So I first read One Day in October 2015 as part of my 52 book challenge that year. I loved it. I can still remember bits from the novel almost 5 years on, not just the plot but the actual words in order. I can also still remember the text I got from my mother (I gave her the novel translated in Dutch for her birthday) when she'd finished it and was heart-broken in the same way I'd been. So with all this stay-at-home mayhem going on, I decided it was time for some rereading, and I picked One Day up again.
I still loved it. Even knowing what was going to happen, how everything was going to turn out, I loved the story, I loved the characters. Reading it again, I was struck by how cleverly the story turns in on itself, ending just where it began, a writer's trick I missed the first time around. Since finishing it, I've felt slightly sad, like the main characters are people I've come to know and spend part of my life with, and now they've somehow gone and all I have a memories. Bits of the story keep coming back to me, almost visually, as if I really was there and really did see it happen. Jonathan Coe says on the blurb: "You really do put the book down with the hallucinatory feeling that they've become as well known to you as your closest friends" and I couldn't agree more.
I also thought back of my own life 5 years ago and now, comparing the 29 year-old with the 34 year-old, wondering whether I identified more with the characters in the earlier part of the novel than in the second, as I did now. David Nicholls really knows how to write people, to put a person of a certain age and disposition on the page.
Plus, he is very very funny.
So if you haven't already, do read this novel. Ignore Sweet Sorrow, ignore Us, just read One Day.
Sunday 19 April 2020
Monday 13 April 2020
Girl, woman, other
It has been some time since I finished reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, but somehow I didn't feel reflective/introspective in a literary sense, so I haven't written about it. But now I've started reading another novel that will require thinking about, so before this one gets too far lost, I'll put something out here.
Girl, Woman, Other won the Man Booker last year, so traditionally it should have been my first read of 2020, but as the whole Man Booker committee decided to do things a bit differently this year (awarding the prize to two authors) I chose to do the same. I'd been reading Frankissstein, which also concerns issues of transsexuality and gender, but that didn't really hold my attention, so I decided to switch to this one, as it supposedly dealt with some similar issues. On the surface that is probably true, but in the writing style, character development, depth of themes and use of language things differ quite a bit. In favour of the latter, obviously.
The novel starts with Amma, walking to the premiere of her play at the National. She has been struggling as a black female playwright for years, but this feels like her big break. We learn about her past, present, the way she sees herself in society, and the way society has treated her. The next chapter is written from the point of view of Jazz, Amma's daughter, and concerns many of the same topics, but now seen through the lens of a confident millennial, finding her mother outdated the way children the world over do at some point in their lives. The next chapter concerns Dominque, Amma's playwright friend who moved to the US. And so on and so forth; we meet 12 characters, all women, all somehow connected to at least one other character in the novel. Slowly, the past of several generations begins to unfold, with all the drama that can take place in a human life.
The way the stories are interconnected is clear at first but becomes more opaque later on in the novel, until at some point I had a major a-ha moment when I could connect two storylines that seemed set far apart in space and time. Then the whole novel somehow came together, like a drawstring pulling the story tight. This felt like a magical moment, which was somewhat spoiled by the epilogue in which the author puts the connection between the two characters on a platter and pushes our face in it, as if it needed extra emphasis. She could easily have left that out.
This is the only major flaw of the novel, there are some other minor issues, cracks where you can see Evaristo working hard to keep the story together. Otherwise her writing style is very nice, similar to Sally Rooney and Anna Burns in that she doesn't use capitals or interpunction, so sometimes the lines
consist
of
just
one
word
for reasons of emphasis, or because a character is slowly dawning on a realisation. This might have been annoying or show-y in the hands of a less experienced author, but to me it felt like the novel flowed. Even when jumping in time or space from one part to the next, there were no hard stops or bumpy transitions within the chapters and I just kept reading and reading. The characters all felt unique and equipped with their own tone of voice and world view, which could sometimes be contested by the way other characters saw them, showing just how much we're willing to lie to ourselves about ourselves.
With all these black female characters the novel is sure to be put in the 'feminist' or 'black empowerment' corner (or both), but to me it just felt like real lives, of real people. Maybe the lives of people whose voices haven't been heard that often in literature, and I fully agree with the novel being awarded the Man Booker, but mostly because it tells stories of human nature, of human interactions and of human failure. It is an insight into 12 meaningful lives and experiences, and well worth reading.
Girl, Woman, Other won the Man Booker last year, so traditionally it should have been my first read of 2020, but as the whole Man Booker committee decided to do things a bit differently this year (awarding the prize to two authors) I chose to do the same. I'd been reading Frankissstein, which also concerns issues of transsexuality and gender, but that didn't really hold my attention, so I decided to switch to this one, as it supposedly dealt with some similar issues. On the surface that is probably true, but in the writing style, character development, depth of themes and use of language things differ quite a bit. In favour of the latter, obviously.
The novel starts with Amma, walking to the premiere of her play at the National. She has been struggling as a black female playwright for years, but this feels like her big break. We learn about her past, present, the way she sees herself in society, and the way society has treated her. The next chapter is written from the point of view of Jazz, Amma's daughter, and concerns many of the same topics, but now seen through the lens of a confident millennial, finding her mother outdated the way children the world over do at some point in their lives. The next chapter concerns Dominque, Amma's playwright friend who moved to the US. And so on and so forth; we meet 12 characters, all women, all somehow connected to at least one other character in the novel. Slowly, the past of several generations begins to unfold, with all the drama that can take place in a human life.
The way the stories are interconnected is clear at first but becomes more opaque later on in the novel, until at some point I had a major a-ha moment when I could connect two storylines that seemed set far apart in space and time. Then the whole novel somehow came together, like a drawstring pulling the story tight. This felt like a magical moment, which was somewhat spoiled by the epilogue in which the author puts the connection between the two characters on a platter and pushes our face in it, as if it needed extra emphasis. She could easily have left that out.
This is the only major flaw of the novel, there are some other minor issues, cracks where you can see Evaristo working hard to keep the story together. Otherwise her writing style is very nice, similar to Sally Rooney and Anna Burns in that she doesn't use capitals or interpunction, so sometimes the lines
consist
of
just
one
word
for reasons of emphasis, or because a character is slowly dawning on a realisation. This might have been annoying or show-y in the hands of a less experienced author, but to me it felt like the novel flowed. Even when jumping in time or space from one part to the next, there were no hard stops or bumpy transitions within the chapters and I just kept reading and reading. The characters all felt unique and equipped with their own tone of voice and world view, which could sometimes be contested by the way other characters saw them, showing just how much we're willing to lie to ourselves about ourselves.
With all these black female characters the novel is sure to be put in the 'feminist' or 'black empowerment' corner (or both), but to me it just felt like real lives, of real people. Maybe the lives of people whose voices haven't been heard that often in literature, and I fully agree with the novel being awarded the Man Booker, but mostly because it tells stories of human nature, of human interactions and of human failure. It is an insight into 12 meaningful lives and experiences, and well worth reading.
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