RaveiNews (UK)Written in sentences that are often arch and always effortless, it’s a remarkable, richly humane novel ... Hollinghurst variously shows how honed his craft is; how brilliantly he can bring life to wildly different milieu and experiences ... Hollinghurst’s great theme here – examined tenderly and reverently, a delicate thing held up to the light for best inspection – is love.
Louise Erdrich
MixedThe Guardian (UK)Arguably, there’s a bit too much going on here, and the reader isn’t given much help to discern what really matters, or indeed what we might need to dwell on, as the book sprints toward its rather skittish and unsatisfying denouement. Some pivotal scenes are so protracted and overblown that the tension slackens, while the crowded design and lurching plotting doesn’t allow for sufficiently engaging character growth to pull the reader through ... But the narrative voice is the redeeming quality. It takes a while for the reader to settle into storytelling as tonally mixed as Kismet’s quilt, but Erdrich’s achievement is pretty remarkable: a voice with brio and lightness that wends and weaves, as the titular river does, between modes and moods.
Elif Shafak
PanThe Guardian (UK)Reading this novel is hard going. Much of this difficulty is to do with an overall bagginess ... One anxiety with a multi-perspective novel like this is that one storyline might overshadow others. Here, Zaleekhah’s sections don’t pack an emotional punch and the romantic arc is unsatisfyingly predictable.
Rachel Cusk
MixediNews (UK)Experimental fiction that consists of a quartet of thematically connected sections ... Quietly menacing ... Cusk’s vision of what it is to be human is largely centred around pained bourgeois experience ... The writing regularly takes on a detached, essayistic mode to offer seemingly decisive but somewhat obtuse pronouncements about these matters ... In terms of Cusk’s ouevre, is there anything new here? Does the novel represent an exciting development for the author? Not particularly.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
RaveThe Guardian (UK)In a novel of secrecy, silences and silencing, Ibeh’s sentences throughout are fastidiously pruned ... There are several striking occasions on which this aesthetic makes way for a little more transcendence, and we’re given a hint of something higher and more hopeful ... Extraordinarily composed and deeply felt.
Megan Nolan
MixediNews (UK)\"In narration often possessing an archness akin to Otessa Moshfegh’s, Nolan presents the Greens as a benighted bunch. The mood is reminiscent of the tenacious bleakness of her equally booze-soaked debut, Acts of Desperation ... Pathos, melancholy, self-loathing and regret, then, are very much the orders of the day here. And at times this can make the reading experience feel a little unrewarding. But the compassion Nolan feels for her beleaguered cast sustains our engagement.
Journalist Tom, however, isn’t granted these nuances. He comes across as a cartoonish and caricatured Machiavellian ... Richie remembers thinking it \'was a beautiful thing as well as an ugly one.\' With its fearless probing of darker human impulses, and its occasional lapses in characterization, perhaps this is an apt summation of Nolan’s novel, too.\
Dolly Alderton
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Warm and generous ... The narrowness of scale could risk feeling repetitive or leaden, but Alderton captures the myopia and obsessiveness that sudden heartbreak can bring, using both satire and compassion ... here’s much to enjoy here, not least Alderton’s willingness to allow in some narrative ambivalence: while Andy’s sorrow is humanely sketched, it also often leans towards self-indulgence. She’s got a good ear for dialoguehere’s much to enjoy here, not least Alderton’s willingness to allow in some narrative ambivalence: while Andy’s sorrow is humanely sketched, it also often leans towards self-indulgence. She’s got a good ear for dialogue ... May not rewrite ideas about contemporary sexual politics, nor offer new insights into the minefield of mid-30s dating, and more space for Jen’s fascinatingly anguished storyline might have provided a piquant counterpoint to the novel’s bouncy and very British comic sensibility.
Kiley Reid
MixediNews (UK)Another comedy of manners ... Much of the novel’s dynamism comes from its zippy dialogue. It often feels verbatim, especially the joyously catty back and forth between Millie’s best mates, fellow RAs Ryland and Colette – playful counterpoints to her assiduousness ... Without doubt an absorbingly twisty page-turner. But it simply doesn’t measure up to the tight, exhilaratingly sharp Such a Fun Age. After excitedly coming to get it, what we are given is, in the end, something a little disappointing.
