Book Review: Where I End

Where I End, by Sophie White, is set on a small island off the coast of Ireland. Fewer than two hundred people live on this remote outcrop. They speak a dialect of Gaeilge that is understood by few incomers. The locals harbour deep seated superstitions that result in some disturbing practices.

The island has a grey beach at one end and sheer cliffs at the other. In between are houses built from the local stone. The mainlanders marvel at the historic culture retained on this isolated backwater, trying to harness it for monetary gain. The remains of a derelict woollen factory attest to one such failed enterprise. This building is now to be turned into a museum and art gallery in an attempt to attract tourists. The locals regard these interventions with disdain.

Livings are mostly eked out from the sea either through fishing or working on the boats that ferry the few visitors. Learning to swim is frowned upon. When the sea takes lives they are mourned but the deaths accepted.

The story is narrated by nineteen year old Aoileann who was born and raised in a dark and cold house, the last dwelling before the cliffs are reached. Her days revolve around caring for her damaged mother, ‘the bed-thing’. Aoileann’s grandmother is the only person to pay her any attention, and that is as scant and silent as the older woman can get away with. The locals actively avoid the girl, believing she is cursed. Her father visits once a month, staying just one night before returning to the mainland. Aoileann resents the extra work his visits create, a show put on that he may pretend all is as it should be despite the glaringly obvious issues with his wife’s physical and mental health.

The author skilfully weaves the backstory of this family and place around the day to day chores that must be undertaken to keep the mother alive. Despite questions, eavesdropping, and searches of the dwelling, Aoileann still does not know what happened to create the being her mother now is. Photographs suggest her parents were once happy. Her grandmother closes down entirely when asked to explain.

Having set the scene, a catalyst for change arrives in the form of an artist, Rachel, and her newborn baby. Aoileann is mesmerised by this young women, doing what it takes to ingratiate herself into their lives. The reader has been fed snippets of some disturbing behaviour from Aoileann’s childhood. These now manifest in her treatment of the new residents. As someone who has never been loved by a mother, Aoileann is desperate for Rachel to grant her some of the attention she observes being offered so freely to the child.

The sense of foreboding is palpable throughout. This plays alongside the explicit horror of Aoileann’s mother’s situation, revealed gradually but with little reasoning explained until later in the tale. By the end the reader will be recoiling from all that has happened and then been perpetuated. The denouement is still shocking despite the foreshadowing.

A masterclass in creating a darkly disturbing character and sense of place. A unique and brilliant read that I couldn’t put down, reading it cover to cover in a day. It will take much longer to recover from the vivid and searing experience. A horror story I unreservedly recommend.

My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Tramp Press.

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Book Review: Seven Steeples

“Bell and Sigh were curious to see what would happen when two solitary misanthropes tried to live together”

Seven Steeples, by Sara Baume, is set in and around a remote and decaying house in the south-west of Ireland. It follows a young couple through seven years of their lives during which they do everything they can to live apart from other people. Other than the essentials for survival they make few purchases, managing without when things break. Their days are habitual. They gain pleasure from walking their locality, observing and discussing the small changes that occur due to: human activity and carelessness, seasonal change.

The story opens in early January. Bell and Sigh arrive at the house they have arranged to rent, bringing with them a single van load of possessions and their dogs, that must now get used to living together as a family. The couple first met the previous summer, to climb a mountain with mutual friends. He worked in a factory, she as a waitress. They are happy to leave Dublin behind, along with their large families and exigent friends.

The house overlooks a farm and what may be a large hill or a small mountain. It is not the most salubrious of residences but it suits its new occupants well. They feel no need to be fastidious in their habits. They relish the space they now have all to themselves.

Days are spent enacting routine tasks, all the while observing each change in their surrounds. They tend to their garden although have little luck in attempts to grow food there. Sigh fishes with more success. Both swim in the sea regularly. They keep the house as they want without concern for social convention.

As time passes they shed all wider obligations, happy to lose contact with people who previously expected to spend time with them. Other than the farmer, their landlord, and those they pass by in town while doing necessary shopping, they avoid other people as much as is possible.

