Review | West by Carys Davies

West

by Carys Davies

My Rating: 

When Cy Bellman, American settler and widowed father of Bess, reads in the newspaper that huge ancient bones have been discovered in a Kentucky swamp, he leaves his small Pennsylvania farm and young daughter to find out if the rumours are true: that the giant monsters are still alive, and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River.

West is the story of Bellman's journey and of Bess, waiting at home for her father to return. Written with compassionate tenderness and magical thinking, it explores the courage of conviction, the transformative power of grief, the desire for knowledge and the pull of home, from an exceptionally talented and original British writer. It is a radiant and timeless epic-in-miniature, an eerie, electric monument to possibility.

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I received an eARC of West from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

West is the debut novella from an established short story writer, and it feels like a debut novella from an established short story writer. Carys Davies' writing is stunning, and I love how sparse her writing is; each word she chooses is there to serve a purpose but she chooses each one with such skill that, although her style isn't flowery it is lyrical in its simplicity.

That being said, I finished this story wishing I'd gotten a little more from it. West is set in 19th century Pennsylvania, where widower Cy Bellman reads an article describing the large bones that have been found out west. Though there are no pictures in the article, Cy is so taken with the idea of creatures so big that he simply has to see them, so he leaves his ten year old daughter, Bess, with his sister and sets out on his quest, and while he deals with the dangers of his journey it appears that Bess isn't entirely safe without her father's protection, either.

There's a lot about this novella that I really liked. Cy's obsession with these bones and the descriptions of his fascination with them set West up to feel like a kind of 'fool's journey' story, in fact when Cy eventually finds himself being assisted on his quest by a First Nations boy West started giving me Don Quixote vibes. There's something about these bones, about these creatures no one's seen, that fills Cy with the most feeling he's had since the passing of his wife years before, and I loved how his behaviour could be read also as a man still dealing with grief and loss and perhaps even mental illness. There are mentions of him keeping everyone, including his daughter, at a distance for days at a time following his wife's death, which read to me like a man struggling through clinical depression in a time when no one understood what that was.

Having said that, I loved Bess and the sections of the novella about her a lot more. Cy and Bess were both well realised characters, but there was something about Bess that made her feel more substantial to me as a character. As her story went on she started to grow into a little human while Cy seemed to become less of a person and more of a parable of foolishness. That being said, Davies never mocks Cy or his desperation to see these creatures and know what they are. Other people he meets along the way might think he's crazy but Davies never does, and I appreciated that while his journey does become rather foolish Cy himself can never be completely described as a fool because so much of what he's doing is wrapped up in grief and a longing for something beyond himself.

While I loved Bess, though, there were aspects of her story that frustated me a little. I really liked the juxtaposition of her father facing the wilderness and Bess growing into womanhood in a world where men might try and take advantage of her with no father to keep her safe, but it feels like a story I've seen before and I didn't think Davies was really saying anything new. I don't want every story I read to be a lesson - stories can just be stories and be enjoyed as such - but this story is so short already that I thought it was a shame that so many of Bess's sections were taken up with scenarios I've seen before, particularly in historical fiction. There are two men in particular who have horrid intentions and, to Davies' credit, she never writes gratuitously about their desires, but she does write in a way that's unnerving and makes us genuinely worry for Bess's safety. Even so, the young girl without parents being pursued by bad men is something I've seen too many times before, and I thought it was frustrating that the aunt she's been left with is useless in this regard. I would have thought that Bess's aunt, more than anyone, would have been aware of the kind of things that might happen to Bess without her father there to protect her.

All that aside, this is a beautifully written piece of literary fiction and a melancholic exploration of the fool's journey and the consequences of that journey for 'the fool' himself and those around him. I look forward to seeing how Davies continues to develop as a writer, and if you're in the mood for something short and sweet with a Western Frontier vibe, I'd recommend giving West a go!

Review | Lullaby by Leïla Slimani

Lullaby

by Leïla Slimani

My Rating:

The baby is dead. It took only a few seconds.

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect caretaker for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite and devoted woman who sings to their children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint and is able to host enviable birthday parties.

The couple and nanny become more dependent on each other. But as jealousy, resentment and suspicions increase, Myriam and Paul's idyllic tableau is shattered...

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I came across Lullaby in an issue of The Bookseller not long before its publication, and as soon as I saw it I knew I'd want to read it. Not only do I want to read more translated fiction but I was fascinated by its incredibly dark premise, which was giving me The Hand That Rocks the Cradle vibes. Lullaby is essentially a whydunnit which opens with the death of two children who have been murdered by their nanny, and then travels back to before the nanny's employment to explore how things come to this horrific conclusion.

Firstly, this is an excellent translation. Sam Taylor did a wonderful job of translating from the French and still making the book dark and lyrical. If you are French or a French speaker, however, I imagine this book is absolutely stunning in French.

