in 1930, this semi-autobiographical novella draws on the time Coleman spent in a mental health institution after suffering a post-partum breakdown in the mid-1920s. The author’s haunting stream-of-consciousness-like style perfectly captures the fractured nature of her protagonist’s mind – a frenetic jumble of suppressed memories, delusions caused by her medical condition and the horrific reality of her imprisonment. In short, a claustrophobic whirlwind of a novella that feels way ahead of its time.

Termush by Sven Holm, tr. Sylvia Clayton (1967)

And here’s another novella that remains wildly relevant today: Sven Holm’s Termush, a deeply unnerving slice of post-apocalyptic dystopia with a fascinating premise. In short, a nuclear apocalypse has decimated the country (and possibly the whole world), wiping out large swathes of the population. Nevertheless, an elite coastal hotel named Termush remains untouched by the disaster, complete with trained staff, medics, an armed security team, radiation shelters, access to clean water, food and other luxury provisions. Holed up at Termush are several wealthy guests, privileged individuals who paid for their reservations in advance as a form of insurance in the event of a global catastrophe. The novella focuses on the aftermath of the apocalypse, reporting what happens within the Termush community once it is deemed ‘safe’ for the survivors to emerge from the resort’s radiation shelters. Holm seems particularly interested in the psychological impact of disasters; for instance, what happens to our moral codes, guiding values and behaviours towards others when familiar societal structures are destabilised or destroyed. This frightening exploration of societal breakdown in the wake of a catastrophe is a fascinating addition to the Faber Editions list – dystopias are not normally my go-to reads, but I was swept up by this.

You can find more information on the full series here. Let me know your thoughts if you’ve read any of them or fancy trying one or two in the future.  

Independent Publishers – some favourite books from my shelves

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As some of you may know, February sees the return of #ReadIndies, (Reading Independent Publishers Month), a celebration of books published by independent presses. This annual event, established and hosted by Karen and Lizzy, aims to support independent presses as they continue to negotiate challenging trading conditions whilst competing with the big publishers for readers’ attention. Basically, the idea is to read and discuss books from independent publishers, posting about them on social media or blogs — whatever platform works for you.

It’s one of my favourite reading events – partly for the theme, which fits well with my interests, and partly for the flexibility. The event was set up in 2021 to support small presses during the COVID lockdown, and it proved so popular that Karen and Lizzy have repeated it every February since then.

So, if you’re still looking for ideas on what to read for this year’s #ReadIndies, here’s a round-up of some favourites – I’ve chosen one book from each of these excellent independent publishers.

The Home by Penelope Mortimer – published by British Library Publishing

This beautifully written semi-autobiographical novel follows an attractive but vulnerable middle-aged woman, Eleanor Strathearn, in the months following the breakdown of her marriage as she attempts to establish some kind of life for herself, while also delving into the meaning of ‘home’ with all its various connotations. The story opens with Eleanor and her youngest child, fifteen-year-old Philip, moving from their longstanding family home in London to a smaller residence near St John’s Wood. As her other grown-up children have flown the nest, Eleanor approaches her new life with a strange mix of emotions, oscillating wildly between stoic optimism and crushing grief – the latter largely winning out. Alongside the sadness, this excellent, slightly off-kilter novel has flashes of darkly comic humour throughout. Fans of Muriel Spark (and possibly Elizabeth Taylor) would likely enjoy this one.

A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble – published by Canongate

This thoughtful, witty debut novel features an intelligent, educated young woman trying to find her place in an evolving world. Drabble focuses on two well-educated sisters here – twenty-one-year-old Sarah Bennett and her older sister, Louise, both Oxford-educated – exploring their different values and preoccupations. While Louise opts for marriage to Stephen, a wealthy but snobbish writer, Sarah tries to figure out what to do with her life. The writing is marvellous, encompassing chic 1960s fashions, hairstyles, and lifestyles, plus glimpses of Louise’s honeymoon in Rome. Drabble also gives us some wonderfully evocative descriptions of London, from Sarah waiting in the pouring rain to catch a bus at Aldwych to the messy glamour of backstage life in the city’s West End. A witty, hugely enjoyable book, shot through with some amusing touches, always beautifully judged.

Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee – published by Daunt Books

Set in Rhenish Prussia in 1851, this sublime Booker-shortlisted novel tells the story of an unmarried woman’s emotional awakening during a boat trip along the Rhine. Originally published in 1981, it’s an ideal summer read, quivering with latent energy just waiting to be unleashed. Schlee’s protagonist is Charlotte Morrison, an acquiescent, mild-mannered woman, financially independent but emotionally tied to her brother, Charles, a sanctimonious Church of England preacher, and his demanding wife, Marion. During the boat trip down the Rhine, Charlotte is assailed by vivid, transgressive dreams that blur the margins between reality and fantasy, reawakening emotions and desires long since buried in the past. This gorgeous, richly imagined novel is as precise and compelling in its psychological acuity as it is in its portrayal of a vanished world. One for fans of Black Narcissus, A Passage to India and Lolly Willowes, to name but a few.

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy – published by Faber and Faber (Faber Editions)

By turns witty, playful, beautiful and sad, this highly original novella is a provocative exploration of man’s treatment of animals, particularly those closest to us on the evolutionary scale. For a book originally published in 1953, Hackenfeller’s Ape feels eerily prescient, particularly in a world where animal rights, sustainability and various environmental issues have risen in importance in recent years. Brophy’s mischievous story revolves around Professor Clement Darrelhyde, a scientist specialising in studying apes, but to say any more might spoil the fun – just read it for yourself!

Dandelions by Thea Lenarduzzi – published by Fitzcarraldo Editions

In Dandelions, the Italian-born editor and writer Thea Lenarduzzi has given us a gorgeous, meditative blend of family memoir, political and socioeconomic history, and personal reflections on migration between Italy and the UK. Partly crafted from discussions between Thea and her paternal grandmother, Dirce, the book spans four generations of Lenarduzzi’s family, moving backwards and forwards in time – and between Italy and England – threading together various stories and vignettes that span the 20th century. In doing so, a multilayered portrayal of Thea’s family emerges, placed in the context of Italy’s sociopolitical history and economic challenges. I adored this book for its themes and the sheer beauty of Lenarduzzi’s prose.

