NaNo the other half: winner

The wrap up party for NaNoWriMo is called Thank God it's Over. I never really understood that name; sure, it was hard, but I usually finished at least a couple of days before the 30th, with an enormous margin to par from pretty much the first week. Not so this year. This year, it really felt like thanking the universe for this (self-afflicted, I am aware) ordeal to be over.
Which it now is! I just wrote the final of my 50,020 words, wrapping up the story and the storyline, finishing off my character's development and plunging me into one last day of November that is NaNo-free. I don't think I've ever written this many days consecutively, usually I'm so far ahead I can skip a day or two in between. Not so this year, although this year I also wanted to get all the badges, which means writing 21 days in a row. Some days, that meant I just wrote 100 words, or thereabouts. My word count graph per day looks like an interesting roller coaster:

Yup, that really is a low point of 120 words.

Maybe it was a very busy year at work (which would explain the lack of blogging too), but I can't remember it being this hard in other years. Or maybe it was my subject matter, which was a bit more personal and emotional than I'd anticipated. Or maybe my characters just didn't want to be in my story (I can't blame them). Whatever it was, out of the 7 NaNo's I've 'won', this was by far the most difficult. I'm hoping I'll feel the accompanying feeling of 'most accomplished' soon too, for now I mostly feel relieved and intensely tired.
Tomorrow, I can start doing all those other things I do in my spare moments, such as actually finishing the Harry Potter novel I've been reading for three weeks now. NaNo is great for forcing yourself to write, but it's good that it's confined to one month a year. But, inevitably, I'll put myself through this again next year, with fresh enthusiasm, which I'll probably start to feel coming in tomorrow. But for now, sleep.

NaNo Days 10 to 15: holiday sprint

So being on holiday gave me ample chance to write lots of words. Most days, those words actually came to me and it was easy to reach 2,000, but I've had some days where I had to search for topics as well. I'm now in that 'middle bit'; all the characters have been introduced, they have gathered, their backgrounds are known, and now Stuff Needs to Happen. But at the same time I'm also working towards the end, because if there is one thing frustrating about NaNo it is finishing the writing but not the story. Because then I know the story will never be finished, and will always be lacking an ending. Or a middle, in some years I've written the ending of the story but not the middle.
Today is the 15th of November, which means I should be at 25,000 words, as the month is halfway through. As we speak, I am at 28,130 words, putting me two days ahead of par. I'd hoped for a bit more headway, as I have a pretty busy work week waiting for me when I get home, but this will have to do. At least I'm not behind. And at least I'm still liking my characters, my plot, and my writing, even if it is difficult to get and keep going sometimes. Let's hope I'll keep up the writing when I'm back home!

NaNo Days 4 to 9: Ups and downs

So I've been focusing so much on writing NaNo, that I'd forgotten to do the meta-writing part, that is, the blog. The good news is: I'm still writing! I just reached 15k!
It's been a bit of a bumpy road getting there, with my daily word count sweeping up and down like a maniacal roller coaster:

What goes up, must come down?

It's been a crazy week at work, reflected in the crazy amount of writing I've done on some days, and the very little I've done on others. Luckily for me, I'm spending the next week in a cute little cottage in France, which will give me plenty of time to catch up. My daily goal has been 2,000 words or more, and as you can see I managed to do something very near that on at least 5 days so far. That's more than half of my writing days. Well, when you put it like that, it doesn't sounds so bad...

NaNo Days 2 & 3: 5k!

So, after a first day of writing 1k, I had to write a bit more every day to get back on par. Today's par is 5k, and I have just finished my writing streak of today at 5,011 words. It still feels very much like the beginning of the story, like I'm getting to know the characters and figuring out who they are and what they're going to do.
This year I'd planned ahead and given myself a book of 22 chapters; 1 prologue, 10 flashback chapters interspersed with 10 present-day chapters, and 1 epilogue. Today, I decided to throw all of that out, and just mix the flashbacks in together with the rest of the story, without bothering with chapter starts or finishes. I can't see why I never realised to do this before, maybe I'll run into issues with this later on, but for now it feels like a revelation. It does make the whole thing more stream-of-consciousness, which is in the modernist corner I usually try to avoid, but we'll see how it works out.
Tomorrow I'll be at a write-in, so I hope to get lads more words in before the business of the workweek prevents me from writing for one or two hours every day!