“A successful trip out was one in which they met no one”

While in some respects a gentle story focusing on the rhythms of day to day living, the life Bell and Sigh choose to live has an elemental feel. Alongside the changing weather, the growth and decay of nature, there is no shying away from: build up of dirt, deterioration, how animals are treated and behave. The dogs in particular have many truly disgusting habits when allowed to roam free. They sometimes kill when able to grasp the opportunity.

Bell and Sigh also share their home with: mice, spiders, the detritus that accumulates if not tidied away. They become ‘poor and shabby without noticing’. Their unassuming outlook provides the reader with food for thought in how most choose to live and why.

“They walked the way they always walked”

As season after season changes the couple grow ever more insular. Their days are marked by activity observed in the fields and landscape: the plants and farm animals, the wildlife that comes and goes, effects of storms and men. They develop rituals for cooking and cleaning (although the house is never clean). They become creatures of habit.

“In six years they had never once been brave enough to attempt cooking something entirely new and run the risk of having to eat a horrible dinner”

Time is measured in: empty bottles collected, washing sponges discarded, the gradual increase in grey on the dogs fur and their hair. Knobs fall off appliances. Clothing merges into one messy pile. They no longer notice the noises made by house and land, the accumulated smells of dog, damp and burnt cooking oil.

“They travelled a twenty-mile radius from the house, never straying a yard further, in the past or present, online or in life”

The author avoids waxing lyrical on the beauty of nature but what comes across keenly are the pleasures to be found on shedding superficial and vacuous preoccupations. When plans are made and then forgotten they are shown to be unimportant. Life is lived in the present.

An affirming and uplifting take on acceptance, on finding joy in whatever can be had, paying little heed to media driven dissatisfaction or aspiration. Such a basic, solitary life may suit few people, but all could benefit from appreciating where they are now above where they are endlessly berated for not being.

The prose style and structure tells the story to perfection, the use of language understated and effortlessly engaging. There is much to consider and unpack in the spare, evocative telling. For seven years Bell and Sigh did not climb the mountain, even though it was there. The life led in the meantime suited them anyway.

My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Tramp Press.

Book Review: Corpsing

“What I was looking for at all times was an escape hatch, a way out of the present moment, to tunnel out of my totally unremarkable and pathetic self. To break the cycle of being a terminal disappointment: a disappointment as a daughter, a mother, a woman, failing at that implied contract of womanhood – of being nice and attractive and contained.”

Corpsing, by Sophie White, is taglined My Body and Other Horror Shows – appropriate given its focus on how one’s body cannot always be relied upon. It is a collection of essays that serve as memoir. The raw honesty of the subjects explored is both refreshing and horrifying, laying bare the sheer effort required to exist in a world where quietly keeping up appearances is the expected norm. Issues examined include the impact on self of: drug taking, grief, mental breakdown, motherhood, self harm, alcoholism. The author has both a caring mother and husband, along with three dependant children, but brings to the fore how living in the world must ultimately be coped with – or not – alone.

Divided into five sections, the first contains a series of essays that deal with the death of White’s father – a drawn out decline that finally ended shortly after the birth of her second child. The violence of birth is compared to the shrunken existence of a human body as it fades towards its inevitable end, when those left behind are cast adrift.

“Birth is explosive and volatile; the final moment of life takes this same explosion and detonates it deep inside us.”

The author struggled to cope with her sense of loss. She went through the motions of each day by keeping busy – looking after her children and starting a new job. And by turning to alcohol. Wine helped numb the sharp edges that threatened to cut her to pieces. What she needed was to be seen to be coping, not making a fuss.

From the outside, White’s childhood was not difficult. She was brought up by loving parents in material comfort. Peel back the veneer and there are all too common incidents that she knew needed to be swept under the carpet: older boys acting inappropriately with her four year old body, a friend’s mother’s who suggested a nine year old White eat fewer puddings to fit into a princess dress, being told she was ugly by laughing boys when a teenager. Absorbing, internalising these unremarkable events, as expected by those around her, leaves lasting scars.

Like many young people, the author in her teens experimented with alcohol and drugs.

