The ultimate unreliable narrator.

Twelve year old Edith lives permanently in her father’s theatre, the only theatre remaining in Edwardian Norwich. She cannot leave for the curse put upon her when she was a baby ruled that if she were ever to leave, the theatre would fall down. Then the person who put the curse on her exploded. (It did happen in a theatre after all.) Now Edith’s got a play of her own in mind that she wants her theatrical staff-family to put on: never having left the theatre, Edith’s done a monumental amount of reading, has learned all there is to know about Norwich (she probably knows more than residents who may traverse it freely) and has learned that a large number of children have gone missing over the years and the culprit is a nasty old woman called Mawther Meg. As her father’s doppelganger understudy confuses her, Mr Measly keeps trying to get her to hug him, her father’s four dead wives’ clothes remain in his rooms, Aunt Bleachy calls her bucket and talks lovingly about her Mop, and father’s new fiancé tries to lure Edith out down the steps of the main entrance (she’s the heiress to the Beetle Spread factory, made of exactly that ingredient) Edith attempts to outwit them all, stay away, and write the truth about what happened to the children.

Edward Carey’s Edith Holler is a bonkers and often confusing book about a young girl’s struggle to be noticed in a way that is full of respect and care, to be listened to. It’s a phenomenal piece of literature and art (Carey’s drawings are included) and is a delight to read. To quote the oft-mentioned-by-Edith Hamlet, ‘To be or not to be’ is precisely the question. Who, what, and, sometimes, where, is Edith? You’ll change your mind very often while reading this book.

On the one hand you have, as stated, an unreliable narrator – it can get incredibly frustrating being in Edith’s head, you’re stuck to her narrative like she’s stuck to her theatre – and on the other hand you have something incredibly true. Confusing? Yes, it is. The thing with Edith Holler – referring to the entire book here rather than the character, though the book and character may be one and the same, who knows? – is that it is wholly theatrical. Edith’s narrative is like a monologue – it is a monologue, just one by a child so, unlike your usual monologue plays, it goes on a bit due to lack of maturity and lack of editing. She does ramble so. (Potentially necessary note: the book as a product of Edward Carey, author, is edited.)

Having written the bracketed sentence it makes sense to now mention the ‘reason’ for this book. This reviewer’s jury is undecided. Possibilities range from mental illness (and across the road is a mental hospital), to child abuse, to a play within a play or play in a book entirely, to puppetry and animation. Where you are indeed with Edith throughout, I think it’s fair to say you may never reach a complete conclusion, but isn’t that just the way with pieces of theatre (and literature) sometimes?

Carey’s theatrical concepts – we should maybe say ‘Edith’s concepts’ because if Edith were told she was a creation of an author originally from Norwich she’ll either self-destruct in fear or depression (that might be appropriate) or, likely as she is with Karl Baedeker the famous guidebook author, become rather obsessed – are both purely his own and taken from various plays. There’s blood and death everywhere, very often, a bit like Shakespeare; there’s children’s toys and dolls and we might be in a doll’s house, like a meta reference to Ibsen. Dolls house – add that to the list of possible ‘reasons’.

On toys, we need mention Carey’s drawings. Carey has included drawings in all of his works and they are always intriguing but I think it’s apt to say they’ve taken on a particularly important role here – pun definitely intended. (Add a child playing with her toys to the list of possibilities.) The drawings present a very strong case for a particular meaning and reason for the whole book, for Edith and everyone else. So too does the fact that, if you visit Carey’s website, you’ll find a printable card theatre with a range of characters included.

I’ll include a single other character of note, though there are more – Edith’s father’s fiancé, whose introduction in the book ushers in a new era and many new questions for the reader. Or are we, perhaps, members of the audience as well?