Bryan Washington
MixedThe Guardian (UK)Though written in his characteristic minor key, Family Meal continues this confidence and conviction. We find the same formal tendencies (moving between characters’ perspectives) and thematic interests (food, interracial relationships and the ramifying effects of grief) as in his debut ... Writing sex is a notoriously fraught business. Washington, however, excels here ... Washington shows great versatility in ventriloquising TJ and Kai’s different tones and sensibilities ... Other aspects of the novel gave me pause for thought. My current bugbear is novels where some chapters are, for no good reason, just a sentence or paragraph long. Washington sometimes adopts this technique, and fluency rather than fragmentation would have helped to sustain emotional intensity in places. Equally baffling was the inclusion of photographs of Japan, after Kai spends time in Osaka for a translation project ... But perhaps my biggest issue was the later trend towards mawkishness. Washington admirably works to show that his characters might not be irreparably marred by their previous trauma, but the dialogue and tone towards the novel’s end becomes notably platitudinous in feel.
Diana Evans
RaveThe Guardian (UK)Enticing ... The narrative expands outwards; it whirls into the lives and perspectives of adjacent characters, sometimes lending the novel the feel of a collection of linked short stories ... Evans records the interiorities of her characters and their lives with acutely realistic detail. Realism, of course, doesn’t mean dullness ... There is sometimes so much detail and rich depth that our eponymous protagonist vanishes ... Sweeping ... Generous.
Derek Owusu
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)In rhythmic, slippery prose, this slim Bildungsroman aims to capture the growing K’s ever-shifting attitude towards his blackness and heritage, his multifaceted relationships with his parents, battles with alcoholism and fluctuating mental health ... The intense scrutiny of detail is, of course, uncomfortable, but the commitment to the microscopic recording of experience gives the narration a uniquely poetic texture ... Some readers will question the efficacy of the framing device, the statements delivered to an impassive Anansi. Others might find some of the lyricism and stylistic innovations distracting rather than illuminating. But there is a palpable charge and welcome freshness to the voice here that is undeniable.
Ayobami Adebayo
MixedThe Guardian (UK)Violence in multiple guises – political, domestic, psychic – simmers beneath the surface of the often restrained prose ... As the protagonists’ stories are ineluctably drawn together, the compassion Adébáyò feels for her two protagonists is deep and her social consciousness commendable. Other elements are more hit and miss. The two leads – understandably – turn in on themselves and become passive because of the pressures of material circumstance. But until the novel’s admittedly explosive final act, this often means that they are held at arm’s length from the reader, encased in fairly repetitive self-reflection and angst ... As a result, some of the peripheral characters steal the show ... It’s a shame that Adébáyò sidelines the curious and exciting \'good things\' about her novel.
Nick Hornby
MixediNews (UK)With a breezily conversational voice, in a unique paired biography of sorts, the High Fidelity author plots surprising parities between the Bleak House novelist and the funk visionary ... Propelled by – Dickensian? – cliffhangers, the writing runs at a smart clip and the sustained correlation between these unlikely comrades often produces imaginative results. For instance, Hornby aligns MTV with the serialisation of Victorian fiction when thinking about the wide reach and mass appeal of these artists, which feels fresh and convincing ... And, of course, given Hornby’s comic chops, there are plenty of decent gags ... However, perhaps halfway through, the comparative conceit loses its novelty. When Hornby’s personal attachment to his material recedes, unfortunate questions stubbornly haunt the text: what is the point of bringing together these artists? Is this book more than a stocking filler with intellectual pretensions? ... We might reasonably suspect that, despite his breathless hagiographies of Dickens’ and Prince’s virtuosity, this book is mostly a platform for Hornby to impress us with the extent of his research rather than offering new insights into Dickens’ or Prince’s oeuvres ... While there is the odd passage in which he professes to finding the industriousness and ambition of these men inspiring for his own work, the accumulation of trivia (rattling off the page counts of the various volumes of Dickens’ Collected Letters) has the faint whiff of the pub bore about it ... Ironically, given that much of Hornby’s argument centres on how both Dickens and Prince are notable for the immensity and scale of their output, perhaps Hornby was constrained by the smallness of his chosen scale ... While slim and concise works are de rigueur and well-suited to our distinctly ravaged attention spans, adding more would have been beneficial for this essay. More detailed lyrical and textual analysis, even more precise engagement with the singularities of these artists’ craftsmanship and more delving into what Hornby feels makes these songs and novels so peerless might have made this a far less ephemeral read.