NaNo Day 1: A quick 1k

Today was always going to be busy, with work and swimming and friends coming over, but just after 11 I could actually start my writing for this year's NaNo. I put in 1000 words exactly, which was the point at which I should have stopped, but I continued for another 80 words before deciding that tomorrow was a better time to write. I am not a late night writer, it has been proven yet again. More to follow on the morrow!

The Cockroach

So Ian McEwan's last novel, Machines like me, was not my favourite. In fact, it may have been his worst novel ever. And it left me despairing that he may have lost his touch, something I'd apparently feared before.
I need not have worried, for just six months later I wandered around the bookshop and ran into The Cockroach, a small novella (less than 100 pages) about Jim Sams waking up and "finding himself transformed into a gigantic creature". I've never read The Metamorphosis, but even I know enough to recognise that reference. In this story, it is the cockroach that is transformed into the human, into the PM of the United Kingdom, to be exact. The UK is undergoing political upheaval as the Reversalist Conservatives want to push through a big economic change, which the Clockwise Labour party wants to forestall. Sounds familiar? What if I tell you the Labour leader is actually a Reversalist himself? Or what about the American president Tupper, busy communicating by Twitter and spending time on his many golf courses?
Yup, this is a political satire, and a good one at that. Brexit is never mentioned, the whole story is purely fictional, and "resemblance to any cockroach, living or dead, is purely coincidental". But between the lines there is of course the absurd reality that the UK is now living through. I don't know that Ian McEwan has written a satire before, but this one is really well done. And it combines his dry, witty humour with his beautiful, flowing language, even when he is verbally slaughtering political opponents.
I raced through the book in about two hours and it left me both good for having read a great McEwan story and sad because the craziness it describes is actually taking place across the pond. But in the end, it is more words by my favourite author, and I'm always happy to have those.

The Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys was one of those novels I read a review about and then immediately wanted to buy, so when I saw it at the local bookshop I did just that. However, the blurb on the back mentions stuff like "the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back"." That doesn't sound like a very pleasant read. It sounds like a horrible read, actually.
So I put the novel aside for a while. Do I admit I was a bit scared to read it? Yes, like with A Little Life, the looming thread of violence put me off. But then I read a double interview with Colson Whitehead, the author, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the author of Friday Black. And the interview mentioned that such stories, of the suffering of black people in the US, have not been told in this way for a long time. And also that both books are based on facts. Which made me realise that the horrors told in The Nickel Boys may be a horrible read, they must have been far worse for the boys that actually endured them.
So I started on the novel, which was every way as 'understated' as the article mentioned. We follow Elwood Curtis as he makes his way up in the world; doing good in school, working in a store, and finally landing a place at a local college on a scholarship. But then he is put in Nickel Academy for hitching a ride with a car thief. Putting someone away for several years for something he hasn't done sounds outrageous, but the things that happen next are far worse. In his first couple of days Elwood steps out of line, again without intentionally doing something wrong, and is taken to The White House for his punishment. The actual abuse and mistreatment are described in short, distant paragraphs, the main focus is the connection Elwood makes with fellow Nickel students Desmond, Turner and Jaimie. How he finds joy in life, even though he is basically scared all the time.
The story taking place at Nickel is interspersed with events happening later in time, when the illegal graveyard with all the boys that have presumably 'escaped' is discovered. The afterword mentions that this really happened; remains were discovered near a school in Florida. The actual White House boys that lived through their ordeals there are now heard for the first time.
So was I right to fear this read? Absolutely not. It is a haunting picture, of course, but the story is beautifully written, the characters are deep and honest, the language is intelligent and full of meaning. The final chapter, to top things off, is one of the best I've ever read. The final paragraph brings such a flood of realisation, tying the whole novel together and completing the story so that you can only marvel that Whitehead can write about such horrors in such a beautiful way.
I realised today that these past months have been one of a lot of American authors, and a lot of minority groups. Interesting. I know The Nickel Boys is pretty big in the media, especially in the US, but I don't feel like I've been pushed by the media towards these novels. I've found most of them through reviews in Dutch papers. So maybe it is true that these are voices that are just now beginning to be heard properly, or by a broader audience. Or maybe I just started paying attention.
Whichever way, I wouldn't have wanted to miss this novel; it is one that will probably stay on my mind for quite some time.