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez (tr. Megan McDowell) – published by Granta Books

The Argentine writer and journalist Mariana Enriquez grew up during the country’s Dirty War. From 1976 to 1983, when Argentina was in the grip of the military dictatorship, several thousands of citizens were murdered or disappeared, many of whom were not formally documented due to the terrorist regime in place. In these macabre, deeply disturbing stories, elements of Gothic horror and surreal, otherworldly imagery are intertwined with insightful social critique, tapping into the collective traumas from Argentina’s atrocities, both past and present. Many of these stories begin in the realms of contemporary normality, only to shift into darker, nightmarish territory as they unfold. I was knocked out by this collection, which makes very effective use of imagery to augment the fear and tension lurking within.

The Girls by John Bowen – published by McNally Editions

First published in 1986, The Girls is a savage gem in which the cosiness of life in an idyllic English village is destabilised by domestic horror. Think Barbara Pym crossed with The League of Gentlemen/Inside No. 9 and you’re pretty much there – maybe with a smidgen of Lolly Willowes or Barbara Comyns in the mix, just for good measure. Early in the novel, a pedigree boar escapes while en route to service a local sow, setting the tone for this idiosyncratic story, which is flecked with touches of the absurd. It’s a wonderfully strange book, by turns, charming, funny, horrific and surreal, all wrapped up in a dark, dreamlike fairy tale with little nods to pagan myths and the supernatural here and there. But despite these otherworldly elements, much of the story remains rooted in realism, illustrating the limits of how far we might go to protect the people we love.

School for Love by Olivia Manning – published by NYRB Classics

Set in Jerusalem during the closing stages of WW2, this highly compelling coming-of-age story features a most distinctive character quite unlike any other I’ve encountered in literature or life itself. In Miss Bohun, Manning has created a fascinating individual who is sure to generate strong opinions either way. Is she a manipulative hypocrite, determined to seize any opportunity and exploit it for her own personal gain? Or is she simply deluded, predominately acting on the belief that she is doing the morally upstanding thing in a changing and unstable world? You’ll have to read the book yourself to take a view.

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff – published by Persephone Books

During a trip to Bognor in the early 1930s, R. C. Sherriff was inspired to create a story centred on a fictional family by imagining their lives and, most importantly, their annual September holiday at the seaside resort. This premise seems simple on the surface, and yet the novel’s apparent simplicity is a key part of its magic and charm. Here we have a story of small pleasures and triumphs, quiet hopes and ambitions, secret worries and fears – the illuminating moments in day-to-day life. By focusing on the minutiae of the everyday, Sheriff has crafted something remarkable here – a novel that feels humane, compassionate and deeply affecting, where the reader can fully invest in the characters’ inner lives. This is a gem of a book, as charming and unassuming as one could hope for – a throwback perhaps to simpler times.

Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes (tr. Ann Goldstein) – published by Pushkin Press

This remarkable rediscovered gem of Italian literature is a candid, exquisitely-written confessional from an evocative feminist voice. De Céspedes’ novel is narrated by forty-three-year-old Valeria, who documents her inner thoughts in a secret notebook with great candour and clarity, laying bare her world with all its demands and preoccupations. For Valeria, the act of writing becomes a disclosure, an outlet for her frustrations with the family she is tied to – her husband Michele, a somewhat remote but dedicated man, largely wrapped up in his own interests, which Valeria doesn’t share, and their two grown-up children who live at home. As the diary entries build up, we see how Valeria has been defined by the familial roles assigned to her; nevertheless, the very act of keeping the notebook leads to a gradual reawakening of her desires as she finds her voice, challenging the founding principles of her life with Michele. I adored this illuminating exploration of a woman’s right to her own existence in the face of competing demands – probably my favourite book of 2023.

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Let me know what you think of these books if you’ve read some of them already or if you’re considering reading any in the future. Maybe you have a favourite indie publisher and book to recommend? If so, please feel free to mention them below.

My Books of the Year, 2024 – Part 2

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Recent reissues: 20th-century classics/rediscoveries from the past

As in previous years, I’m spreading my Books of the Year across two posts. Part 1, published on Sunday, highlighted some of the new books and treasures from my TBR I enjoyed reading in 2024, while this second post features recent reissues, all originally published in the 20th century. Trailblazing publishers such as Virago Press, Persephone Books and NYRB Classics have long been championing reissues, but other, more recent publishers/imprints (e.g. McNally Editions, Daunt Books and Faber Editions) are contributing to a resurgence of interest in this area, enhancing readers’ demand for these fascinating rediscoveries. Unsurprisingly, these publishers are very strongly represented here, reflecting my love of books from the mid-20th century.

As with everything featured in Part 1, these are the books I loved, the books that have stayed with me, the books I’m most likely to recommend to other readers. I’ve summarised each one in this post, but you can find my full reviews by clicking on the titles.

Winter Love by Han Suyin

First published in 1962, Winter Love tells the story of sapphic love, the agony and ecstasy of an illicit relationship frowned upon by society, played out against the backdrop of a bitterly cold British winter in 1944. Fans of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair and Rosamond Lehmann’s The Weather in the Streets will find much to appreciate in this achingly melancholy novel of doomed love, thwarted desire and the pain of loving in secret. The wintry vistas of wartime London, complete with mean little boarding houses, illicit evenings in flats and chilly walks on the Embankment, are brilliantly evoked.

A Green Equinox by Elizabeth Mavor

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1973, Elizabeth Mavor’s marvellous novel A Green Equinox captivated me from its opening pages. It’s a rich exploration of female sexuality and love in all its various manifestations, from the passionate and the sensual to the companionable and spiritual, not to mention the intellectual. In a quote on the cover of my Virago edition, the novelist Charlotte Mendelson calls it ‘funny and brave and moving and absolutely bonkers’ – a description that captures the novel’s untethered spirit to a T. I adored this erudite, unpredictable book, which revolves around an unconventional love triangle of sorts, with the marvellously named Hero Kinoull, an antiquarian bookseller, placed tantalisingly at its centre.

