If I should forget before I wake…

Publisher: Black Swan (Random House)
Pages: 356
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-552-16413-9
First Published: 28th April 2011
Date Reviewed: 10th November 2016
Rating: 4.5/5

She wakes up in a bed next to a man she does not recognise. The mirror shows a woman much older than she is. It’s been years; Christine discovers she’s had an accident that means every night her memory is erased. She must trust her husband, the man in the bed.

Before I Go To Sleep is a fast-paced psychological thriller that repeats itself intentionally and remains a page turner from start to finish.

Christine is an unreliable narrator of a particular kind – if she could be, she’d be trustworthy. She’s as factually accurate as possible; you have to keep your wits about you. Due to Christine’s role as narrator, and the first-person viewpoint that entails, as the reader you are as in the dark as she is about everything. The only advantage you have is that Watson wants and needs to clue you in more than than he does Christine. The character takes things at face value so whilst it’s fair to say there’s an element of growing together – you and her – your journey is particularly engrossing.

The clue is in the genre; Watson doesn’t provide too many red herrings because he doesn’t need to. The success of this book lies in its ability to make you doubt and dissect everything and indeed you come to form most every possible conclusion out there. There’s a section towards the end where the narrative crawls, almost to a halt, and if you didn’t know otherwise you’d say Watson wrote too much; in actual fact what happens is that, having now exhausted all the possibilities, you’re just waiting to find out which it is.

If you worked it out early, you may be less enthused, though it’s likely you’ll appreciate what Watson has done and the work that went into it. This is perhaps where timing comes in – if you’ve read lots of books that sport the same/similar conclusion you likely won’t feel as compelled. This is the sort of book it pays to mull over after finishing, to look again at what Watson has done, at the editing that must have happened, at the timing, the structure, of it all.

The writing is good. There’s no time for descriptive passages and you wouldn’t remember them anyway. There are plenty of questions posed in the book and all are answered. Only one or two plot points may inspire frowns – situations at the end it would spoil the story to write about – the morality of relatives to patients, that sort of thing, if that makes sense. Are parts convenient? Yes. Does it matter? Not really.

Before I Go To Sleep forces you, at some undisclosed point, to look at a tough subject. Its mainstay is, as Renée Knight said recently, something that works because it’s real and could happen to anyone. It’s scary, it’s shocking, and it’s one heck of a ride.

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Dealing with sadness (crow).

Publisher: Faber & Faber
Pages: 112
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-571-32723-2
First Published: 24th August 2015
Date Reviewed: 9th November 2016
Rating: 4/5

A family in mourning is visited by a crow. Crow brings some havoc with him but he’s also there as Dad gets through the days without his wife – struggling to finish writing his book on Ted Hughes – and as the boys come to terms with life without their mother.

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is a rather experimental book steeped in literary history. Looking at grief both as a process and in the various guises it takes, it blends prose and poetry together with semi-autobiographical elements – Porter lost his father as a child – to become something very unusual indeed.

There is a lot to this book; it’s difficult to know where to begin. Let’s start with the style: Porter opts to eschew convention, deciding not to choose between poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction, commentary, study, fully-fledged plot, vignette. His book is the result of a vast mixing pot that is both confusing and compelling. Mind-blowing concepts within the whole compete alongside aspects that are difficult to define. It’s safe to say this book requires a lot of attention.

And a fair bit of knowledge. Whilst the book can just about be read without knowledge of its background subjects, your reading of it will be immensely improved by your having at least a basic idea of the lives and work of those who have influenced Porter. Chief amongst these is the poet Ted Hughes, whose book Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow is, not surprisingly, a major factor. Porter’s general interest in Hughes means that any knowledge is useful – and it pays to know about the poet’s relationship with Sylvia Plath.

Porter takes his inspiration for his Crow from Hughes but also from the bird itself. It is the sections written from Crow’s point of view that invite the most bafflement – the sentences are often a mess of words, onomatopoeia-like creations, and a general strangeness pervades. There is the idea of a metaphor – who or what Crow is, and how much he/she/it is related to Hughes’ Crow is a question that spans the entire book. Is this Death? Is this grief itself? Is it, even, Sylvia Plath? And why does Dad see Crow – because it suits Porter or because he’s working on a Hughes commentary?