NaNoWriMo 2019

It isn't even October yet, but my mind is already drifting to November, also known as National Novel Writing Month. (I am really early this year, usually I write this in the middle of October, as I found out last year.) Of course, I will be participating once again. I've just created my new 'project', which was a bit more of a fuss than usual, because the entire nanowrimo.org website has had a major do-over. I'm not sure if I like this new design better, some things are pretty fancy, but especially the forums seem to have become a lot more difficult. Will have to spend some time figuring that out.

Anyhow, NaNo is not about the website, it's about the writing. And the community. And rewarding yourself with sugary treats every 1,000 words you write. And... Let's stick with the writing first.
After my brief departure into 'romance' last year, I'm firmly back onto 'realism' territory. Who was I kidding? I, who love the basic prose of Sally Rooney, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift. I shouldn't wander off the path of down-to-earth conversations and everyday occurrences that gain hidden depths through unified themes. Or at least I shouldn't stray from attempting to write such a story, as those are the novels I love to read, so those are the stories I love to write.
So, I will be stealing some characters and perhaps plot lines from an earlier NaNo and putting those in a new story that I've been thinking about for a while. I've given myself a very contained time span and location, to avoid going off on various tangents and never finishing. I've even got a basic 'book' structure laid out, all 22 chapters. The chapters will be alternating 'group' chapters and more personal chapters focusing on one of the characters each time around. If that sounds like NaNo 2019 will be a breeze, think again. My characters will probably revolt and break down the entire plot house I've built for them in the first 5,000 words. But that's okay. That's what NaNo is about; just writing and see where it will get you.
As always, I'll be keeping you up to date on my progress here, but since November is still 32 days away, it will be some time. Somehow, being this early doesn't make me feel any more prepared...

How to

I've been a fan of xkcd for as long as I can remember. Apparently Randall Munroe started the website in September 2005, when I must have been on the Internet for a couple of years already, but I simply can't remember being online and not checking the website for new comics every so often (the publishing schedule has varied throughout time).
So what is xkcd, you may wonder. It's a webcomic. A nerdy, scientific, but also very funny webcomic, written by a very nerdy (ex-NASA) guy. I've seen one of Randall's TED talks, and it is almost impossible to believe that someone that dry and nerdy can write such funny comics. For one, the name of the website isn't an acronym, it's simply 'a word with no phonetic pronunciation'. I can't really get all of the jokes, to be honest, but thankfully there is even a website explaining the jokes (and science) in the comics.
Randall has created a couple of side projects, one of which is What if? in which he answers scientific questions (usually of the ridiculous kind). This has sparked a book, which contains even more questions about what would happen if you'd do something pretty crazy. He's also written a Thing Explainer, in which complicated things such as rockets are explained using only the thousand most common words.
His latest book is How To, which tells you how to do a couple of things: how to dig a hole, how to decorate a tree, or how to see if you're a nineties kid. The answers are never as straightforward as you may think. I love these kinds of books. You learn about something pretty complicated, like quantum physics or crowd psychology, while reading absurd stories of how Serena Williams takes down a drone by hitting it with a tennis ball. Randall tries to explain things in the easiest ways possible, sometimes showing how off the cuff estimations can get you pretty close to the real answer without having to do a lot of difficult calculations. If you understand the logic behind something, the way things work and affect each other, you can get pretty far without crunching the numbers.
The trademark comics are interspersed with the text, so you don't feel like you're reading a physics book. Rather, it feels like reading a comic book with some chunks of text in the middle. It feels like learning without studying, and that physics isn't as scary as you might think.