Kamila Shamsie
MixediNews (UK)[An] unexpected and compelling weaving of the febrile past into her protagonists’ present ... Nevertheless, there are disappointments ... There is something bloodless and unconvincing about her protagonists in adult life ... Equally, what new wisdoms this novel reveals about the warp and weft of long-standing friendships isn’t entirely clear ... The ending of the novel frustrates, too: while a lack of resolution isn’t itself objectionable, the abruptness of the conclusion undoes some of the more careful, sustained earlier plotting ... Shamsie at her best? Maybe not this time.
Andrew Sean Greer
MixedThe Guardian (UK)Absurdity and playfulness are the crowd-pleasing hallmarks ... While an acidic wit in the vein of David Sedaris is ever present, Greer’s attention to the sublimity of the changing landscape introduces softer notes ... Like its predecessor, then, Less Is Lost combines poignancy in Less’s personal life with gags to keep us entertained ... Greer’s attempts to give his sequel distinction largely rest on an intermittent inquiry into the state of the nation, and the confounding brutality of the distant and recent past...The anxieties prompted by Less’s acknowledgment that later life stretches before him like the California deserts he traverses are matched by Greer’s anxieties about what lies in store for the United States in its post-Trumpian, Biden-era malaise ... But this interrogation of Americanness and speculation about where the country might go next feel tepid and incomplete. Greer’s narrative never comes close to answering Palu’s weighty question; romcom kookiness wins out in the end. Of course, an indeterminate rather than shouty evaluation of the current nature of the American project has its place in an ostensibly lighthearted novel. But it seems that in Greer’s desire to offer both levity and political profundity, something was lost indeed.
Andrew Sean Greer
MixedThe Guardian (UK)\"Sketches of sticky dive bars overseen by quick-witted bartenders allow Greer to send up Less’s self-conscious metropolitan sensibilities. In tandem with these screwball high jinks, the novel consistently evokes Less’s insecurities about his literary talents, as well as Freddy’s misgivings about his often solipsistic lover. Like its predecessor, then, Less Is Lost combines poignancy in Less’s personal life with gags to keep us entertained...Given the similarities, the reader might justifiably wonder: why resuscitate Less? ... this interrogation of Americanness and speculation about where the country might go next feel tepid and incomplete. Greer’s narrative never comes close to answering Palu’s weighty question; romcom kookiness wins out in the end. Of course, an indeterminate rather than shouty evaluation of the current nature of the American project has its place in an ostensibly lighthearted novel. But it seems that in Greer’s desire to offer both levity and political profundity, something was lost indeed.\
Edward Enninful
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Make it past the preface, notable for the number of names dropped in one particularly glitzy passage, and you’ll find a text more intimate in tone and easier to relate to, emotionally at least ... We’re given fascinating, deftly sketched insights into the experiences of a dreamy, imaginative boy growing up on an army base in Accra under the stern eye of his father, a major in the Ghanaian army ... he shows he’s able to distil complex debates without forgoing nuance ... He’s a good pop cultural historian, too, leading a whistle-stop tour of the influences that shaped his adolescent creativity ... though there are plenty of tales of jet-setting, glamour and debauchery to enjoy as he ascends, the autobiography shows its worth when Enninful makes himself vulnerable. While this is broadly a triumphalist account of enormous success, it is also the record of a man who has lurched between periods of great difficulty.
Clare Pollard
RaveiNews (UK)\"A feverish quest for elusive understanding...is a driving force within Delphi. It makes this curious and wilfully odd tale hugely recognisable, too ... Our anonymous, first-person narrator traverses all manner of domestic, maternal, marital and professional demands. She does so with a sharp intellect and unshakeable ambivalence ... Perhaps the thought of another slim, formally tricksy Covid narrative might be off-putting ... Pollard confronts all of these questions in an inviting, stylish and candid way ... What is appealing...throughout is the voice. So many of Pollard’s sentences ring with delicious wryness ... This variety gives momentum and energy to a text that eschews the more immediate satisfactions of conventional, progressive plot.