On the stylistic note, the book uses three narratives – Crow, Dad, and ‘Boys’, the latter of which concerns the two sons but is written from one point of view, potentially to infer that at their young age the boys’ grief could be considered interchangeable, or maybe that their experiences are the same. Sections by the Boys are written in verse and meanings are split over a couple of lines. Much whitespace between narratives as well as lines and sometimes words mean that the book is even shorter than it appears, physically. And in many ways this is a good thing because of the amount of detail and commentary Porter has packed in.

To the stated grief, then; Porter has spared nothing. The book is at its most powerful when it’s examining the forms grief takes and how different people deal with it. Again metaphors and explorations take centre stage, with stereotypes and the idea that one must get over it always lingering nearby.

Take this, the Boys’ reaction to their father calmly coming into their room to tell them their mother has gone:

Where are the fire engines? Where is the
noise and clamour of an event like this?
Where are the strangers going out of their
way to help, screaming, flinging bits of
emergency, glow-in-the-dark equipment
at us to try and settle us and save us?

And this, wherein Dad works through both the metaphorical and literal detritus left in her wake:

She won’t ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus).

She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm).

And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday.

I will stop finding her hairs.

I will stop hearing her breathing.

As said, this book requires all your attention. It’s incredibly easy, even with context behind you, to lose your way and it can take work to find yourself again. This is where Porter’s leaving of titbits comes in handy, most noticeably around the middle where comprehension questions, of the English Literature lesson type, are added as part of the narrative.

So Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is hard work but can be very rewarding. But it is also a very unusual beast and fits a specific, niche, category. You have to be happy with the very experimental style.

A difficult book to recommend outright, Porter’s début will intrigue most, delight many, and confuse just as many too and your experience of it won’t necessarily lie in how much you do or don’t know of Porter’s literary interests.

Keep a look out for it, go after it even, and see what you think. It’s quite an experience.

This book is shortlisted for the 2016 Young Writer Of The Year Award. I’m on the Shadow Judging Panel.

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In all its flaws, in all its beauty.

Publisher: Jonathan Cape (Random House)
Pages: 45
Type: Poetry
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-224-10213-1
First Published: 9th July 2015
Date Reviewed: 1st November 2016
Rating: 4.5/5

Physical is a short collection of poems that’s focused on the male body and sexuality – relationships, encounters, day-to-day life. It uses a specific style to focus attention on a few ideas at any one time. (It is also apparently inspired by poet Thom Gunn – I don’t know enough about his work to comment on this properly; I can only say there is similarity in the themes and the approach to them.)

There are some fantastic passages in this book that have the power to leave you a little stunned in the way of all great poetry (that sort of pause effect this reviewer is coming to love). As it’s short it can be good to read it slowly and it pays to take your time over the lines, to really read into what is being said; McMillan often uses double meanings that are rather clever, a line ending acting also as the start of the next line.

taken allegorically     he is beating on himself
until the point at which the inner river of the word grace
runs passed and everything lays down in calm
and walking back across the stream to his possessions
he feels the bruise that is staining his thigh
and he wonders at the strength of one so smooth

One of the stand outs is the very first entry, Jacob With The Angel, which takes a biblical tale, looking at it from both the usual and another angle. It’s a variation full of artistic license and provocation that asks you not to look at the story in another way exactly, but in a way that asks you to consider a potentially different meaning or possibility behind the words. McMillan explains himself outright, saying, “taken literally” then “taken allegorically” – it’s a story exploration of possibilities that makes you admire the thinking behind it.

At the risk of making it seem as though this review only concerns the very first few poems (because an example of style using the third poem follows this paragraph), another stand out is Urination. The whole being just as blunt as its title, this piece looks at discomfort in public situations, childhood memories, having to use the toilet at home when in a relationship. It seems an almost odd choice of subject but McMillan makes it important, stylist choices making it so much more than you’d think it might be. (And to get away from the first poems the multiple-page-spanning-or-is-it middle section of the book is worth reading just for the use of white space.)

In terms of McMillan’s use of pause, white space, to denote meaning and so forth, The Men Are Weeping In The Gym – about power and things that are seen as weaknesses – is one poem that illustrates the method constantly and consistently, so that you can just extract a couple of lines from the rest to show the method in action. For example:

the bicepcurl     waiting     staring
straight ahead     swearing that the wetness
on their cheeks is perspiration

A good use of language, a play on grammar, sentence clauses, and when added to McMillan’s tendency to put words together that aren’t ‘supposed’ to be together but could be – twelveyearold; slowpunctured; shortflightstopover – words that in McMillan’s collection become their own entity, it’s quite something.