Summer reading

Summer reading had me a blast, summer reading happened so fast...
Right, I can't fathom that just two days from now September starts, it feels as if summer has just begun. But the nights are getting longer, putting an end to long summer evenings spend outside reading (I tried to make do with candles and/or the light from my mobile phone, but it just isn't the same as the long evenings of June and July). Sad as it is that summer is nearly gone, I look back on several great summer reads.
Firstly, I read The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson. It is her debut novel, based on her experiences teaching a high school near San Fransisco (much is made of the specific valley the school/town is set in, but I can't actually remember it). I picked this novel because it had a great review but also because I happened to be travelling the west coast this summer. The day I read the first chapter, in which a character bikes all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge, parks his bike, walks for some time on the sidewalk and then jumps off the bridge was the day after I myself rode to that same bridge, albeit from the other side, biked across it, and past several points the novel mentions. This was pretty surreal.
The novel focuses on a specific group of students as they make their way from eighth grade to senior year. The chapters written from a specific student's point of view are interspersed with the point of view from their English teacher, Miss Nicholl, Through the course of the novel we get to know most of the kids in the group, leading to surprising discoveries. They are all entitled, rich, snobbish and quite brutal in their behaviour and opinions of each other. But reading each chapter you get to know the actual person behind the image, usually leading to a better understanding and more sympathy for the way they are. Stereotypes turn out to be a mask to hide behind. Lessons are learnt. Paths are chosen. Towards the end I feared a sugar coated happy ending, but to my surprise and relief the ending was very human, very real, and slightly painful. All in all a great read, made even more special by being in the places it was set.
After that my travel book supply had run dry, so we went to a Barnes&Nobles and I bought Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. Another debut by a female author, another novel about high school life, but this one has already been made into a film called Love, Simon. I'd seen the film but was curious about the novel, especially because the film had an un-American feel to it. The story is written from Simon's point of view as he meets a fellow closeted gay student through an online message board (Tumblr, which dates the novel quite a bit). One of his fellow classmates discovers their secret emails and blackmails Simon into setting him up with one of his friends. This leads to all sorts of teenage drama, but the tone of voice of the novel is surprisingly mature and undramatic. Simon is very analytical, balanced and humorous. Several things are different from the film, not always to the best, although the characters in the novel felt more realistic and sympathetic. In contrast to The Most Dangerous..., this is an actual YA high school read. Added to that, the novel deals in a respectful and normal way with pretty sensitive issues, making it even more suitable for the target audience.
Finally, I read a Dutch novel, Ferrera by Bert Wagendorp. This is the sequel to his famous (in the Netherlands) novel Ventoux. It focusses on a group of four friends who are now in their early fifties. In the first novel they hadn't seen each other for more than 20 years following the death of their fifth friend on the mountain of Ventoux. In this novel, they travel to Ferrera in Italy as one of them has found an old building to turn into a design hotel. The novel focuses on them coming to terms with their ageing and death, or basically with human mortality in general. In a way, it is a 'coming of age' story for the baby boom generation. This is one of the few novels I've ever read in which I actively disliked the main character (not even his tone of voice, his whole personality). He is whiny and self-obsessed and overly dramatic. Also, way too many references to obscure Italian historians/poets/philosophers, and extensive descriptions of the town of Ferrera. Where in The Most Dangerous... the subtle references to real locations gave the story some depth, here it felt like showing off. The plot twist at the end felt forced and as I had no sympathy for any of the characters, the (unsurprisingly) bleak ending left me feeling pretty indifferent.
So maybe not the best of novels to end the summer on, but it was a typical summer read in that it was not a difficult 'literary' read but an easy, summery story set in a warm and sunny location. But after all these snack size stories I feel ready to tackle something with a bit more substance. Time for cold, rainy, autumny nights spend curled up with a cup of tea and a good book. Reading is a feast for every season.