I’m starting to sound like Edith, I fear, so here’s a related yet different topic: Carey’s necessarily limited portrayal of Norwich is appealing. It is in fact due to the limitations Edith’s life sets on the text that perhaps makes it stand out all the more – there’s a lot of very specific street-to-street facts here, a bit like the guidebook Edith loves (oh this is all getting too meta!) that allow you to know a nice amount of information about this city in its Edwardian form. Norwich too is part and parcel of this text – there are again many inspirations, and literary metaphors abound.

Edith Holler, then – again the book, not the girl, though the girl is probably stomping her feet at me for the twice-now dismissal of her person – is quite the literary feat. The literary (genre) elements, the intertextuality, the use of and grounding in its location, and of course the overriding theatricality and artistic nature of it are superb. Best read alongside reader-led research into the various parts (especially if you do not know Norwich – the nearest this reviewer has been is Lowestoft and that as a child) unless you are well informed already. It’s a great experience.

I was sent this book in order to interview the author.

Publisher: Gallic Books (Belgravia)
Pages: 390
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-913-54778-3
First Published: 31st October 2023
Date Reviewed: 30th August 2024

Isolation before it was cool.

Publisher: Canongate
Pages: 295
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-786-89155-6
First Published: 24th April 2019
Date Reviewed: 28th April 2020
Rating: 4/5

Richards looks into the value of various isolated buildings and places – sheds, Svalbard, a Martian research centre, a Japanese temple high in the hills – seeking to find out why we are drawn to them and how they inspire creativity. The book includes elements of Richards’ previous books on art, nature, and travel, pulling the subjects together.

I’ve always been drawn to simple structures (p. 57).

The places Richards visits sometimes gel with what you might expect – a small building in the wilds of Iceland; Desolation Peak in America which Jack Kerouac visited and wrote about – but others are very much the opposite; when looking at isolation, you might not think of those places that inspire community. Chapters focused on the research centre in Utah – which Richards spends mostly on an interview (some chapters are more about his own experience, others focus on other people) – and in Svalbard, where the author is never alone, call into question our inherent need for society.

The Svalbard chapter is particularly poignant – as it shows the requirements for others (away from the tourism people need to be careful given the danger) so too does it show how society, humanity, can have a detrimental effect. As much as we may enjoy the isolation, the impact of it – the continual movement of people through it – so too does the ecosystem become impacted. Perhaps the most notable part of the book is Richards’ contemplation and further discussion with the reader of the role humanity plays in the life of the polar bears, in which he recounts the story of bears drowned in the sea as they have to go further and further out to find slabs of ice; having memorised where the slabs were, there comes a problem when they are not found. The irony in being able to witness the movement of polar bears whilst being a part of the problem is not lost on the author.

I believe the more we know about our world, the more we see, the more deeply we engage with it, understand its nature, the more likely we are to be good custodians and reverse our most selfish destructive behaviour (p.10).

Shedboatshed – the chapter about the modern artwork of the same name – will likely divide opinion; it’s certainly one of the more prominent examples of the unexpected. The art work, by Simon Starling, is covered in an effective two step process – a museum visit and an interview with the artist – marking a change in the proceedings. It’s a different travel and a wholly new concept of isolation – the piece is, both in short and literally, made up of a shed that was then dismantled and recreated as a boat, taken to the water, and then rebuilt into a shed; if you like modern art or are even just interested in the idea from afar, it’s a fascinating chapter, but nevertheless may take some getting used to. If it’s not your sort of thing, it may feel like you’ve started a different book. Whichever side you fall on, however, you will probably appreciate Richards’ motive for discussing it, as well as the various extra ideas surrounding it. (One such is the idea that the display of the piece as well as its practical use adds to its history and conversation). The spin off mid-chapter to briefly cover Roald Dahl’s writing hut also helps provide more context, however much it may seem fairly far from Shedboatshed.

The book’s language and general structure make it an easy read. Richards very much takes the reader with him, always addressing them, and the focus on a few core concepts for each location means an in-depth look at what the author deems most important and interesting to relate; you don’t always get a ‘full’ feel for everything but the attention to the overall theme means a more coherent book.