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy 

By turns witty, playful, beautiful and sad, this highly original novella is a provocative exploration of man’s treatment of animals, particularly those closest to us on the evolutionary scale. For a book originally published in 1953, Hackenfeller’s feels eerily prescient, particularly in a world where animal rights, sustainability and various environmental issues have risen in importance in recent years. Brophy’s mischievous story revolves around Professor Clement Darrelhyde, a scientist specialising in studying apes, but to say any more might spoil the fun – just read it for yourself!

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver

Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, Diane Oliver was writing in the mid-1960s, a time when racial segregation in America was being challenged through the civil rights movement, but longstanding prejudices remained entrenched. Much of her work portrays life for black women – frequently young black women – in 1960s America, complete with the abuse and microaggressions that characterised these people’s days. Nevertheless, despite the undeniably powerful nature of these themes, Oliver’s fiction is subtle, taking in a range of experiences that feel authentic and true. Here we see racial discrimination, both explicit and less overt, social exclusion, abandonment, exoticisation, activism, interracial relationships and much, much more, giving a rich insight into black lives in this crucial period of history. A knockout collection that deserves to be widely read.

Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer

Unflinching, penetrating and razor-sharp in its depiction of the horrors of suburban domestic life, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting is one of Penelope Mortimer’s better-known novels, and rightly so. It’s a truly excellent book, as insightful in its portrayal of mental illness as it is in the exploration of an unwanted pregnancy, especially when young. The story revolves around Ruth Whiting, an unhappily married woman in her late thirties, and her teenage daughter, Angela. Published in 1958, Mortimer is exploring some dark issues here – unwanted pregnancy, limited access to abortion, isolation in marriage, mental illness, the suffocating futility of suburban life in a patriarchal society – and yet she does so with a humane, unflinching eye. The combination of her insight, precision and humour really lifts this novel, one of my favourite reads of the year.

The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman

There is a long tradition of women writers depicting crushing mental health conditions in fiction, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s unforgettable short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) to Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963). The Shutter of Snow – a groundbreaking modernist novella by the American writer Emily Holmes Coleman – fits firmly into this tradition, portraying its protagonist’s fractured state of mind in haunting, luminous prose. First published in 1930, this semi-autobiographical novella draws on the time Coleman spent in a mental health institution after suffering a post-partum breakdown in the mid-1920s. The haunting stream-of-consciousness-like style perfectly captures the fractured nature of the protagonist’s mind – a frenetic jumble of suppressed memories, delusions caused by her medical condition and the horrific reality of her imprisonment. In short, a claustrophobic whirlwind of a novella that feels way ahead of its time.

Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee

Set in Rhenish Prussia in 1851, this sublime Booker-shortlisted novel tells the story of an unmarried woman’s emotional awakening during a boat trip along the river. Originally published in 1981, it’s an ideal summer read, quivering with latent energy just waiting to be unleashed. Schlee’s protagonist is Charlotte Morrison, an acquiescent, mild-mannered woman, financially independent but emotionally tied to her brother, Charles, a sanctimonious Church of England preacher, and his demanding wife, Marion. During the boat trip down the Rhine, Charlotte is assailed by vivid, transgressive dreams that blur the margins between reality and fantasy, reawakening emotions and desires long since buried in the past. This gorgeous, richly imagined novel is as precise and compelling in its psychological acuity as it is in its portrayal of a vanished world. One for fans of Black Narcissus, A Passage to India and Lolly Willowes, to name but a few!

Green Water, Green Sky by Mavis Gallant

There’s a scene near the beginning of Mavis Gallant’s 1959 novella Green Water, Green Sky, which seems to encapsulate this stunning book. We are in Venice in the height of summer, and 14yro Flor buys a cheap glass-bead necklace on a whim, but as soon as she tries to place it over her head, the thread breaks, scattering the jewelled beads over the ground. It’s a memorable scene, notable for its vivid visual imagery – a trademark of Gallant’s — and its signalling of one of the story’s key themes. Namely, the snapping of something beautiful and fragile. As this shimmering novella unfolds, it reveals an unravelling – Flor’s unravelling – amidst the heat of the summer sun. This is a complex, subtle novel, full of light and shade, like a jewel from the past, dazzling us in the present.

The Girls by John Bowen

First published in 1986, The Girls is a savage gem in which the cosiness of life in an idyllic English village is destabilised by domestic horror. Think Barbara Pym crossed with Inside No. 9 and you’re pretty much there – maybe with a smidgen of Lolly Willowes or Barbara Comyns in the mix, just for good measure. Early in the novel, a pedigree boar escapes while en route to service a local sow, setting the tone for this idiosyncratic story, which is flecked with touches of the absurd. It’s a wonderfully strange book, by turns, charming, funny, horrific and surreal, all wrapped up in a dark, dreamlike fairy tale with little nods to pagan myths and the supernatural here and there. But despite these otherworldly elements, much of the story remains rooted in realism, illustrating the limits of how far we might go to protect the people we love.

Appointment with Yesterday by Celia Fremlin

Last summer, I read and loved Celia Fremlin’s 1959 novel Uncle Paul, a wonderfully compelling story about what can happen when our imagination runs wild, conjuring up all sorts of nightmare scenarios from our fears and suspicions. Faber’s latest Fremlin reissue, the 1972 novel Appointment with Yesterday, shares something of that earlier book’s themes, exploring as it does the damaging impact of paranoia in domestic settings. It’s a very cleverly constructed story in which Fremlin gradually reveals information to build terror and suspense, all set against the backdrop of a dismal London basement, a windswept seaside town and a series of cluttered kitchens. I thoroughly enjoyed this clever exploration of fear and paranoia, which gripped me throughout. Some readers may question a certain element of the ending, possibly projecting 21st-century values onto a 1970s protagonist in the hope of a different outcome, but to my mind, it fits with the times.

Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto (tr. Jesse Kirkwood)

Originally published in Japan in 1958, Tokyo Express is an excellent, thoroughly involving mystery, taking in elements of duplicity, intrigue and corruption, partly played out across Japan’s uber-efficient rail network. The mystery centres on two dead bodies – a man and a woman – found lying side by side on Kashii Beach in southern Japan. At first, the case appears to be a love suicide, but the investigating Inspector harbours doubts. I loved this wonderfully clever ‘howdunit’, in which much of the investigative legwork involves working out where each key player happened to be during the time period in question, with train routes, timetables, stations and passenger lists proving crucial at various points in the timeline.