Autumn

I am on a really good book streak so far this year. And most of those books were written by women. I remembered my 'books to go' post of 2 years back stating that I was going to read more great novels by female writers, but that must have been the pro-feminist atmosphere colouring my thoughts, because the only thing I actually say is that I want to read more books by potential to-love authors. Well, Ali Smith is one to put on that list.
I'd seen her novels in the book shop, the ones with the seasonal names and the colourful covers. Somehow they looked kind of boring, or serious, or in any case not as a novel I would enjoy. But then I read a review on the third novel in the series she's doing, Spring, and that sounded pretty good. So next time I was in the book shop, I picked up Autumn and read the blurb, and that sounded pretty good, so I bought it together with Winter. I didn't buy Spring at the time because it hadn't come out in the right edition/size (still hasn't) but that will at some point in the future follow.
Now Autumn. A great novel. One for the streak. Ali Smith writes in the wandering, meditative, musing style that Sally Rooney has, also without putting quotation marks around her dialogue (the proper thing would be to say that Sally Rooney writes like Ali Smith, since Ali Smith had been writing for at least a decade before Sally Rooney was even born, but I read them in the 'wrong' order so my associations are backwards). I love this style. It is amazing to have found three female writers, all from the Celtic homelands (Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland) who write in a way that feels at once completely familiar and also very exciting. If only I were still doing an MA in English Lit, I would have a thesis topic to fill thousands of words with.
Anyway, Autumn. I read somewhere that this is the first novel 'about the Brexit', since it describes the vote and the aftermath and it is somewhat of a plotpoint, especially in the bits were Elisabeth tries to renew her passport. But I do hope that is not the only thing the novel will be known for. This is also not what it is 'about'. The blurb tells us the novel is about Daniel, more than 100 years old, and Elisabeth, in her early thirties. They were neighbours once, and struck up a friendship. Somehow they have grown apart, but now Daniel is in a care home and Elisabeth goes to visit him every day. Interspersed with these scenes, which flow with the seasons, are flashbacks to earlier periods in their lives, which are or aren't connected (although in the end, everything is connected, as in most great stories).
So what is it 'about'? It's about love, love for each other and love for a country and the togetherness of people and how easily this can rupture. About a sense of belonging. About art. It is a clever book, there are lots of references to other books and plays and films and historic events, I'm sure I haven't even discovered half of them, but they gave the book extra layers of meaning. It is a funny novel, philosophical, meaningful. The writing is beautiful. I will give you a snippet, just to enjoy:
A minute ago it was June. Now the weather is September. The crops are high, about to be cut, bright golden.
November? unimaginable. Just a month away.
The days are still warm, the air in the shadows sharper. The nights are sooner, chillier, the light a little less each time.
Dark at half past seven. Dark at quarter past seven, dark at seven.
The greens of the trees have been duller since August, since July really.
I don't know whether Winter follows the same characters, but even if it doesn't I will read it, together with many more books by Ali Smith. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker a couple of times already (including for Autumn) so there must be many more beautiful reads by her out there.
Next time I see a dull looking novel on a pile in a book shop, I will think twice about just walking past it!

There there

There there. What a beautiful novel. Everyone should read it.
I read a review about this debut novel and immediately wanted to buy it. It is by Tommy Orange, a Native American who followed a writing programme at the Institute of American Indian Arts. I don't know how well he could write before the programme, but he can certainly write now.
The novel's title refers to a sentence by Gertrude Stein: "There is no there there", in which she commemorates that the home, the surroundings, the area she grew up in are no longer there. Stein was writing about Oakland, and the novel also takes place in Oakland. It involves several characters of Native or part-Native descent as they prepare for the Big Oakland powwow (I didn't know what a powwow is, but thankfully the novel opens with an essay by Tommy Orange explaining this, and explaining why these remaining shreds of Native culture are so important to keep and to treasure and to broadcast to a wider audience). Some of the characters organise the powwow, others plan to dance at it, visit it, or rob it. This also shows the various states of destruction these characters' lives are in; some are recovering alcoholics, some are drug dealers or users, many come from broken or mixed families. But at no point does their tone of voice turn dramatic or sad; this is just the way their lives are.
All character's lives are somehow interconnected, but in each chapter one character is the main focus point. These chapters are written in the first, second or third person, which gives the novel a very diverse structure. It also made me feel I got to know some of the characters better than the others. The earlier chapters are quite long, with detailed background knowledge of most of them, while the later chapters taking place at the powwow are sometimes only a couple of sentences long. The only downside to this structure was the amount of characters, several of which are named a variety of Charles or Carlos, which made for a confusing read sometimes. I think some of them could have been left out.
Apart from the plot (which is gripping) and the characters (which are deep and engaging) there is the language of the novel. Wow, this guy can write. He has the capability to mix very down to earth, easy descriptions with deeply meaningful messages and words. "Calvin sits down next to the big guy and gives him a slight, general whatsup-type head nod. The guy lifts his hand and waves, then seems to immediately regret the wave because he puts his hand back down as fast as it went up and gets out his phone like everyone does now when they want to leave without leaving." You can see this happening. You can also feel the emotional layer of people blocking other people out by focussing completely on their phone. "Now I don't have any dreams, or if I dream, I dream of dark geometric shapes drifting noiselessly across a pink, black and purple pixelated colorscape. Screen-saver dreams." Beautiful.
So this novel is at once very now, very current, but also filled with history. It is about people separately, trying to live their lives the best they can, and it is about Native people as a whole, as a group, a community trying to survive, trying to do honour to their forefathers. It gave me an insight into a culture and a people and a history I basically hadn't read about before, and it opened my mind in ways I didn't expect nor would ever wanted to have missed. So yes, read this novel. Especially if you know nothing about Native Americans. Or maybe especially if you think you do know.