Richards’ enthusiasm for the places and the travel ensures you come away from Outpost with a fair amount of knowledge, and serviceable knowledge, too. It is in many ways – inevitably? – escapist, but the various points of poignancy in it leaves you with much to think about.

I have interviewed the author.

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Speaking to Dan Richards about Climbing Days, and Outpost (spoilers included)

Charlie and Dan Richards discuss asking to join well-known people for lunch and producing fascinating interviews for your book, travelling the less beaten paths of your mountaineering great-great aunt, finding society in isolated places, and looking ahead to how we might continue to approach humanity’s harming of nature after the benefits to scaling back have been shown by this current crisis.

If you’re unable to use the media player above, this page has various other options for listening.

Not being admitted, or keeping one’s distance?

Publisher: Sceptre (Hodder)
Pages: 305
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-473-63832-7
First Published: 11th August 2016
Date Reviewed: 6th December 2016
Rating: 4/5

Following his father’s death, Jay flies to Berlin to find his mother to hand over the keys to the family home; Yuki has been absent as long as Jay can remember yet his father still wanted her to have the house. Yuki’s teenage years and early adulthood were troubling times; as an artist and Japanese American growing up in the 1960s she always felt uncomfortable, distanced, and the few relationships she does have are not enough to change that, particularly as they aren’t all healthy.

Harmless Like You is a rather well-written dual narrative novel that looks at discomfort, identity, isolation, and social-racial issues in mid twentieth century America, in turn examining the effect of an absent parent on their child as well as the effects of artistic frustration on a person. Both subtle and to the point it uses interesting turns of phrase to create something rather new and full of interest but doesn’t quite make the most of the setting and characters.

The writing in this book is really something. Hisayo Buchanan favours a poetry in prose sort of style that fits somewhere between the experimental and the more usual, a narrative that could have easily swung towards the self-indulgent but doesn’t. Rarely does the author fall back on common metaphors, preferring to look at things in a different manner that fits well with the idea of an artist, a very creative style wherein you can see how much time has been spent on every sentence:

The small, female oblong stood in the shadows beyond the doorway. Sun buttered the sidewalk where I stood, but she was dressed for a colder season.

In the playground, bodies swirled to the door like so much dish soap draining away.

Told in both the first and third person – one for each of the two narratives – the use of the two ‘persons’ boosts the overall atmosphere of distance and closeness; Jay, very much a part of society and in a loving relationship, even if it’s been strained recently by the birth of his daughter, speaks to the reader directly; Yuki, always feeling at arms-length to everyone around her and only at peace in an abusive relationship in which equates outbursts to love, is chronicled by the author. Yuki would probably be happy to narrate herself… sometimes. This use of third person means that although you spend a great deal of time with Yuki, far more than with Jay, and thus know a lot about her, the lack of the character’s own voice means you are distanced from her yourself. In any other book this would be a problem, and indeed some might say that even here it’s a problem, but it does reflect the author’s character and point well.

Yuki was a chīzubāgā [cheeseburger] – enough to make a Japanese person sick and still inauthentically American.