Because we already know what happens to Myriam and Paul's children, the first half of the book was so tense and I found it hard to put it down; Louise, the nanny, is unnerving and simply too perfect, like a Mary Poppins gone horribly wrong. Supercalifragilisticshe's-secretly-atrocious. To call Louise evil, however, doesn't seem right, especially not in the first half of the book. What she ends up doing is vile, but Lullaby is clever in the way it explores how the people we let into our families can change things and also how parents who can afford to hire nannies can sometimes take advantage of them or patronise them without realising.

Sadly, I do think Lullaby has been the victim of dishonest marketing. I keep seeing it marketed as a thriller and, to be honest, I don't think it is. Yes there's a murder, but this story is much more social commentary than anything else. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you go into this book expecting a thriller and find instead a very domestic, quiet and short novel about social politics you're bound to feel a little betrayed.

For me I also felt as though the book lost its way in the middle and I wasn't as interested. I don't have children and therefore I've never been in the position of having to trust someone I don't really know to look after them, so perhaps I would act the same way as Myriam does in this novel, but there were quite a few times when Louise's behaviour was disturbing enough that I would have let her go. The tragedy is that Louise's life hasn't been easy and she's suffered a lot, but Myriam's continued employment doesn't come from a place of compassion but a place of pity and those aren't the same thing at all. We'll never know if things would have been different if Myriam and Paul had treated Louise a little differently, but however much I felt sorry for someone I'd like to think I'd still remove them from my life if I felt like my children weren't entirely safe. That's not to say I blame Myriam and Paul for what happens, the only person to blame is Louise because she is the murderer, but at times I found it hard to believe that they would continue to employ her - particularly after one instance in which Louise takes a chicken carcass out of the bin and makes the children eat all of the meat on it until it is literally bone dry. Uh, get away from my children please!

I was hoping to like Lullaby a lot more than I did. I didn't hate it by any means and there are lots of good things about it, but what's made me the most uneasy is that Lullaby is actually based on a true story. This is something I didn't know until I'd finished reading it, but a nanny was found guilty of killing two children, very similarly to the way Louise kills Myriam and Paul's children, in New York in 2012. In fact when I looked into it I discovered she has only been sentenced this year. This is just a personal thing, but I really didn't like that I'd read a novel that is so close to something that happened very recently about this topic. Those parents in New York will be grieving for the rest of their lives, but it must still be so fresh having to wait six years for their nanny to be found guilty and now there's this novel bouncing around heavily based on their story that's trying to make the nanny look sympathetic. For me it just felt a little insensitive, and I felt as though the novel could have been publicised without mentioning the true crime it was based on. If Slimani found this story inspiring then I don't think she should have not written it, but I can't help feeling sorry for those real parents whenever I see the book mentioned in magazines in relation to the crime that inspired it.

Would I recommend it? Yes, if you can handle the subject matter. The way it's written is beautiful and it does have a lot to say about race and class and the way we sometimes take advantage of our employees, but unfortunately I didn't like this one as much as I'd hoped I would.

Review | Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You

by Celeste Ng

My Rating: 

Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting. 

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened. 

I must say a big thank you to Mallory @ The Local Muse for introducing me to this book; I don't tend to read family stories that often, but I'm always interested by mixed race families. As someone from an entirely white family I can't pretend to know what kind of experiences, either good or bad, someone from a mixed race family might have, but it's something I always want to learn more about.

Everything I Never Told You is one of the most devastatingly beautiful books I've ever read. It's also probably the best family story I've ever read, and it might well be one of the best books I read this year. For the past few years I've read something fantastic in January; last year it was Burial Rites, the year before it was American Gods, and now it's this.

Just as I was with The Miniaturist, I'm astounded that Everything I Never Told You is Celeste Ng's debut; her writing style is just stunning, and I will read whatever she publishes next. There's such attention to detail in the way she describes the members of this family, so even though the narration is fairly God-like (she sometimes alludes to things before they happen) we still get to know each character well. This book made me ache for all of them.

As the blurb says, Lydia Lee is the middle and favourite child of her parents, Marilyn and James, but when she's sixteen she goes missing, and her body is later found in the local lake. She appears to have committed suicide, but why would a girl who has it all do a thing like that? Only then do Lydia's family realise that they didn't really know her at all.

I have to be honest I don't tend to read many family stories because there's usually at least one person I don't really care that much about. This was the exception. Marilyn, James, Nath, Lydia, and Hannah are all so beautifully realised that I didn't care who I was reading about as long as I could keep reading and learn more. Even Marilyn and James who both do some pretty terrible things to their children (especially Lydia) and each other are understandable. You don't have to agree with them, you don't even have to sympathise with them, but it's hard not to understand why they are the way they are or why they do the things they do.

There are certain characters, such as neighbourhood boy Jack and even Lydia herself, who I thought were going to be one way and then turned out to be completely different people, which I loved. And then there's Hannah, the youngest child, whom I desperately wanted to cuddle; there's something about the blurb which kind of suggests Hannah has a very central role, but this story has an ensemble cast.

I loved this book. It's haunting and raw and honest. It's exquisitely written and exquisitely plotted. I highly recommend it!