It is the freshness of this narrator’s perspective and the openness with which this perspective is shared that suggests that Pollard’s future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed.\
Mohsin Hamid
RaveiNews (UK)Strikingly long sentences that demand attention ... Hamid’s uncanny tale is alert to the notion that race is a construct. His gaze is also trained on the paranoia arguably at the heart of whiteness and white supremacy ... The novel perhaps begins as a kind of thrilling intellectual exercise. It then unfolds as a potent and timely anti-racist parable. Alongside all this, Hamid investigates what happens to relationships in highly pressurised contexts ... The evocation of Oona and Anders’ evolving bond is exquisite ... Hamid quietly and beautifully recounts the stolen nights they spend together when their roiling city is effectively under curfew ... Without mawkishness, in this masterful novel about the fallout from breathtakingly sudden change, Hamid asserts the adaptability and endurance of love.
Seán Hewitt
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Hewitt’s paranoia about leaving Elias alone even briefly – \'How could I keep him safe?\' – vibrates off the page ... Queer artists who dwell on their own suffering are often accused of unhelpfully figuring homosexuality as a kind of trauma. But throughout this troubled period, engaging with poetry galvanises Hewitt and leavens the text. Together, the two men informally translate the work of Swedish writer Karin Boye. They throw themselves wholeheartedly into this task of creating something new together. Hewitt captures the process vividly, emphasising both its slipperiness and its all-consuming quality ... Hewitt’s introspections take him towards a place of self-acceptance, a partial reconciliation with what he has endured. It would be inaccurate to suggest the story is ultimately redemptive. As the memoir proceeds, however, it does so with a discernible sense of opening out, of Hewitt moving away from the shadows.
Eloghosa Osunde
RaveThe Guardian (UK)... raucous ... Even when it confronts darkness in its condemnation of Nigeria’s political and religious corruption and homophobic legislation, Osunde’s partly magical realist novel is imbued with this rich sense of the kinetic and the possible. As intimated by the titular exclamation mark, it is a loud work. It boldly rails against the pernicious sexual orthodoxies and hypocrisies of Nigerian life. It also joyfully resists conventional formal boundaries, both linguistic and generic ... consists of short story-like snapshots about disfranchised dreamers and otherworldly beings living in Lagos’s thrall, all drawn with Osunde’s skill for foregrounding moments of quiet connection amid metropolitan cacophony ... The fantastical tone of the writing throughout serves to draw attention to the speciousness of othering whole groups of society. It also underscores the illusory nature of binary distinctions between \'us\' and \'them\'. Most movingly, it highlights how the experiences of persecution can make one feel strange to oneself. The thread that holds together these surreal and hyperreal sketches, not always effectively, is the character arc of Tataf ... While the mobility of the narrative shape makes Vagabonds! an energising read, there are moments when episodic similarities in tone, texture and content undermine the reader’s immersion in this bustling world ... Overwhelmingly, what readers will be struck by is the powerful sense of freshness, newness and aliveness here. Osunde gives readers a visionary version of what Lagos is and what it could be. Reverberating with musicality and shot through with innovative figurative language, this patchworked, fabulist novel messily and mischievously appeals for a freer and more open Nigeria. In its experimental celebration of individuality, Vagabonds! is always defiantly and resolutely itself.
JJ Bola
MixedThe Guardian (UK)Bola’s filmic snapshots...are a vivid counterpoint to the mournful protagonist’s journey towards fulfilling his dark \'pact\' ... The novel’s conceptual concern with the limited routes available for black people to find meaningful release from systemic racism is, without question, important and emotive ... Additionally, the novel’s intensity and earnestness are engrossing, and the reader is drawn along by a grim curiosity about whether Michael will see his plan through. However, the book struggles in some respects. Mental health challenges for black men are worthy terrain for the contemporary novelist ... But this novel, however heartfelt, rarely offers new, insightful or affecting investigation into the turmoil of suicidal ideation ... Largely, this is a result of stylistic choices. Though there are moving passages in which Michael’s distress is laid bare in powerfully raw terms...this directness and sensitivity is mostly absent. More often, there is a somewhat grandiose, ponderous and ultimately distancing tone to scenes ... Michael’s unexpected and seemingly revelatory relationship with an exotic dancer, Belle, in New York is presented in overblown phrases ... This novel’s great potential to reveal new truths about the intersectional minefields that black men negotiate is compromised by a brand of lyricism that distracts rather than illuminates.