A Spring of Love by Celia Dale

Recently reissued by Daunt Books, A Spring of Love (1960) is another utterly compelling story of suburban deception by Celia Dale, similar in style to Patricia Highsmith’s best domestic noirs. Dale specialises in showing us how vulnerable individuals – particularly the elderly and the naïvely trusting – can be preyed upon by malicious confidence tricksters in the safety of their own homes. There is something particularly chilling about a seemingly innocent figure inveigling their way into the domestic space, and Dale leverages this violation to the hilt with her disturbing tales of greed and deception. In A Helping Hand and Sheep’s Clothing, the scammers’ victims are female pensioners, often reliant on care and support; but in Spring, the predator targets a much younger single woman – thirty-year-old Esther Wilson, who lives in London with her widowed grandmother. This is another masterful novel by Celia Dale – a gripping story of greed, deception, misogyny and horror, all the more terrifying for its seemingly innocent trickster and grounding in normality.

The Door by Magda Szabó (tr. Len Rix)

This extraordinary novel is a character study, a detailed portrayal of a complex, co-dependent relationship between a female writer who narrates the story and her elderly housekeeper, the enigmatic, unpredictable Emerence. Using this dynamic as a framework, Szabó explores various themes, including betrayal, guilt, shame, loyalty, sacrifice, mortality, grief and the tensions between the traditional ‘old’ Hungary and the more progressive ‘new’ Hungary in post-war society. In fact, the relationship between the writer (who remains unnamed until the end of the novel) and Emerence could be seen as a metaphor for the country’s tensions, trauma and evolution during the last century. A book group friend chose this recently, and I could not be more grateful to her.

Baron Bagge by Alexander Lernet-Holenia (tr. Richard and Clara Winston)

Born in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, Alexander Lernet-Holenia served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, an experience which may have inspired his transcendent novella Baron Bagge, a haunting, existential tale of love, mortality and war set in the dreamlike hinterland between life and death. I loved this poignant, captivating little book, which is quite a difficult one to summarise. Just trust me when I say it’s a wonderfully captivating read that sets the surreal, heady dreamscape of yearning and desire against the harsh realities of war, conjuring a world in which the former just might prevail over the latter.

So that’s it for my Books of the Year, 2024. Thanks so much to everyone who has read, commented or engaged with my thoughts on books over the past year. I really do appreciate it.

All that remains is to wish you all the very best for the festive season and the year ahead. Here’s to another great year of reading and book chat in 2025!

Ten haunting, atmospheric novellas I highly recommend

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November seems to be a very popular time for themed cultural events, ranging from German Lit Month (which focus on books originally written in the German language) and #Noirvember (a tradition of watching film noir classics throughout the month). There’s also Cathy and Rebecca’s Novellas in November reading project, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

So, to tie in with this particular theme, I’m highlighting ten haunting, atmospheric novellas, each of which could be read in an afternoon. In fact, something Cathy said in a recent comment gave me the idea for this post when she mentioned how much the novella form seems to suit dreamlike, enigmatic stories. It’s hard to sustain this type of mood across a longer novel, but the novella-length format feels just about right – long enough to build up the atmosphere but short enough to stop it from dissipating.

So here are my ten picks. As ever with these themed posts, I’ve summarised each recommendation below, but you can read the full reviews by clicking on the title links. Happy reading!

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr

A sublime, deeply affecting book about love, loss and the restorative power of art. Set in a small Yorkshire village in the heady summer of 1920, Carr’s novella is narrated by Tom Birkin, a young man still dealing with the effects of shell shock following the traumas of WW1. A Southerner by nature, Birkin has come to Oxgodby to restore a Medieval wall painting in the local church – much to the annoyance of the vicar, Reverend Keach, who resents the restorer’s presence in his domain. However, there is another purpose to Birkin’s visit: to find an escape or haven of sorts, an immersive distraction from the emotional scars of the past. Above all, this is an elegant novella imbued with a strong sense of longing, a nostalgia for an idyllic world. It also perfectly captures the ephemeral nature of time – the idea that our lives can turn on the tiniest of moments, the most fleeting of chances to be grasped before they are lost forever. A masterpiece in miniature, full of yearning and desire.  

A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray by Dominique Barbéris (tr. John Cullen)

This beautiful, evocative novella is set in Paris on a Sunday afternoon in September, just at the crossover point between summer and autumn. The narrator – an unnamed woman – drives from the city centre to the Parisian suburb of Ville-d’Avray to visit her married sister, Claire Marie. As the two sisters sit and chat in the garden, an intimate story unfolds, something the two women have never spoken about before. Claire Marie reveals a secret relationship from her past, a sort of dalliance with a mysterious man she met at her husband’s office. What emerges is a story of unspoken desire, missed opportunities and avenues left unexplored. This haunting, dreamlike novella is intimate and hypnotic in style, as melancholy and atmospheric as a dusky autumn afternoon.

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri (tr. by the author)

This slim, beautifully constructed novella is an exploration of solitude, a meditation on aloneness and the sense of isolation that can sometimes accompany it. The book – which Lahiri originally wrote in Italian and then translated into English – is narrated by an unnamed woman in her mid-forties who lives in a European city, also nameless but almost certainly somewhere in Italy. There’s a vulnerability to this single woman, a fragility that gradually emerges as she goes about her days, moving from place to place through a sequence of brief vignettes. As we follow this woman around the city, we learn more about her life – things are gradually revealed as she reflects on her solitary existence, sometimes considering what might have been, the paths left unexplored or chances never taken. This is an elegant, quietly reflective novella – Lahiri’s prose is precise, poetic and pared-back, a style that feels perfectly in tune with the narrator’s world.

Territory of Light by Yūko Tsushima (tr. Geraldine Harcourt)

I loved this. A beautiful, dreamlike novella shot through with a strong sense of isolation that permeates the mind. Originally published in Japanese as a series of short stories, the novella focuses on a year in the life of a young mother, recently separated from her somewhat ambivalent husband. There is a sense of intimacy and honesty in the portrayal of the narrator’s feelings, something that adds to the undoubted power of the book. Themes of isolation, alienation and disassociation are heightened by the somewhat ghostly nature of the setting – an apartment located in a commercial building where the mother and child are the sole occupants at night. Strangely unsettling in tone yet thoroughly compelling.