Quite something – that’s it in a nutshell. Physical is powerful, stunning, mind-blowing, but not quite perfect – a word which of course has value here because in the context of the collection not being perfect is sometimes the point. The collection repeats itself to interlink, to draw connections between poems, but it also repeats itself literally, subjects that are in reality separate scenes but on the page sound very similar. Is that a problem? The answer is subjective – it really depends on how much you’re enjoying reading about the themes; McMillan’s writing itself never waivers. It’s another reason to take your time.

However you feel, it’s safe to say that McMillan’s book is a valuable addition to the world of poetry. To be taken literally.

This book is shortlisted for the 2016 Young Writer Of The Year Award. I’m on the Shadow Judging Panel.

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We’ll meet again.

Publisher: Borough Press (HarperCollins)
Pages: 322
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-007-36147-2
First Published: 22nd May 2014
Date Reviewed: 16th August 2016
Rating: 3.5/5

Riley returned from WWI a changed man, half his jaw missing. Surgery made up for some of it; Nadine still wants to marry him though her family worry about his prospects – it doesn’t seem to matter to employers that he served his country when he’s disfigured and thus deemed a discomforting presence. Riley’s worried about how Nadine will view him and in turn Nadine is worried about Riley’s depression; she doesn’t care that his looks have changed. Then there’s Peter and Julia – Peter served with Riley and came back physically unharmed but the war has taken its toll on his mind. Julia, in an attempt to reach him, experimented with cosmetics and has damaged her skin. Will either couple return to how they were?

The Heroes’ Welcome is the sequel to Young’s previous book, My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You. This fact is not noted; fortunately the book works as a standalone or at least it seems to – readers of the first book say it does matter, that you need to read them in order. The Heroes’ Welcome is a fair look at disability in the context of the war, it just doesn’t have much of a plot or character development going on.

On that word, ‘fair’, it’s fair to say the book goes a good way towards showing social issues and personal rehabilitation but doesn’t go quite as far as one might hope. It shows PTSD and the effects of the disorder on families – one of those topics that doesn’t get looked at much – but the main bulk of the development in this way is confined to a few pages. Young knew about the hospitals and healing through the work of her aunt (I discovered this after having read the book) which means that when the subject is concentrated it’s special. In those few pages is a wonderful overview of what you’re already starting to understand, the juxtaposition of society saying, ‘welcome back and thank you for your service!’ and ‘I’m not sure you can do this work and anyway you’ll scare people – no job for you’. It both harks back to the post-war days and illustrates what is unfortunately still the case today.

The writing is pretty good. It flows well and in the main rings true, however there are some anachronisms – ‘epically’, ‘those ones’, and the rather odd ‘losable’, for example. Young slots a first person thought narrative into the third person narration which makes the text choppy at times. Phrasing can be vague.

Young was inspired by the work of another writer who used Homer in conjunction with the events of WWI, showing how related the ancient text is to the later war. It’s interesting but the sense of fascination and seeming originality in Young’s book is marred by this fact of copying – something only divulged in the afterword, after you’ve finished it. And if you haven’t read Homer or don’t know the stories well, it may be a problem. It may be best to read Homer or to get your knowledge of The Iliad down to pat first… which given the nature and length of that text…

In sum, The Heroes’ Welcome sports nice language, good ideas, and isn’t a bad read, but there’s not much going on and for all the promise in the veterans’ stories, the book is lacking in substance. The ending is a bit of a rushed, convenient, job. The book would work best as further reading, say if you’ve completed Anna Hope’s Wake and want something that looks at the war in a similar light. It’s not, as the quotation on the cover says, the book to read about the war if you’re only ever going to read a single one.

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Gaming. Ability.

Publisher: Sphere (Little, Brown)
Pages: 390
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-751-56327-6
First Published: 1st September 2016
Date Reviewed: 24th October 2016
Rating: 5/5

Alex and Jody’s relationship changed forever when Sam was born. Diagnosed with autism, it’s been a difficult journey that Alex hasn’t coped with. Eight years in, now at breaking point, Jody suggests a separation. Alex needs to learn to relate to Sam or leave the family home for good. But as Alex tries to deal with the devastating situation of his marriage, Sam discovers the video game, Minecraft, and a ray of hope shines in.