Of points, Hisayo Buchanan uses a fine mix of the frank and the subtle. Yuki struggles with knowing where she fits in the world due to her heritage, ethnicity, and nationality – she looks Japanese and speaks it but does not want to live in Tokyo because it would not be a good fit, would not offer her what America can, which are things that match who she is. What and who she is are questions she asks herself often if not in so many words. In the same vein, this is a book in which Asian Americans – Japanese here – are both accepted and not, where many people have got past colour and many haven’t and the author shows both sides, where colour is irrelevant and unremarkable upon as well as that simple prejudice where it may or may not be discussed but certainly has an impact. It’s the latter that informs the text most, particularly because, like her usage of distance in her writing, the author shows unvocalised prejudice, the only vocalised questions and statements made by those who like Yuki and those who may or may not. It makes for an interesting reading experience because it allows Hisayo Buchanan to really look into Yuki’s anxieties, to show how many different elements make them up – she shows how the underlying feeling can have a big impact. Sometimes – we could even suggest it’s often – the girls who seem to dislike Yuki (because we see things from Yuki’s perspective ever time) have different reasons for disliking her, particularly as Yuki is what we’d now call flaky, other times you have to piece things together along with Yuki’s perception of what’s going on. And where there is room for debate, where it’s not definite whether Yuki’s thought is correct, there is Hisayo Buchanan’s frankness to show how Yuki has reached her opinion. (There is also a look at female friendship where distance and possible misunderstanding has eroded the connect, but this is distinct from the rest.)

Then there is the author’s own feeling, scattered throughout the text in a way that means you see it and the point of it but toes the line between the author being directly involved and not, about race and how we discuss it, of identity. It’s best to use an example:

‘So,’ Yuki’s boy asked. ‘Where’re you from?’
‘Six blocks away. Oh. My family,’ she replied. ‘Japan.’ When she moved back would she say she was from America?

There is also Yuki’s later exhibition, based on eating only white coloured food for a month, which is titled Shit’s Still Brown. It’s not commented on directly, but one can read subtext in it.

So this book is about being apart from people because of physical differences, perceived differences, and that stereotypical creative isolation – Yuki isn’t Cassandra sitting bin the sink, she’s Mr Mortmain in his room at the top of the house, staying away from relatives. Through its theme of artistry it also looks at the Vietnam war, Yuki using the Napalm girl photograph as a base for a photography series, contrasting the situation depicted with the childhoods she sees in action on the streets of America. It looks at artistic frustration and misunderstanding when Yuki photographs food for a series and people write to ask her about the restaurants instead of discussing the work itself.

And it looks at a life without a parent, parental neglect as well as purposeful separation, and the effects both have. Would Yuki have been happier if she’d not stayed with her friend and had followed her parents back to Japan? Would she have been a different person, capable of being a mother? Would she have left her abusive boyfriend earlier instead of finding comfort in the relationship? (That is something else the book looks at – why people stay, the reasons the have.)

This book does a very good job portraying characters – the main ones, at least; others aren’t so well drawn but that appears to be the point – and it does an excellent job in evoking the setting. It’s easy to imagine place and time. However the plot is minimal and this is only emphasised by the fact you know how Yuki’s life ends out because the author brings Yuki and Jay together as the introduction. The substance of this novel lies entirely in its themes and the ending isn’t particularly engrossing, Yuki remains roughly the same person as she begins. And as the theme work can be very subtle at times you do need to be happy with the idea of a gentle flow rather than something that you’re going to want to sit up and pay attention to. At times the writing becomes the best part. You may well very much enjoy the book but is it one you’d recommend to a friend?

Harmless Like You is a good début full of fine writing, well-written characters, but it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Yuki won’t be for everyone. And perhaps that’s also part of the point, falling very much in line with the thinking in the book. If you’re looking for something in particular, a literary element, you may find it middling; this is a book that uses broad strokes of the calligraphy brush liberally so there are patches where the ink inevitably misses.

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Fly away on my zephyr.

Publisher: The Friday Project (HarperCollins)
Pages: 510
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-008-10521-1
First Published: 30th July 2015
Date Reviewed: 8th October 2016
Rating: 4.5/5

An idea sparks an artistic journey – after a brief conversation about a decoration for a student bar, Richards sets about creating a model airship, which leads him to think about how artists work within their creative spaces. He decides to contact various people of the arts world, interviewing them in context with his thoughts. (Amongst the icons are Jenny Saville, The Manic Street Preachers, David Nash, and Dame Judi Dench.)