A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano (tr. Brian Robert Moore)

Another atmospheric novella in which Giulia, the young woman who narrates the story, is drawn into the orbit of an enigmatic married couple – the lively, spontaneous Ada and her distant, pre-occupied husband, Paolo – while sheltering in the Italian countryside during WW2. A sense of connection swiftly develops between Giulia and Paolo, a kind of affinity or unspoken bond which flourishes in their shared silences, enhancing the delicate mood in the couple’s house. There is something dreamlike and hypnotic about this novella, as if the reader is viewing every development through a light, gauzy curtain, rendering everything with a hazy, shimmering glow. Romano excels in creating an intimate, emotionally charged atmosphere, highlighting the burgeoning relationships between Giulia, Paolo and Ada. It’s a beautiful ode to stillness and silence, all expressed in Romano’s subtle, poetic prose.

Baron Bagge by Alexander Lernet-Holenia (tr. Richard and Clara Winston)

Born in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, Alexander Lernet-Holenia served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, an experience which may have inspired his transcendent novella Baron Bagge, a haunting, existential tale of love, mortality and war set in the dreamlike hinterland between life and death. I loved this poignant, captivating little book, which could be in the running for my 2024 highlights. It’s quite a difficult book to summarise, so I won’t try to describe the plot. Just trust me when I say it’s a wonderfully captivating read that sets the surreal, heady dreamscape of yearning and desire against the harsh realities of war, conjuring a world in which the former just might prevail over the latter.

The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman

There is a long tradition of women writers depicting crushing mental health conditions in fiction, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s unforgettable short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) to Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963). The Shutter of Snow – a groundbreaking modernist novella by the American writer Emily Holmes Coleman – fits firmly into this tradition, portraying its protagonist’s fractured state of mind in haunting, luminous prose. First published in 1930, this semi-autobiographical novella draws on the time Coleman spent in a mental health institution after suffering a nervous breakdown in the mid-1920s. The haunting stream-of-consciousness-like style perfectly captures the fractured nature of the protagonist’s mind – a frenetic jumble of suppressed memories, delusions caused by her medical condition and the horrific reality of her imprisonment. In short, a claustrophobic whirlwind of a novella that feels way ahead of its time.

Love by Hanne Ørstavik (tr. Martin Aitken)

This haunting, dreamlike story of a neglectful single mother and her eight-year-old son will almost certainly get under your skin. Right from the very start of the book, there is something of a disconnect between parent and child, a sense of separateness or isolation that sets them apart from one another. The narrative unfolds over a bitterly cold night, during which these two individuals embark on separate yet strangely connected journeys, searching for their own sense of fulfilment in an uncertain world. A fascinating choice for book groups and solo readers alike – the ambiguous nature of the novella’s ending makes this a particularly unnerving read. A quietly devastating book.

Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin (tr. Aneesa Abbas Higgins)

Set out of season in a quiet seaside town close, Winter in Sokcho is a haunting yet captivating novella of great tenderness and beauty – a story encompassing themes of detachment, fleeting connections and the pressure to conform to society’s expectations. The narrator – a young woman who remains unnamed throughout – is something of a misfit in her community, her French-Korean origins marking her out as a source of speculation amongst the locals. Into her life comes Kerrand, a French graphic artist from Normandy whose speciality is creating comics. Almost immediately, there is a certain frisson to the interactions between the two, a connection that waxes and wanes as the days slip by. The book’s enigmatic ending only adds to its sense of mystery… 

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

At first sight, the story being conveyed in Cold Enough for Snow seems relatively straightforward – a mother and her adult daughter reconnect to spend some time together in Japan. Nevertheless, this narrative is wonderfully slippery – cool and clear on the surface, yet harbouring fascinating hidden depths within, a combination that gives the book a spectral, enigmatic quality, cutting deep into the soul. Au excels in conveying the ambiguous nature of memory, how our perceptions of events can evolve over time – sometimes fading to a feeling or impression, other times morphing into something else entirely, altered perhaps by our own wishes and desires. A haunting, meditative novella from a writer to watch.

Do let me know your thoughts on these books if you’ve read any of them. Or maybe you have some favourite atmospheric novellas of your own – if so, feel free to mention them in the comments.

The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman  

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There is a long tradition of women writers depicting crushing mental health conditions in fiction, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s unforgettable short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) to Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963). The Shutter of Snow – a groundbreaking modernist novella by the American writer Emily Holmes Coleman – fits firmly into this tradition, portraying its protagonist’s fractured state of mind in haunting, luminous prose.

First published in 1930, this semi-autobiographical novella draws on the time Coleman spent in a mental health institution after suffering a nervous breakdown in the mid-1920s. Following the birth of her son in 1924, Coleman contracted puerperal fever, a post-partum condition that has a devastating effect on the new mother’s physical and mental health, with symptoms including severe abdominal pain, headaches, fever, mania and delirium. In essence, the novella is inspired by Coleman’s own experiences of being trapped in such an institution and the crushing impact on her well-being – both mental and physical.

Like Coleman herself, the book’s protagonist, Marthe Gail, has been institutionalised following the birth of her son, whom she is prevented from seeing. Right from the start, Coleman plunges us straight into that unnerving environment, a world of penetrating lights, frightening voices and tortured souls. 

There were two voices that were louder than the others. At night when the red light was out in the hall and there was someone sitting in a chair in front of the door clearing her throat at intervals there would be the voices far down the hall mingling with sobs and shouts and the drones of those who were beginning to sleep. (p. 3)

The Shutter of Snow is written in a haunting stream-of-consciousness-like style, moving backwards and forwards between third- and first-person narratives without line breaks or speech marks to indicate these switches in point of view. Apostrophes are also absent from the text, which might sound a little odd, but fortunately everything works brilliantly on the page. Coleman excels at conveying what it must feel like to be Marthe as her wild, untethered thoughts flow freely despite the physical restrictions being imposed on her body. Stylistically, the novella perfectly captures the fractured nature of Marthe’s mind, a frenetic jumble of suppressed memories, delusions caused by her medical condition and the horrific reality of her imprisonment.