“a place of refuge where I could take a break from being myself”

Aged twenty-two she took an ecstasy tablet while camping at a festival. The bad reaction suffered changed her forever. She describes it in detail, the start of her ‘madness’. There followed a breakdown, psychiatric help, the slow clawing back from thoughts of suicide. Years of travel, working as a chef or living meagerly off grid, provided ‘a strategy for restoring sanity’. The essays describing this period are terrifying to consider – the risks taken by young people that so many get away with – yet prove evocative and hopeful.

Returning to Ireland and getting married brought into sharp relief the relationship women have with their bodies and appetites.

“If you were born in the latter half of the twentieth century, then you will know that fat is the very worst thing. The worst thing to eat. The worst thing to be.”

This series of essays is wonderful in highlighting the many ridiculous habits so many absorb, and how women police not just their own bodies but those of others – family, friends, even strangers.

Later essays explore further the author’s descent into alcoholism, and how drunk girls are dehumanised.

“She teeters and topples, knees scuffed. She deserves nothing. No justice if she is victimised by an opportunistic predator. Opportunistic – it’s a word that practically commends this tenacious, moment-seizing, go-getting rapist.”

Another disturbing incident at a festival is detailed, but it is the drinking at home that many stressed out mothers may relate most to. The thoughts on motherhood are as honest as anything I have read on the subject – the pain and fatigue but, more than that, the judgement.

“When a man leaves work to attend to his child, it is commended; when a woman leaves work to attend to her child, it is noted.”

And, of course, the harshest judge of all is the mother herself – her inability to be perfect at all times leading to feelings of failure.

In amongst these excellent essays are topics that may be a little more esoteric: vampirism, adult thumb sucking, knitting. As the author approaches the end of the book: she gives birth to a third child, the COVID-19 lockdown is imposed, she suffers another breakdown and is taken into psychiatric care. It is a reminder that mental illness is managed rather than cured.

White has a writing style that is vehement in its desire for unadorned realism yet contains much humour. The macabre is balanced by recognition of how so many choose to live unaware, to turn away from the unpleasant. The conspiracy of silence that mostly surrounds the unpalatable truths of giving birth and mothering are discarded by the author witheringly.

As well as being eminently engaging, somehow this is an enjoyable read despite the blood, gore and madness. It is an eye-opening account of the strength required to hold a life together – a reminder to show compassion however ingrained judgement of others’ outward behaviour has become in an age of picture perfect social media.

Corpsing is published by Tramp Press. My copy was provided gratis by Turnaround UK.

Book Review: A Ghost in the Throat

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an award winning poet. She is also mother to four children born within a six year period. A Ghost in the Throat chronicles her life during her offspring’s baby years, when she became obsessed by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, author of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (the Keen for Art Ó Laoghaire), which has been referred to as ‘the greatest poem written in either Ireland or Britain during the eighteenth century.’ It is a school text in Ireland, one that Ní Ghríofa developed a crush on as a teenager. In 2012, while taking a break from her household chores to express milk she donated for poorly babies, she rereads the poem and ponders on the life led by this other mother who has been dead for centuries.

Her ponderings lead to sporadic research. The author discovers that although many have studied the poem closely – there are multiple translations – few show interest in its creator.

“the more I read, the sharper my rage grows. This feeling glues itself to the introductory paragraph that often precedes the translations, flimsy sketches of Eibhlín Dubh’s life that are almost always some lazy variant of the same two facts: Wife of Art O’Leary. Aunt of Daniel O’Connell. How swiftly the academic gaze places her in a masculine shadow, as though she could only be of interest as a satellite to male lives.”

Ní Ghríofa describes A Ghost in the Throat as a female text – notably, not a feminist text. She glories in her ability to create and nurture the tiny miracles that are her children. Her days are spent: mopping and scrubbing, wiping and feeding, on laundry and dishes and caring for her children. There is none of the more typical apology for being a housewife. She acknowledges the fatigue and fretfulness of the role but derives pleasure from giving herself to other’s needs. She writes of these days with a lyricism that is astonishing.

“My weeks are decanted between the twin forces of milk and text, weeks that soon pour into months, and then into years. I make myself a life in which whenever I let myself sit, it is to emit pale syllables of milk, while sipping my own dark sustenance from ink.”