Douglas Stuart
RaveiNews (UK)An evocative coming-of-age narrative centred on the housing estates of Glasgow. It boldly addresses the hostilities of a post-industrial, post-Thatcherite Scotland, through which working-class boys must somehow find a path towards manhood ... Stuart once again proves himself to be a masterly and humane storyteller, a lyrical translator of Mungo’s jagged experience in this inhospitable context ... The profundity of Stuart’s exceptional writing comes, then, partly from his commitment to the truth that even amid deprivation, compassion persists. This is most fully and beautifully expressed in the relationship between Mungo and his fellow lonely adolescent Catholic James ... Stuart’s attention to the bodily is poignant and represents some of the novel’s finest writing ... Poignant and soulful, this is a substantial work of art that is just as full of feeling and as meticulously crafted as Shuggie Bain. It is no exaggeration to say that I read the final pages through floods of breathless tears.
Tessa Hadley
RaveThe Guardian (UK)One criticism sometimes levelled at Hadley’s astutely observed narratives is that, for all their finesse, they lack propulsion and verve ... Some readers may consider the conclusion of Free Love in similar terms, feeling that the plot fizzles out, or that the resolution for the Fischers is partial or underwhelming. But on rereading, the final pages struck me as achingly moving and real. This novel does not close as a triumphant bildungsroman of middle life, replete with self-discovery. Instead, Hadley’s poignant drawing together of a situation that ultimately becomes \'as fatally twisted as a Greek drama\' shows a writer with boundless compassion. Yet again, she offers insightful and sensitive understanding of the quiet compromises people make to survive in a deeply compromised world.
Nadifa Mohamed
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Mohamed’s refashioning of this story takes time to develop its momentum. Largely, this is because of an understandable attempt at even-handedness ... The novel becomes most powerfully compelling when attention is squarely focused on spiky, maverick Mattan and the fight to clear his name. Mattan is a shape-shifting character, variously positioned as a rakish antihero, plucky picaro, petty thief, charismatic dreamer, prideful gambler, doting father, anti-colonial firebrand and speaker of truth to power. It is predominately through her depiction of Mattan’s imprisonment that Mohamed achieves this layered complexity ... In her determined, nuanced and compassionate exposure of injustice, Mohamed gives the terrible story of Mattan’s life and death meaning and dignity.
Chibundu Onuzo
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Accomplished ... In her acknowledgments, Onuzo identifies Rachel Cusk’s work as providing her with inspiration. Both the portrayal of a coolly distant protagonist who closely controls her emotions and the artfully spare sentences demonstrate Cusk’s influence on this lean novel. While the uncluttered style is admirable, at times it leads to some of the book’s potentially complex messages about identity landing in a slightly heavy-handed manner. However, the slick pacing and unpredictable developments – especially in the depiction of Anna’s enigmatic father – keep the reader alert right up to the novel’s exhilarating ending. Here, though some might find the tonal shift jarring, Onuzo lifts the narrative into an entirely unexpected space. She shows that the healing of fractures and a desire for wholeness can be achieved in the most unexpected of places.
Rebecca Solnit
RaveiNews (UK)... a wildly meandering thing, whose porousness of structure and resistance to neatness echo Orwell’s own advocacy of freedom ... At no point do we feel lost during this freewheeling roaming. Solnit is a sure-footed, often witty navigator. Her nuanced prose has a distinct purposefulness. One of the wonders of this work is the careful but effortless grounding of wide-ranging discussion in an engagement with the radically humane beliefs underpinning Orwell’s writing ... It is, evidently, not an orthodox survey of Orwell’s life and works. However, some of its most absorbing episodes involve Solnit’s examination of Orwell’s lineage ... While there are glorious \'moments of delight\' throughout – such as Solnit’s recollection of the miraculous discovery of flint paths in fields surrounding Orwell’s cottage – her willingness to confront the discomfiting is notable ... In this idiosyncratic, immensely original work, these lingering sections are powerful proof of Solnit’s view that \'to plant a rose […] can mean so many things\'.