The Beechwood Airship Interviews is a work of non-fiction the defies genre. At once a slight memoir and an arts/culture book, it’s an intriguing work that sports an overall artistic interest that’s apparent no matter how much or how little you happen to know about the interviewees themselves.

Richards’ starting point is the eponymous airship – a zeppelin of wood he creates as a sculpture for his student union bar. It is through this that he comes to ponder creative spaces, an artist’s personal connection to the place in which they create their work.

Richards’ interviews tend to follow a basic network connection – he starts with Bill Drummond who often lends work to the student bar, then moves on to Richard Lawrence who is a printer Drummond knows, then to Stanley Donwood who knows Lawrence and so on. The interviews span several pages and are offset by photographs. White space between questions and Richards’ now usual footnotes mean that the book is not quite the possibly daunting length it infers itself to be.

The questions are what make this book, along with Richards’ joviality and writing in general. There are no queries as to favourite roles as there are on TV shows or in papers, for example; Richards’ mission in visiting the people was to be different, to achieve the exact ideas and answers he was interviewing them to find. Some of the thoughts conveyed here are really quite mind-blowing in that artistic, literary pleasurable way.

In amongst the interviews, then, is Richards’ journey through the airship creation, his travels between places – home, university – and general diary-type content. His personable style pulls you along during the brief introductory periods – the vast majority of this book is formed of the interviews (as you might expect!)

Something of great importance to Richards in terms of education is the way art courses are run, how they’ve changed to become a lot more about rules and regulations – working towards a construct – rather than about creative freedom and becoming the artist/writer/musician one is destined to be. His thoughts – blunt, no prisoners – form a large part of the end though the thread is there throughout.

You learn a lot thanks to these interviews. How particular people work, yes, but also specific ideas, concepts, that unless you happen to be well-versed in every subject covered will be compelling at some point. You get the set-up – the off-stage portion of his time with each person; the cups of tea, the phone call between Dame Judi Dench and her daughter, the banter.

But really it’s the power, the almost inevitability, of this book to really wow you at times – supposing you are interested of course – that makes it the success it is. Richards’ enthusiasm is infectious; he tells you everything, taking you along for the ride in its entirety. The book itself may be niche and all about Richards’ desire to learn for himself, but the angle he takes and his writing style means that you’re just as much a part of it yourself from the word ‘go’.

The book could be considered a little too long; it does cover a lot and at a couple of points goes into the sort of artist philosophy that might turn off non ‘arty’ types. But that’s the way of interviews and collections, there will always be something a bit less interesting, and it doesn’t affect the book beyond that nor for any particular length of time.

Speaking in the present, if you’ve read Richards’ later work – rather possible as this book is somewhat of an outlier – you’ll find a slight difference in style that’s interesting in terms of the writing journey; this book was published a good few years after it was written. The Beechwood Airship Interviews won’t suit everyone but in terms of today it’s safe to say that with the recent publication of Climbing Days the potential audience number has increased, because, particularly, if you liked that book, you’ll like this one too.

I’ve met the author a couple of times and have interviewed him.

Update, 14th December 2016: Changed second usage of ‘decoration’ to ‘sculpture’ to more accurately reflect the project specifications.

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Do not disturb.

Publisher: Scribner (Simon & Schuster)
Pages: 463
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-471-12672-7
First Published: 2nd July 2015
Date Reviewed: 28th November 2016
Rating: 4/5

It’s some time in the 1960s or 70s and Elspeth is living at Portmantle, a mansion and grounds on an island near Turkey, a place for the most talented artistically-minded people who are finding creating impossible. Elspeth has been there a number of years – how many exactly she’s not sure, watching, together with similar residents, others come and go whilst her own project evades her. One day a new resident turns up and won’t fall in line with the status quo. And Elspeth starts looking back at what led her to escape the world.

The Ecliptic is a great novel that is at once very different and rather familiar, a book in which the themes are those not often studied in fiction but the overall presentation resonates in a literarily-relatable fashion.