To find Eibhlín Dubh, it became necessary to delve into the male texts as these were all that existed. Ní Ghríofa then set about excising the men and their concerns to see what remained. She discovered a mother and a twin sister – lives unremarked by most researchers. She visits places where they lived but often finds little remains.

“Now: nothing. Another grand deletion this. Another ordinary obliteration of a woman’s life. The farmer is right, I am looking at nothing. I am also looking at everything.”

The author writes of her own past as well as on motherhood and the household tasks that fill her days. Her words are steeped in the importance of family and the sense of place in the world that they instil.

“My family had lived within these hills for centuries […] every path I followed had been written by the bodies of others, the course of every track sculpted by the footfall of those who came before us.”

As time passes, Ní Ghríofa’s obsession with Eibhlín Dubh verges on the unhealthy – a trait that is not unknown to her – and yet what she discovers is fascinating to read. Entwined with the historical details she uncovers are the challenges she herself faces as her fourth child makes its way into the world. Yet still she wants more babies – concerned with what she will become if not nurturing children.

Eventually she must accept that she has found everything available to her about Eibhlín Dubh. She must also accept another ending in the life she is leading. The book closes with the poem that set her on this journey – transcribed in both Gaeilge (Irish) and an English translation. As this work has been quoted throughout, to read it in its entirety is to immerse oneself in a now valued text.

The Caoineadh is as deeply personal for its author as A Ghost in the Throat is for Ní Ghríofa. In weaving the stories of these two women together, the tapestry of the lives of mothers is exhumed from the detritus they perennially exist under, demanding attention rarely received. Engaging content and elegant prose ensure reading is a pleasure. An extraordinary book that deserves wide attention.

My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Tramp Press.

Chatting to independent publisher, Tramp Press

As part of my feature on the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses I invited publishers and authors whose books were selected for the longlist to answer a few questions or write a guest post for my blog. Today I am delighted to welcome Lisa Coen from Tramp Press, which published The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo.

 

An introduction – who you are and what you aim to achieve?

Tramp Press is an independent publisher based in Dublin. Officially it’s just two of us: Sarah and Lisa, but we have a growing team of people helping us out. We publish the best writing by new and established authors, and we’re working hard to nurture great talent all the time. Ireland is known for its great writers, we’d like it to also be known for its excellent independent publishing.

How have things have changed in publishing since you started?

We started Tramp in 2014, but even in that short time we’ve seen Irish fiction make incredible strides in the market. Mike McCormack talks about how hard it was for his unusual style of writing to get published, and that’s no longer a problem. The growth of independent publishers like Galley Beggar, And Other Stories and so on has seen the conservatism of the big 5 being somewhat balanced out in terms of representation on shelves. There’s still a long way to go but it’s a good start.

What is your experience of prize listings – costs and benefits, monetary or otherwise?

We put aside money to enter prizes because we think it’s a really important way of bringing an author to a reader’s attention. Critical review space is shrinking all the time, so it’s vital to have another opportunity to demonstrate that someone else has read and judged the novel to be important new work

The future – where you would like to see your small press going?

We always say it’s strange that Ireland has four Nobel laureates for fiction but no equivalent publisher to Faber & Faber or Editions Gallimard. We’re working hard to develop our distribution network in the UK and the US so we can grow and compete on a bigger stage.

 

Thank you Lisa for answering my questions, and congratulations on the part you and Sarah played in getting that other literary prize, The Man Booker, to accept submissions from Irish-published novels. 

You may follow Tramp Press on Twitter: @TrampPress

Click on the book cover above to find out more about The Iron Age. 

Keep up with all the news on The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses by following on Twitter: @PrizeRofc

The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo, published by Tramp Press

As part of my feature on The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses I am posting a number of guest reviews written by a couple of my fellow judges. Today I welcome back Graham Fulcher who provides his thoughts on The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo (illustrated by Susanna Kajermo Törner), which is published by Tramp Press.