Machines like me

Hurray, a new novel by Ian McEwan! And one that I read a review of in the paper on Saturday, and then the next Saturday actually came across in the bookstore, so I could throw down the novel I was planning to read (sorry, John Williams) to dive into the magnificence that is a fresh new story by Ian McEwan. Literary bliss. Or so one would hope. But the review I read wasn't entirely positive, and the subject matter didn't feel very McEwanesque, so I started with some caution. Not enough caution, as it turned out.

The novel centres around Charlie and Miranda, two neighbours. Charlie comes into some money when his mom dies, and decides to invest in one of the new robots that have just been released to the market; Adam. There are only 25 of these robots (12 Adams and 13 Eves), so how he manages to get his hands on one, while otherwise being one of the most indecisive, incompetent and inactive characters I've ever read is not explained.
But wait a minute, robots? Is this science fiction?
Well, yes and no. The story takes place the 80s, but in an alternative reality. Alan Turing is a prominent figure, and his research into computers and robotics has brought the world great things. There are other differences (the Brits lose the Falkland war) but otherwise things look a lot like our universe. By which I mean; our time. The Internet has been created, there are electric cars, a lot of the developments we went through in the past 40 years have taken place earlier here. So what is the point of setting this story in the 80s, if you're going to keep things basically the same otherwise? If you needed a big British defeat, you could have invented a war. It is science fiction after all. So was it just for the small references and puns that pop up every now and then?
Anyway, back to the story; Charlie buys Adam, together they program his personality, and then he 'comes to life' and becomes part of their lives. Charlie and Miranda also start a relationship, while Adam claims to be in love with Miranda as well. This would have been a nice time to go in depth into the whole 'can consciousness be created' debate, but Charlie sometimes mentions that they talk about it, without them actually talking about it. The whole novel spans several months, the only McEwan novel I know to span more than a couple of days apart from Solar (his attempt at a comical novel which I also didn't like) and Sweet Tooth (another one I didn't like).
I say 'Charlie mentions' because the novel is written in the first person, from Charlie's point of view. This is the second McEwan novel I can think of to use first-person narration, the other one being Nutshell in which it all works out really well. Here, not so much. Miranda is practically a flat character despite having a violently interesting back story, so is Adam, while both Charlie's personality as his feelings are ambiguous at best. What is supposed to be the 'big reveal' at the end, something to do with morals and consciousness, feels forced and at the same time unsurprising.

Oh, sure, there are some really great parts in this novel. Not plotwise (the plot is predictable and uneventful) or characterwise (see above, there is zero character development), but languagewise there are some very nice McEwanesque phrases. Some bits flow really nicely, even though the grand subjects of ethics and interpersonal relationships are not gotten into. The ending, predictable and forced as it is, is beautifully written, almost heartbreaking in its style. It felt like a cheap ripoff of a McEwan novel, in which someone took his writing style but not his brilliance at crafting stories or characters, and threw them together in a strange and pointless universe. It is almost as if McEwan wants to show that science fiction can never be literary (although Philip K. Dick proved different quite some time ago), not even by him.
All in all, this novel made me sad. Why not stick to what you do best; small novels, centred on a couple of characters, spanning a couple of days, focusing on emotions, philosophies, thoughts, and character development? Why go out of your way to create something this big and bombastic if that is not your style at all? I can only hope that there was some kind of hidden purpose, and that it isn't because he is losing his writing touch...

PS: I've written something about Sweet Tooth earlier (7 years! How time flies!) and there I am afraid McEwan is losing his touch. After The Children Act and Nutshell, I'm pretty sure he can still write beautiful novels, he just sometimes goes off to do something completely bizarre...