Tice Cin
RaveThe Guardian (UK)Crackling with energy, interdisciplinary artist Tice Cin’s debut is a kind of textual collage. It offers vistas of the Turkish communities of north London between 1999 and 2012, in pacy, often impressionistic chapters that glitter with inventive descriptions and are dotted with Turkish terms. This is a novel brimming with evocative renderings of gossip-mongering in grocery shops, belly dancing lessons, \'sweated onions and potatoes … meals that slid oil into you\'. Cin’s characters inhabit a noirish cityscape of smoky snooker halls, pawnshops, boarded-up houses ... The nuances of [an] adolescent relationship are finely, unsentimentally and empathetically observed: it is a vision of sisterly love from a writer who understands the potency of restraint. An exhilaratingly idiosyncratic first novel, Keeping the House has \'cult classic\' written all over it.
Jo Hamya
PositiveiNews (UK)... haunting ... Far from being a site of youthful abandon, Hamya’s rendering of the campus experience is melancholic, calling to mind Brandon Taylor and Sally Rooney’s work ... Hamya’s portrayal of the entitlement and toxic hostility of this world and the narrator’s ambivalence towards it can feel unremitting...Arguably, however, this only adds to the novel’s confronting social realism: the pervasive financial, professional and emotional precarity experienced by the narrator despite being well educated and privileged ... There are also, in these chapters, some extraordinarily well-observed set pieces: a vignette concerning the announcement of Boris Johnson’s victory in the Conservative leadership contest is breathtaking in its absurdity ... Hamya’s depiction of the narrator disclosing the difficulties she has trying to make space for herself in the world rings with authenticity ... The unequivocally critical tone of the narration will, no doubt, trouble some readers. Equally, the lack of a propulsive plot and the unknowable central character perhaps make this a testing read ... clearly demonstrates, however, that Jo Hamya possesses a powerful and powerfully enquiring intellect. In this brave, experimental book, she asks pertinent and pressing questions about what progress really means for \'a lost generation\'.
Colm Tóibín
Ravei (UK)With remarkable sensitivity and empathy, Colm Tóibín fictionalises the rise and extraordinary life of the German writer Thomas Mann ... Mann’s unfulfilled sexual desires also lend the narrative a longing undertone and feeling of being unmoored, despite Mann’s loving marriage to Katia Pringsheim. Most notably, some of the finest writing in the novel finds Tóibín bringing to life Mann’s profound questions about the role of the German artist as a public figure as Hitler ascended to power. Another feat of this towering work is that the hallmarks of Tóibín’s diaphanous prose—stillness, precision, intimacy—remain intact despite the wide-ranging, voluminous material of Mann’s biography. Tóibín deftly moves the reader between different facets of Mann’s persona while also allowing space for the novel to read as a finely observed and wholly absorbing family saga ... in a quietly epic tale, Tóibín expertly captures the layers of a richly multiple self and surely reasserts his own status as one of our greatest living novelists.
Dolly Alderton
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)... occasionally, slightly laboured jokes undermine the overall comic force. Nevertheless, these comic turns often made me chuckle: the depiction of a hen do dominated by a passive-aggressive maid of honour is brilliant ... Max’s singular brand of cruelty and the novel’s other darker themes show Alderton’s writing at its strongest. The unnerving introduction of Nina’s threatening neighbour Angelo is a particular highlight. The depiction of her mother’s reaction to her new role as a carer – a brittle but steadfast denial that there is a problem – also makes for effectively unsettling reading that tests the boundaries of what used to be called chick-lit. It would be good to see this element of her writing – the difficult, the ambivalent – find an even fuller voice in Alderton’s subsequent novels.
Leone Ross
RaveThe Guardian (UK)Ross undertakes the task of world-building this trippy realm with tremendous gusto, wit and style. Lushly chromatic landscapes reminiscent of Ben Okri’s The Famished Road teem with tangled bougainvillea, \'polymorphic butterflies\' and trees whose blue fruit is covered with lines of poetry ... This focus brings solidity to an expansive plot as it meanders towards a dramatic climax ... There are moments when fulsome description, a digressive tendency, overemphasis or repetition cause the narrative propulsion to snag ... Impressively, however, Ross almost always handles the vast range of material and the multi-tonal quality of the text with an adroitness that keeps the reader involved ... Ross invites us also to suspend our scepticism, to take a risk and wholly immerse ourselves in the wildness and weirdness of Popisho. This is a novel that will reward those who are able to surrender to its capaciousness and eccentricities, to revel in its oddness and delight in each surprise...provides us not merely with a welcome opportunity to enjoy a madcap, freewheeling ride through surreal and supernatural territory. It also asserts the importance of interacting with our own unpredictable world with openness, unfettered awe and wide-eyed wonder.