 

Tramp Press is a small Irish publisher which aims

to find, nuture and publish exceptional literary talent and … is committed to finding only the best and most deserving books, by new and established writers

Its greatest success to date has been Mike McCormack’s 2016 Goldsmith Prize winning Solar Bones (which was Booker longlisted on its subsequent publication by a UK publisher). More recently Sara Baume’s A Line Made Walking has been shortlisted for the 2017 Goldsmith Prize, following on from her wonderful debut novel.

Arja Kajermo is a cartoonist – born in Finland, raised in Sweden, and living in Ireland. The Iron Age, her debut novel was based on notes for a graphic novel, and was then written as a short story which was a finalist for the 2014 Davy Byrnes Short Story Award (won by Sara Baume) before being developed into this short novel/novella.

The book is narrated by a girl, growing up in the first half of the book in rural poverty in Finland in the 1950s, the youngest in a family of four – her father, injured in the defeat in the Continuation War of 1941-1944 and seemingly suffering from PTSD.

“It’s the war” [her mother] said father’s nerves are shot. It was from all the bad things he had seen and been through

He struggles to find employment to feed and clothe his family and ends up returning repeatedly to the family farm where he struggles with his widowed mother who owns it

Grandmother was an angry woman. She was angry with father most days ….. But most of all she was angry with Grandfather because he was dead

and in an increasingly bitter marriage.

Father was always telling mother to shut up. He had married her for her good looks and plucky attitude. Then he set to trying his damnedest to destroy both the looks and the attitude

Eventually he decides that his family should move to Sweden (minus his oldest son, who he unsuccessfully plans to inherit the family farm on the death of his other relatives).

But we bought our war with us. The shrapnel that had gone into Father’s legs, in 1944 in the painful retreat when the war was lost, had somehow worked its way into his children. Each of us carried a shard of that iron in our hearts. We would never be at peace. Not in Sweden. Not anywhere.

The second half of the book chronicles the start of the family’s life in Sweden – which in many ways takes an even darker turn. The family struggle between Father’s insistence that they assimilate and yet that they also keep their proud martial Finnish identity amongst the peace loving socialist Swedes. Further, it is often their Father who draws the most attention to their foreignness (for example his Finnish dress making him look like a Nazi).

I felt that the family’s struggles to maintain this dual identity while also not drawing attention to themselves could serve as a metaphor for the difficult path of neutrality that Finland navigated after the World War.

They struggle even more with language

We were now what mother called ummikko. We were people who could only speak our own language and we could not understand the language around us. And the people around us could not understand us. It was a terrible fate to be ummikko. It was like being deaf and dumb mother said. Outside our own home we were like cows that could only stand and stare.

The narrator’s reaction both to her father’s continuing anger and the ummikko issue is a two fold withdrawal. She stops speaking altogether and draws into herself

There was a strange safety net in not saying anything. It was like being very small inside a big bomb shelter and looking out through narrow slits that were my own eyes.

and further escapes into the world of books.

I did not just read books. I lived the stories in the books

In particular she escapes into the world of the Little Mermaid – identifying with the sacrifices that the Mermaid made to live with her prince

If you leave your true home you have to give something up. I had traded in my tongue too but I had got nothing for it

but ultimately rejecting the Mermaid’s choice and instead fantasising that she stays underwater in a mer-Kingdom where the bitterness of her father, the choices and sacrifices her family have made, the long lasting effects of war, all play no part, and are replaced by calmness, peace and togetherness.

Under the water everyone can stay together and nobody has to go away

In a devastating ending to the book she opens her eyes during one such fantasy and realises

I had no tail

The book is atmospherically illustrated by the author’s niece – Susanna Kajermo – in a series of black and white pencil drawings.

The illustrator Susanna has commented that

I had heard several of the anecdotes in it, told in various ways, by my Dad when I grew up. I have always been interested in the way people tell or remember things …… … my art often relates to childhood and storytelling ….. Arja gave me some old photographs for inspiration, and I also had my Dad’s, rather thin photo album to look at … I tried to make illustrations that would work with the text but also as separate pictures that could somehow tell a story of their own … I appreciate pictures that have both seriousness or a sort of darkness, combined with humour or absurdity in them. That is something I strive for in my art. Arja’s novel has all of those components and so I had a really good time working with it

And this quote picks up many of the themes of the book: its concentration on storytelling and remembrance – family stories and legends, the war stories that the narrator’s Father uses to draw on his lessons for life, the interpretation of dreams, constant reminiscing on those that fell in the Wars, Finnish folklore particularly around a witch like figure, the stories in which the narrator increasingly takes refuge; the illustrations which while clearly relating to the story often have a deeper dark fairy tale element (for example – a dinosaur skull buried under the roots of a tree, a ghost figure on a sled); the juxtaposition of the darkness of much of the life of the narrator with the absurd incidents that occur and the dry humour with which she relates them.