You must get back into bed, they both said, you are getting excited again. Im not excited she screamed, cant you see its because youre all so crazy? She threw out her arms and her voice penetrated the bars and drew out their metal marrow. (p. 21)

To keep her quiet, Marthe is wrapped up tightly in strips of material, placed in bed, covered in blankets and hemmed in with a rough canvas sheet. Somewhat ironically, her sore body is wound up like an Egyptian mummy or ‘French doll’ with only a small hole in the canvas sheet for her head. Resting is nigh on impossible, partly because Marthe finds it impossible to sleep on her back; consequently, the mind-numbing effects of insomnia only exacerbate her shattered state of mind.

Her veins ran coldly in her arms. Her face was very hot. She was lying with her arms bound behind her back in the spiralled casket with the canvas sheet all over. There were many steps out in the hall. There had been her father who had whistled, and she had whistled back. She answered every time to let him know that she was there and knew him. But he had never come in, only slinking outside in the hall. They would not let him in. (p. 37)

Moreover, this sense of entrapment is augmented by Marthe’s visions or suppressed memories, which frequently tap into thoughts of burial and death. Incidentally, it’s often difficult to distinguish between dreams, delusions and suppressed memories in this novella, mostly because Coleman is so effective at blurring the margins between what is real and what is imagined in the mind.

There had been the burial. She was lying quietly in the bed and being covered over her face. She was carried quietly out and put in the casket. Down, down she went in the rectangle that had been made for her. Down and the dirt fell in above. Down and the worms began to tremble in and out. Always she had kept telling of it, not one word of it must be forgotten. It must all be recorded in sound and after that she could sleep. (p. 6)

At various points, Marthe pleads with her husband to take her away from this place; however, he simply looks away, saying she will be out very soon, as long as she is quiet. (Being told to be quiet is a constant admonishment here, as Claire-Louise Bennett highlights in her excellent introduction to the recent Faber Editions reissue.)  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Marthe is left feeling that her husband is in league with the doctors, all of whom seem to be conspiring together to keep her locked up and away from her baby. To have even a hope of being released, Marthe must conform, submitting herself to the institution’s power structure and punitive rules.

Punishments are meted out to those who do not comply with the doctors and nurses’ commands. The use of the canvas sheet is a common punishment, with confinement to the dreaded ‘Strong Room’ being reserved for those considered too difficult to handle. Inevitably, there are bursts of defiance as Marthe seems determined to take revenge on those who are imprisoning her – Miss Wade for instance, who manages one of the wards.

Alongside the undoubted cruelty on display here, there are bursts of poetic beauty, such as in the following passage where Marthe is allowed to play the piano.

They came like fluttering phantoms out of dimly lighted corridors, and all at once she plunged with two hands into the keys and came swiftly from beneath her hands the portion of the dream she had been keeping. Gold and black and even, the full crescendo of the dream, up the keys and into the black beyond. She leaned her body to the keys and bent her head above them and from the wide spaces between her fingers burst forth yellow birds to the sun. (pp. 103-104)

There’s also a subversive, feminist thread running through the narrative, which emerges as the book unfolds. Marthe is one of many women constrained by the institution’s restrictions, highlighting the collective power that could be harnessed, if only the women were able to unite in a quest for freedom.

The only thing to do is to put hammers in the porridge and when there are enough hammers we shall break down the windows and all of us shall dance in the snow. (p. 11)

Coleman uses surreal, dreamlike imagery to mesmerising effect throughout, augmenting the novella’s strange, dreamlike mood by lacing the text with recurring symbols, such as snow, oranges and pine needles. I couldn’t help but imagine Marthe’s story unfolding as a sequence of surrealist paintings in front of my eyes, in the style of Leonora Carrington’s or Remedios Varo’s artworks with their haunting, otherworldly symbolism and motifs.

He was coming today. It would be sometime before the red lights. He would come stalking in the door with his gentle hands and would smile at everything she said. He would look up from under his eyebrows and demand to know what she meant. He would have purple sandals and a crown of laurel. He would bring her a casket of roses and she would crush them on the floor. And there would be under his coat the little snow-haired baby with clenched hands. (p. 20)

The experience of reading this book feels utterly immersive, and while there is a narrative thread of sorts, largely driven by Marthe’s desire to enter the less restrictive Day Room and ultimately a permanent release, the book is primarily an exploration of the destructive nature of incarceration in a conventional, patriarchal society. As the novella unfolds, there are conflicts and tensions, instances of extreme cruelty and moments of poetic beauty, the shards of light contrastingly starkly with the bleakness of the institution. It’s also a book where the modernist style and fractured subject matter are working together in perfect harmony – a claustrophobic whirlwind of a novella that feels way ahead of its time. Highly recommended!

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver  

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The black American writer Diane Oliver had a promising career ahead of her when she died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 at the age of twenty-two. A graduate student at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Oliver had published four short stories during her lifetime, with another two following posthumously. These six stories and eight previously unpublished pieces make up Neighbors and Other Stories, a remarkably striking collection recently issued as part of the uber-reliable Faber Editions series.

Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, Diane Oliver was writing at a time when racial segregation in America was being challenged through the civil rights movement, but longstanding prejudices remained entrenched. Much of her work portrays life for black women – frequently young black women – in 1960s America, complete with the abuse and microaggressions that characterised these people’s days. Nevertheless, despite the undeniably powerful nature of these themes, Oliver’s fiction is subtle, taking in a range of experiences that feel authentic and true. Here we see racial discrimination, both explicit and less overt, social exclusion, abandonment, exoticisation, activism, interracial relationships and much, much more, giving a rich insight into black lives in this crucial period of history.

Several stories depict the fear and anxiety present within the black community at the time. In the titular piece – one of my favourites in the collection – Oliver portrays a family’s conflicted emotions the night before the youngest son is due to start at a new school. But what makes this situation so unusual is that Tommy will be the first black child to attend a previously all-white facility. Unsurprisingly, opinions within the community are divided, with strong views being expressed on both sides. In fact, the family has already received threatening letters and abuse, and as the night unfolds, their home comes under attack.