Caleb Azumah Nelson
RaveThe Guardian (UK)It is Azumah Nelson’s expressive style that most startlingly reanimates this formula. His presentation of the narrative in sensual but precisely paced sentences with elegant refrains and motifs imbues Open Water with a rhythm of its own. Azumah Nelson’s descriptions of his lovers’ physicality provide the clearest examples of his supple prose. ... While an elegance of style is a hallmark of Azumah Nelson’s storytelling, there is bold risk-taking in his choices too: he writes in the second person, using its immediacy and potency to create an emotional intensity that replicates the emotional intensity with which the protagonist experiences his bond with the dancer and his wider world. ... In its interweaving of the romantic arc with meditations on blackness and black masculinity, this affecting novel makes us again consider the personal through a political lens; systematic racism necessarily politicises the everyday experiences of black people. ... Running alongside is a glorious celebration of the exuberance of blackness. The photographer stresses that he and his community are \'more than the sum of [their] traumas\'. As the protagonist explores the influences underpinning his own work, and in tender dialogue between the lovers, Azumah Nelson namechecks black artistry of all kinds, often drawing attention to its immersive power and transcendental effect. ...Given its slim size, the novel sometimes seems slightly crowded – not just with these enthusiastic references to black artists, but in other ways too. Alongside the main narrative, other topics fleetingly referred to include the difficulties of being a black person in a private school, curling at the Winter Olympics, the Notting Hill Carnival, basketball, Kierkegaard, the loss of grandparents ... This engaging breadth of interest might make us wish the book, at 176 pages, were a little longer to accommodate its investigative spirit. However, this range and the desire to record the variety of a particular black perspective demonstrate a key feature of Azumah Nelson’s work: his exciting ambition.
Brit Bennett
RaveThe GuardianWith a judicious hand, Bennett outlines how this regulating of racial purity comes with no small measure of emotional cruelty ... among the novel’s great technical accomplishments are the parallels it draws between characters’ experiences across the decades. Stella and Desiree’s struggles are elegantly and inventively echoed in the future challenges encountered by their children ... Images and subplots associated with this performative aspect of identity are prevalent in the text. We regularly find ourselves in the company of shapeshifting drag queens, a chameleon-like bounty hunter, extravagant soap stars, theatrical estate agents. Some might find this repeated allusion to the theme of pretence grinding or overly emphatic. For me, it mirrored the daily self-policing and continuous effort required in order for Stella to maintain her facade ... Bennett is a gifted storyteller. This generous, humane novel has many merits, not least its engrossing plot and richly detailed settings, from smoky small-town diners to gleaming laboratories. The handling of Stella’s secret struggles is, however, an especial achievement ... the novel proves to be a timely testament to the redemptive powers of community, connection and looking beyond the self.
Brandon Taylor
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)... formally and conceptually testing ... With its icily cool sentences, mysterious tonal shifts and determinedly open ending, Taylor’s novel is also a curiously liquid thing, with troubling, opaque depths ... a nuanced portrayal of gay desire ... Wallace’s principal struggle throughout the novel is with the legacy of sexual violence. Taylor sensitively records his protagonist’s attempts to excavate these deeply buried personal tragedies. In terms of craft, the passage in which Wallace reveals the horrors of his past is a disturbing, virtuosic piece of writing ... Taylor’s treatment of racial politics in the novel is sophisticated and forceful too. Wallace astutely diagnoses the ways his privileged white peers \'have a vested interest in underestimating racism;\' the depictions of the micro and macroaggressions he faces as he moves through a predominantly white world are figured with piercing accuracy ... aspects of Wallace’s characterisation...might discourage readers. Taylor is committed to precisely portraying Wallace’s inner life and lived experience as a deeply withdrawn individual, born no doubt from Wallace’s history of abuse. This dedication to psychological verisimilitude involves showing that, for victims, progressing beyond trauma is not always possible. It also involves asserting that people, often and especially those closest to us, might be unknowable. These tendencies mean that, by the end of the book, the narrative often has a somewhat inert, ponderous quality, and Wallace feels curiously indistinct. Ultimately, Taylor renders Wallace always at a remove from us; a figure frustratingly out of reach.