Overall this is a simple book but one with surprising depth.

GF

 

You may read my review of The Iron Age here.

Coming tomorrow, an interview with the publisher of this book.

Keep up with all the news on The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses by following on Twitter: @PrizeRofc

Book Review: The Iron Age

The Iron Age, by Arja Kajermo (illustrated by Susanna Kajermo Törner), is a story of a childhood. It begins in 1950s Finland when the narrator is four years old. She lives on a small farm with her war damaged father, stoic mother, angry grandmother and two older brothers. Neighbouring farms are owned by wider family, some more well off than others but all reliant on the land. Properties are connected by dirt tracks and a lake. The log cabins lack running water and electricity. The people raise, grow or make the bulk of what they need. Life is hard, made moreso for the unnamed child by her father’s volatility.

Of course, the child knows of no other way. She observes the behaviour of those around her, the anger and resentments the adults feel. Her language is simple yet conveys the tradition and attitudes under which they all live. Told with a dry, dark humour, day to day life passes and the seasons turn.

Money is tight so Father travels to distant towns after harvest has been gathered to find work. He returns with gifts and dreams for a future which he berates his country for failing to provide. This future he talks of appears a myth to the child, much like his stories from the past which he shares repeatedly with local visitors. She listens avidly but with a lack of understanding, shown to effect by her literal interpretations.

Eventually there is a row so bitter the family must move away. Father takes them to a distant town and then onwards to Sweden where everything changes. They do not speak the language, the child must attend school. Books become a solace, her voice a hindrance.

Mother strikes out for a degree of independence of which Father disapproves. His traditional attitudes are now as anachronistic as the clothes he chose to impress, viewed askance by the Swedish.

The child has little control over the detail of her existence yet she harbours her secrets, survives by living inside her head. The denouement felt sudden, perhaps because I didn’t want the story to end.

Told in sparse, droll language this is a beautifully painted portrayal of the transience of time and place when young. The illustrations work perfectly with the text, adding an extra dimension. A fable like depiction of unbelonging that I recommend you read.

The Iron Age is published by Tramp Press.

Book Review: Solar Bones

Solar Bones, by Mike McCormack, is the most accurate adherence to stream of consciousness style writing that I have come across. The entire novel, all 223 pages in the edition I read, is presented as one continuous sentence. Do not let this put you off. Despite its apparently mundane subject matter it is an engaging and compelling read.

The narrator is Marcus Conway, a native of the county of Mayo in Ireland. When the book opens Marcus is standing in the kitchen of his family home listening to the Angelus bell ring out from the village church a mile away.

We learn that Marcus has been married for twenty-five years to Mairead, a teacher at a local school. They have raised two children – Agnes who is an artist, and Darragh who is casually working his way across Australia. The committed parents have adjusted to the initial emptiness felt when their grown-up children first moved away. They have settled into a comfortable routine.

Marcus looks around him recalling history as he has lived it through familiar places, possessions and significant events. He is an engineer by profession working for the local council on infrastructure projects. He is frustrated by the influence self-serving politicians exert on the decision making process. He takes pride in his ability to work to a standard.

Raised on a farm he remembers his childhood and then the deaths of his parents. His relationships have at times been rocky as life sometimes is. Mostly though he feels grateful for the chances he has been given. In many ways his is an ordinary life, as he wished it to be.

It did not take long to slip into the cadence of the writing. Its beauty is in the detail, the observations made and insights given. The reader is drawn into the intricacies of this man’s everyday pleasures and irritations. Not a single turn of phrase is dull or misplaced.

A haunting elegy that captures the battles and the beauty of existence. This is an extraordinary, life-affirming read.