Friday Black

Short stories. You don't come across them that often any more, which is a shame. A good short story will give you the immersion in the life or personality of a character, a nice story arch and a good ending in less than thirty pages. I love reading short stories, especially after finishing a long and difficult novel.
I read a review of Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah a while ago and decided this was a short story collection I had to read. Then I came across a hardcover version in the local bookstore that had such a beautiful cover image I absolutely had to buy it (I could add something witty about judging books by their cover here). I don't usually buy hardcovers anymore, but I gladly made an exception here.
The review said this was a great new voice in the world of short stories, focussing on the experiences of black Americans, but also very forward in his ideas. Now I'm not sure if all of that is true. The stories are beautifully written, they read quickly and easily, you get into the mind of the main character (most stories are written in the first person) pretty quickly. There are no great messages or grand resolutions; people live their lives in no particular way, but in that way he somewhat reminded me of Roald Dahl's stories.
Several of  the stories revolve around people working in retail, including the title story Friday Black. These were nice, but not all that special; they even got a bit repetitive at some point. Then there were the more 'black lives matter' inspired stories, such as the opening story of Finkelstein 5; a white man murders 5 innocent black teenagers, gets aquitted in court, and in response black activists start murdering white people. This reads like a gruesome story (and it was), but the main character, whose loyalties are devided between joining his friends and 'fitting in' in society (he dials his 'Blackness' up and down on a scale of 1 to 10 depending on how he wants people to perceive him) gives it some much-needed depth and focus. Finally, there are a couple of science fictiony stories, usually taking place in an altered, somewhat dystopian, future. This may be a world in which people genetically perfect their children before they are born, or a world in which people relive the same day of nuclear warfare over and over again. These I thought were the best; inventive in plot, with fleshed-out characters while at the same time also containing a social warning; this is what our world might become.
But the scifi were also the best because they weren't too niched on promoting the black experience. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but those stories somehow felt narrower, lacking in creativity and depth of character. As if those characters were defined only by the fact that they were black. Whereas in the more futuristic stories (although also in Finkelstein 5) the protagonists shared more universal experiences, they were a person more than they were a black person. It didn't matter what colour skin they had, as it should be.
In short, this was one of the better short story collections I've read in a while. I hope Adjei-Brenyah continues to write short stories, or perhaps a novel, although in my opinion writing a good short story is more difficult than writing a good novel!

Veggie burgers: Sweet potato and goat's cheese burger

So I thought it was time for me to let go of Mark Bittman's burger advice, and strike out on my own. I had a couple of burgers in mind, and then the recipe guide of the Albert Heijn also made some suggestions for spring burgers, but in the end I stuck with the first thing that came to mind when I thought about making my own burgers from scratch: sweet potato burgers. With some kind of cheese, preferably goat's cheese.
I Googled a couple of recipes and checked out my own previous work, and all of this combined I came to the following recipe:

Ingredients
400 g sweet potato, peeled and rasped
100 g goat's cheese, in small pieces
1 onion
2 toes garlic
2 eggs
3 tablespoons oats
chives
parsley
pepper

Chop the onion and garlic and combine with the sweet potato. Add all the other ingredients and combine to a mixture with your hands (this will turn your hands a nice bright orange, which was just in time for King's Day today). Leave to rest for about 10 minutes.
Then shape 4-6 burgers out of the mixture. Heat sunflower oil (or any other kind) in a frying pan and bake for 5-8 minutes on both sides. Serve any way you like.

Sounds pretty easy, right? Well, a couple of things didn't really go as planned.

Pre-burger mixture. Looks like I was making a carrot cake burger.

At first, I added only the one egg, but this didn't really work. The mixture was a) too wet and b) not in any way coming together as burgers. So I added another egg (which made two in total, as stated above) to help with the combining issues, and then I added more oats to help with the moisture. This all helped somewhat to get a proper burger mixture.

Carrot cake burgers a-baking.

Then for the burgers: I made four, as I was joined by my trusty burger tester, but they were way to thick. This meant that both sides were baking nicely, but the middle part was still pretty wet. Also, it made turning them pretty impossible. If I'd made six (or even eight) burgers out of the mixture, it would have worked out easier. The amounts were okay for two people, although maybe you could tone it down to 300 g sweet potatoes for two people (I only add a salad, nothing like chips or potatoes or anything). They were pretty unsteady to begin with, and their size didn't help, so these were the least consistent burgers I've made so far.

Sweet potato burger mess.

So they looked pretty messy. But what about the taste? Well, they tasted really really good. The overall taste was sweet (what can you expect, with sweet potato?), but not too sweet. The sweet potato came through nicely, as did the goat's cheese. The herbs were not that prominent, but they added something.  The texture was also really nice: crispy on the outside and quite moist on the inside. Very, very far removed from any meat burger you'll ever eat, but that's the whole point of vegetarian burgers!

I'd call this a burger success, although as with all my previous burgers, there are some points of improvement. But that's why we call it an experiment! Can't wait to try some of my other ideas.