No one heard her speak, and no one came over to see if they could help; she knew why and did not really blame them. They were afraid their house could be next. (p. 20)

Central to the story is the family’s moral dilemma. Should they send young Tommy to the newly integrated school, knowing that he will be bullied and ostracised for months, or do they relent and put his emotional well-being first? Someone must be the first for progress to be made, but does it have to be Tommy?

This theme is developed further in The Closet on the Top Floor, when Winifred – who is fed up of being ‘the Experiment’ – is sent by her civil rights activist father to a prestigious girls’ college where all the other pupils are white. Oliver is adept at illustrating the different forms of racial prejudice at play here, from social exclusion (in the first passage below) to more explicit slurs (in the second). For clarification, Norma is Winifred’s roommate, while Ellen is Norma’s friend.     

Everybody was in a sorority but Winifred. She didn’t mind. Somehow she had become used to not being invited and when she received an invitation to a sorority tea—by mistake, of course—she very casually threw the envelope into the wastepaper basket. (p. 31)

“Norma?” Ellen asked, her voice sounded puzzled. “Do you think all of them are like this, or just her?”

“I don’t know,” Norma answered. “Our maid takes food, but she never really tries to hide anything.” (p. 36)

As the weeks pass, Winifred withdraws from college society, hibernating in her room and stockpiling food before Norma moves out. This sad, unsettling story highlights the devastating impact of racism – both casual and more deliberate – on a young woman’s mental health.

The detrimental effect on health – both physical and mental – is a recurring theme in several of these stories, perhaps most overtly in Health Service, where an impoverished woman, Libby, and her four children must walk for hours to see a doctor. White authority figures, such as nurses, managers, employers and police officers, are particularly aggressive in their treatment of black women, as illustrated in the following scene. In short, the clinic nurse shows no appreciation of Libby’s personal circumstances and the challenges of caring for young kids.  

“Your kid’s in here raising sand,” the nurse said. “We ask you people not to deposit your children in the waiting room. When only one’s sick, why don’t you leave the rest at home?” (p. 71)

After a tiring journey and a long, frustrating wait (the children are tired and fidgety), Libby is told to come back another day as the doctors will be finishing early. But Libby will be working the rest of the week, and with no husband on the scene, it’ll be hard for her to return.

These heavy-handed authoritarian attitudes also come into play in Before Twilight, when Jenny and her three friends enter a whites-only tea room determined to be served. It’s one of several stories where Oliver subtly drops hints about her characters’ backstories, fleshing out the broader context in coolly nuanced ways.

Jenny looked down at her mother’s hands, seeing the knuckles swollen in the middle of each finger. She knew what she was thinking about. The father of one of her friends had found the charred body last spring. Since then she guessed everybody had just stopped talking about voting. (p. 43)

Jenny’s mother doesn’t want her girl getting mixed up in any trouble, fearful of what might happen, but Jenny is swayed by her friend Hank, a civil rights activist intent on making a stand. A thoroughly unsettling story laced with a sense of dread.

When the Apples are Ripe also features a character eager to take an active role in the civil rights movement, dividing opinion within his family. In contrast to some of these other pieces here, this is a hopeful, touching story with an unexpected ending.

In Mint Juleps Not Served Here, Oliver shows us just how far one family, the Macks, will go to protect their child from bullying and racial abuse.

The town with all of the pale faces that ruined her baby frightened and angered her. But she and Mr Mack knew better than to become angry in their town. (p. 79)

However, their off-the-grid existence in the depths of a large forest is threatened when an inquisitive young social worker comes looking for their house. This darkly unnerving story has the power to shock…

“No Brown Sugar in Anybody’s Milk” is a fascinating story that starts in familiar territory – a black maid being bossed about by her privileged white employer – only to end up somewhere different with a rug-pull at the end.

I’d also like to mention four stories as important illustrations of Oliver’s breadth. In Banago Kalt, three American friends from college, Millie, Rita and Karen, stay with a Swiss family for the summer as part of an educational trip. While Rita and Karen (both white) are warmly welcomed, it is Millie (black) who generates the most curiosity amongst the locals. Everyone wants a piece of Millie, and she is exoticised wherever she goes. While all this attention is well-intentioned, it doesn’t always feel that way for Millie, who often finds it funny and unnerving. There are shades of Nella Larsen’s excellent novella 1928 Quicksand here, highlighting the damaging fetishisation of black culture and individuals – an issue that remains in some segments of society today.

In The Visitor, Oliver focuses on the tensions between Alice, a well-to-do stepmother of high social standing, and her disdainful stepdaughter, Katie, when the latter comes to stay. This excellent story explores class conflicts, differences in aspirations, and the damaging effects of making assumptions about someone based on one’s own views.

Alice thought she detected a slight smirk on her face. The child was unnerving, she reminded her of a wizened old lady in a child’s body. (p. 118)

Spiders Cry Without Tears – one of the standout pieces here – explores an interracial relationship from a white woman’s perspective. When Meg, a divorced white woman with a teenage son, starts seeing a black doctor named Walt, she finds herself excluded from social events, even when she tries to keep the relationship under wraps. This beautifully developed story is far more layered than this brief description suggests.

While short story collections can often be mixed, all of Oliver’s stories hits their marks for me, which is quite a feat. Even the experimental Frozen Voices – a startling tale of the messy, entangled lives of four young friends – is wonderfully raw and evocative. It’s a dazzling example of Oliver’s potential as a writer.

Come on, Jenny, wanna dance? Soft as April rain, smooth as a quiet mountain lake, as mysterious as an ocean, as dangerous as white water in deep rivers, she drops from a white cloud and falls to a green, a raindrop on a leaf. Dark, bloody drops of beer and wafer chips of flesh, a communion of human love. (p. 218)

So, to summarise then, these excellent stories skilfully portray various aspects of life for the black community in 1960s America, just as the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum. There is a richness of experience here, taking in a wide range of scenarios and moral questions, many of which remain relevant today. Oliver’s style – strong on the grinding horrors and microaggressions of daily life – has drawn comparisons with Shirley Jackson, Nella Larsen and Toni Morrison, highlighting her literary promise and skills. It’s always tragic when a talented writer dies young, but it seems especially cruel in this instance. Bravo to Faber for publishing this terrific collection, which I strongly urge you to read.