A Boy Made Of Blocks is a semi-autobiographical novel (excuse the oxymoron), about the relationship and communication in a family affected by autism. It is an excellent work in all ways, being at once a lesson in communication and autism in general taught by someone with first-hand knowledge of parenting a child with autism and a fun story of a very popular game we have in the factual world. And to round it off it’s just a very good, solid, read.

Stuart has a particularly engaging writing style. It flows well, it’s full of emotion without going into any sort of ‘brave’ or ‘inspiring’ territory, well written whilst bereft of anything literary which is absolutely of benefit in this case. You can read the autobiography between the lines of fiction and it’s just a wonderful reading experience.

‘All the standard parenting rules are out of the window,’ continues Matt. ‘Whatever will make this easier for you. The kids can watch movies, play video games and eat crisps for two days, we don’t care. We’ll deal with the fallout when we get back.’
‘Well, I’ve got Sam on Saturday…’
‘Bring him,’ says Matt. ‘Bring whoever you want. I’ll stock the fridge with beer – you can either drink it yourself or give it to the kids.’

It’s also rather funny. Laugh-out-loud only once in a while, it sports a general happiness, joviality, even, that’s down to the other parents’ positive outlook and, increasingly, Alex’s ever-more-optimistic outlook.

Because Alex isn’t always optimistic. In writing him, Stuart is showing very bluntly how people can see the difficulties and not cope with them. Whereas Jody has had to learn how to parent, Alex has used his work life to get away from home and so the book is a lot about the adjustment he must make. It’s far more a case of bad father than any of Sam’s tantrums. Alex must work out a way to communicate with Sam – as Stuart implies, the idea should be to work around problems rather than just say it’s impossible.

Whilst this reviewer cannot comment on the knowledge imparted with any particular expertise, from what she does know, it rings true. The main takeaway in this sense – if you’re looking for a book that presents autism and the parental experience from real knowledge – is that Stuart has a child with autism, of the same age as character Sam. The novel itself makes clear that Sam has high functioning autism so the book corresponds to that particular level of ability and of course it must be remembered that every person is different – one person with autism does not reflect every other person.

For all these reasons it hardly needs to be said – this book is incredibly important.

And due to the variety of subjects and the writing style it has vast appeal. It’s by no means just for those who are interested in or have autism. For example, the information and detailing of Minecraft should prove a literary delight for gamers. On this subject it bears noting that the use of Minecraft will inevitably, unfortunately, mean the book may lose some of its significance within a few/several years. The best time to read it is within that time, most especially if you don’t have experience of the game yourself as there will be lots of resources available to learn from.

(As a brief introduction for those who aren’t familiar, Minecraft is a multi-player game, playable over the internet if the person wants to share their game with others, that involves gathering building materials and making tools in order to create shelters and farms and so forth – all sorts of things really – on a blank/semi-blank landscape canvas. In this book’s case, the building is a vast castle based on the Tower of London. The game’s graphics are retro – in a time when we have rather sophisticated software, Minecraft harks back to 80s/early 90s nostalgia. It’s suitable for a variety of ages.)

The use of Minecraft presents a conflict for this reviewer: it has been noted by many gamers that not all the references in the book are factually correct, and indeed some will be noticeable to non-gamers also, for example Sam and Alex choose to start a game in ‘peaceful’ mode, turning off the monsters because Sam is not comfortable with the idea of them, but then a few pages later to Sam’s dismay monsters arrive anyway. It’s hard to say why there are incorrect references as Stuart plays Minecraft himself and as Games Editor of The Guardian is presumably very well informed. Perhaps it was an attempt to make it easier for people who do not play the game to understand it, but it presents a conundrum: this is an incredibly important book that in all other ways is absolutely superb. To give it less than full marks may be going against the idea that perfect should be perfect, but at the same time the Minecraft references themselves in the grand scheme of things do not seem so vital. (And you know how important research is to me, and that I am a gamer myself.)

So this book gets top points with the caveat that Minecraft players may on occasion feel very frustrated.

There are so many books out there, about autism, mental, and physical health in general, that are written by ‘experts’ with little true experience of the day to day, that A Boy Made Of Blocks shines brightly in its difference. If you want to know more about autism in the context of parenting, read this book. And if you’re looking for a good reading experience that doesn’t necessary fit into any category, this is the book for you. It’s so good it’ll give even the biggest reading slump a run for its money… or crafting tools.

I received this book for review from the publisher.

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