Wood has a lot to say about artists and the creative process; he uses the book as a base, the story as the means by which he dissects various thoughts, conversation, and points of debate, to a highly effective degree.

The mansion and grounds of Portmantle are, of course, a well-placed – literally! – device by which Wood can look at the way art of all types is often created in isolation at the behest of its creator. The solitude and freedom from distractions, from criticism and review, from opinions whether positive or not so. And no one need do their laundry at Portmantle, either. The only chore is, potentially, that of creating. It’s a haven, an artistic utopia.

But like all fictional utopias, things aren’t as perfect as they are first presented to both reader and residents. Wood’s Portmantle is full of rules – meal times, the ability to stay or leave – that replace all the distractions of sociability at home with things that are perhaps even more stifling to those creative minds. Even the rules regarding the journey to the mansion – don’t bring your possessions, disregard your name, take this many moves before a phone call (I’m simplifying it but that’s the basic idea) – are far more controlling than any professor’s university assignment. And no names, thank you. Pick up a new one because no one’s work should be referenced to or put in the context of another’s.

I walked up to the board as though it were a boy I had decided to kiss and streaked a layer of phthalo blue across the surface with a palette knife, the floppy baking kind my mother owned, making an impulsive shape upon the wood. There was no history standing on my shoulders then, no classical references hanging in my head like dismal weather. I was alone, uninfluenced, free to work layers of chalky stolen paint with a big lolloping knife, to smudge with my fingers, pad flat with my fist, thumb, scrape, and scratch. No judgements of technique arose in my mind, because I did not invite them, did not think to. I simply acted, expressed, behaved, made gestures of the knife that seemed unprompted and divined.

It is the way formal education can have an impact on one’s inspiration, raw talent and subsequent work, that is seen as bad. Wood doesn’t say as much directly about the positive impacts of lessons but then he doesn’t need to, it’s shown in the subtext and in references to other ideas.

Another thing that mills in the background, less studied presumably because Portmantle is fiction, is the way that taking time out of life in such a context would impact the eventual reception of the work created. If Elspeth joined Portmantle in the 1960s and has been there a long time without access to the rest of the world – years, decades even – then won’t much of what she creates be irrelevant? The world would have moved on. As much as we like older works we need, crave, new ones. The world is in fact the antithesis of what pianist James Rhodes recently said on the subject of classical music; Rhodes said that people should not write new classical music, that anything new will never match the work of the masters.

But new is surely inspired by a love of the old, is the natural result of that love, and to discourage it would be to lessen the popularity of the old.

It’s interesting that it’s the ‘short-termers’ at Portmantle, those disliked by Elspeth – who actually get work done, that Elspeth and crowd are those no nearer to finishing.

Does Portmantle keep culture away from humanity? One of the possible answers to the mystery of the place is a prison for the highly talented.

The creativity in general, in this book, is exquisite. Yes, there is a lot about the process of painting to the extent you’d think Wood an artist rather than a writer, but there’s a lot for readers of any artistic persuasion. Reams of paragraphs that beg quotation. We should dissect art somewhat but, as Wood’s use of psychiatry shows, dissections should be limited. Some things really aren’t related, they are the result of pure in-the-moment inspiration. Not everything has a meaning behind it and nor should it have to.

There are a couple of aspects that skim the top from this book. The ending – the reveal – which may be considered a bit too been-there-done-that. And the text – Elspeth is in her 20s in the 1960s yet she uses a lot of present day language, colloquialisms from the 21st century – ‘towel off’, ‘unseeable’, for example – rather recent terms and ways of speaking.

So The Ecliptic is imaginative, awesome in its studies and more than worth a read if you’re a creative type, but it does have some draw backs.

One to explore, this book will make you think, want to debate, and quite possibly make you want to create. Get your paintbrush/pen/instrument; you’ll be here for a long time but unlike Elspeth and co you’ll make use of every moment.

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

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