(My thanks to the publisher and the Independent Alliance for kindly providing a review copy.)

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy

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One of the most exciting literary developments in recent years has been the emergence of new imprints specialising in rediscovered gems – lesser-known or neglected writers given a new lease of life through carefully curated reissues. The Faber Editions series is proving to be an excellent source of forgotten classics, championing voices from the past that speak to our present. I think I’ve read seven of these books now, and they’ve all had something thrilling and original to offer.

Hackenfeller’s Ape – the debut novel by the British writer, critic and political activist Brigid Brophy – is a recent addition to the list, and what a brilliant choice it is, too. By turns witty, playful, beautiful and sad, this highly original novella is a provocative exploration of man’s treatment of animals, particularly those closest to us on the evolutionary scale. Moreover, the book feels eerily prescient, particularly in a world where animal rights, sustainability and various environmental issues have risen in importance in recent years.

‘When my species has destroyed itself, we may need yours to start it all again.’ (p. 27)

Brophy’s mischievous story revolves around Professor Clement Darrelhyde, a scientist specialising in studying apes. As the novel opens, the professor is in the midst of a project at London Zoo where he hopes to observe the mating ritual of two Hackenfeller’s Apes, Percy and Edwina. These apes, which hail from Africa, rarely mate in captivity, and details of their courtship rituals are little known, hence Darrelhyde’s interest in the study. Percy, however, is not playing ball, spurning Edwina’s advances much to the latter’s (and the professor’s) dismay. Even Darrelhyde’s enthusiastic singing – he is a lover of Mozart’s operas – fails to do the trick.

If the Chimpanzees’ Tea Party, which sometimes took place on a nearby lawn, was a rollicking caricature of human social life, here was a satire on human marriage. Separated by the yard or two that was the extent of their cage, not looking at one another, tensed, and huffy, Percy and Edwina might have been sitting at a breakfast table. (p. 9)

The Hackenfeller, we learn, is the closest creature to man in evolutionary terms, and Brophy does an excellent job of giving us hints into Percy’s character – particularly his apparent confusion and suffering. At times, the ape seems almost human – to Darrelhyde at least.

Nonetheless, Percy’s rebuttal was more than an animal gesture. He disengaged himself with something the Professor could only call gentleness. He seemed to be perplexed by his own action, and imposed on his muscles a control and subtlety hardly proper to his kind. His own puzzling need to be fastidious appeared to distress him as much as Edwina’s importunity. After their entanglements he would turn his melancholy face towards her and seem to be breaking his heart over his inability to explain. (p. 13)

One day, the professor’s observations are rudely interrupted by the arrival of Kendrick, an ambitious, self-assured young man intent on commandeering Percy for a scientific mission. Percy, it seems, is to be propelled into space, destined to be a guinea pig for experimental purposes – a test case, if you like, for humans to follow. The professor, for his part, takes an instant dislike to Kendrick, determining to save Percy from this inhumane endeavour.

Brophy’s skills with witty, pithy dialogue are put to excellent use here, particularly in the exchanges between Darrelhyde and Kendrick, highlighting the absurdity of the situation to great effect.

‘What do you mean, Percy is going to go? Where’s he going? Who’s going to take him?’

‘Percy is being called to higher things.’

‘Called?’

‘Commandeered, if you like. Liberated.’ […]

‘And who is going to make off with Percy?’

‘The outfit I’m with.’

The Professor paused a minute, then asked: ‘By whose authority does your “outfit” propose to take Percy?’ He felt his question turned to ridicule by the mock-dignity of the animal’s name.

‘The powers that be’, Kendrick replied. ‘It’s pretty much top priority.’

‘What is?’

‘The whole project. Your Percy’s a V.I.P.’ (pp. 20–21)

What follows is a delightfully zany caper in which Darrelhyde enlists the help of a pickpocket, Gloria, in the hope of liberating Percy, thereby saving him from being blasted into space. Gloria too has experienced the cruelties of captivity, having been imprisoned for breaking and entering following an earlier spell in borstal. Furthermore, she also understands the indignities of being observed by others – in her instance, psychiatrists probing her upbringing and motives for stealing. It would be unfair of me to reveal how this unconventional story plays out, save to say that Brophy has a few surprises in store for Darrelhyde – and for Kendrick, too!

Naturally, there’s a degree of irony to all this, especially in the professor’s own motives for the project. While Darrelhyde seems to have Percy’s welfare in mind, why should his studies of animals’ mating rituals in captivity be any more acceptable than Kendrick’s space exploration plans? It’s a question that ran through my mind as I was reading this excellent, thought-provoking book.

This was, moreover, the only species which imprisoned other species not for any motive of economic parasitism, but for the dispassionate parasitism of indulging its curiosity. (p. 4)

Brophy was an active animal rights campaigner herself, championing pacifism, humanism and vegetarianism amongst other causes. As noted in the Faber Editions reissue, her 1965 Sunday Times manifesto, The Rights of Animals, catalysed the modern animal rights movement, establishing Brophy as a trailblazer in this respect. Central to the novel are questions about which species is more absurd: the human or the ape? And conversely, which of the two is more deserving of our sympathy? I doubt it will surprise you to hear that Brophy, through her razor-sharp intelligence and playful wit, shows man to be more dysfunctional, foolish and mercenary than his animal counterparts by quite some distance. It is the ape that emerges from this story with humanity and dignity, not the supposedly more evolved homo sapiens.

I love how this nimble, playful novella touches on some big themes in an amusing and engaging way. There’s a skill to achieving this feat without the story feeling preachy or heavy-handed, and Brophy manages this tension beautifully. There’s also some lovely descriptive writing here, with Brophy conjuring up the scorching, arid atmosphere of early September in a suitably evocative way. I’ll finish with a passage from the opening page, a scene-setter for this highly creative story, which I can thoroughly recommend. 

In the central meadow they were playing cricket. Westward, the shouts and splashes of the boating lake lingered, like gentle explosions, above the expense of shallow water. North-west, the canals stood black and transparent, like Indian Ink, between banks, mottled by sun. (p. 3)

(My thanks to the publisher and the Independent Alliance for kindly providing a review copy. This review also contributes to Karen and Lizzy’s #ReadIndies project, which runs to the end of Feb.)