The Island – no paradise here

I’ve had Victoria Hislop’s The Island on my shelf for a long time. It was given to me and I, thinking it was a romance, hadn’t found the enthusiasm to read it. But although the story starts with the young Alexis deliberating over whether to end her relationship with bossy boyfriend Ed during a holiday to her mother’s native Crete, the tale soon turns to the Cretan island of Spinalonga, a former leper colony, to which Alexis’s secretive mother has uneasy and long unspoken ties.

Alexis begins to delve into the story of her mother’s history and we trace her family back to her great grandmother – it’s quite a story, and the factual side of it, detailing the leper island and Cretan history, is fascinating. Victoria Hislop has obviously fallen in love with her subject and hers is a very tenderly drawn portrait of the lives of the fictional Petrakis family – its women, who range from brave and deeply loyal to haughty and adulterous, and also its men, especially the stoical boatman Georgiou who has to bear so many cruel twists of fate.

It’s a well-crafted story and even though it’s not the sort of book I’d normally buy I did enjoy it. My only criticism would be that it verges on depressing in parts – there’s a lot of suffering and though there is hope and joy, it’s sparse. The cover describes it as “a beach read with heart” but I don’t think it’s one I’d really want to read under a palm tree. Hislop does much to provide a fresh take on leprosy – her characters are far from the rotten pariahs of biblical tales – but they do suffer, often as much from ignorance and hysteria as from their physical condition, granted, but it still doesn’t make for a light and fluffy read. Then again, perhaps Hislop (who, in the interests of trivia, I should mention is the wife of Private Eye editor Ian Hislop) never intended it to be that sort of book. Perhaps she intended a more all-encompassing portrait of a family whose history is rich and full of secrets. Certainly The Island is perfect if you like the idea of a good emotional read that opens a window into an often misrepresented disease and its heartbreaking history.

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Starter For Ten – I give it a seven

I’ve had David Nicholls’ Starter for Ten on my bookshelf for ages, and not because I wasn’t keen to start it. I was saving it. Just like I save the dumplings in a casserole or the strawberry and honey chocolates in a box of Milk Tray. However, I’d been saving it so dutifully that I’d actually forgotten I had it, making rediscovery an extra treat in itself.

So what of Nicholls’ debut novel? Was it what I hoped for, having been utterly charmed by the authentic and deeply affecting One Day? The answer is yes and no.

Yes because Nicholls is a great accessible writer who brings ordinary people and their thoughts to life, and also because the book is very funny. I knew I was off to a good start when the opening chapter made me laugh out loud. Brian Jackson, the book’s narrator, sets the scene as he tells us why he hates summer (primarily the way it makes the sun shine on the TV screen in the afternoon) and what he hopes to learn at university (a litany of weird and wonderful things that most people could probably relate to if they put to paper the odd things that float around their heads).

It was no surprise to learn that Nicholls spent much of his twenties as an actor, nor that he has been a fairly prolific screenwriter since, amid writing his novels. I didn’t realise that he’d actually adapted Starter for Ten for the big screen (I’m about to go and dig the film out) but his writing always has a filmic feel to it so I can imagine how such a thing would work (and how wonderful and unusual to be able to see a film of a book that is still totally the author’s vision!).

Anyway, Starter for Ten is the story of spotty Kate Bush fan Brian, who leaves his widowed mother and working class mates in Southend to go to university, where he falls in love with the unbearably beautiful Alice Harbinson and prepares to have his moment in the spotlight on his beloved University Challenge.

One thing you could never take away from David Nicholls is how well he depicts the mundane, and manages to make it funny and endearing. He’s like (and this is a huge compliment coming from me) the Richard Curtis of books – he can do both light-hearted and heartbreaking and he does them equally well. He’s great with teenage angst – and anyone who’s ever been away to uni will find something of their own experience in his, whether it’s his mum trying to press trays of cold meat and everything else bar the kitchen sink onto him as he tries in vain to get out the door, the vile experience of being deathly hungover in a grotty student bedroom, or learning how to navigate a new landscape of painful irony, the political earnestness of those who’ve never had to test their theories in the real world, and proper old-fashioned snobbery. Don’t get me wrong, Brian Jackson is no slick hero in this, watching all the foolishness go by – he manages to balance feelings of inadequacy and snobbery with a complete inability to stop talking even when he’s talking rubbish…..which leads me on to the No part of my analysis.

There were times when I just hated Brian Jackson. Obviously he’s not meant to be entirely sympathetic – who is at that age? He’s an inexperienced, awkward teenager trying to shuffle his way through the world, but sometimes I got frustrated by the way he was always his own worst enemy. Maybe (and I really hesitate to say this) it’s a gender thing – like the way my boyfriend (who bought me this book) always laughs hysterically at The Inbetweeners, while I oscillate between laughing, cringing and thinking ‘For god’s sake, why would you ever say that?!’

My university experience was also pretty different to Brian’s so I think that, on top of the fact that I can’t really relate to people who dig endless holes with the stupid things they say (I’m more of a clam up awkwardly and say nothing whilst thinking ‘Say something, anything’ type of person) I couldn’t connect to the story quite as much as I hoped to.

I found much more of myself in One Day, and although it’s possibly a bit narcissistic to assess books that way, it did make me enjoy it more. Nevertheless, David Nicholls’ great skill is in holding a mirror up to the horrid parts of the human mind – those thoughts everyone likes to pretend they don’t have – and I still think there’s something for everyone to relate to somewhere in this book. It’s funny, incisive and very, very readable. It doesn’t quite hit the high notes of One Day but it’s still undoubtedly worth a read.

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The Auschwitz Violin – an old song, but not played out

Maria Àngels Anglada’s international hit, The Auschwitz Violin, is the first of my latest batch of books from Lovely Mum. At a mere 128pp with big margins and large type, it’s also one of the briefest books I’ve read in a very long time.

It follows the story of Auschwitz prisoner and luthier (violin maker) Daniel, who is tasked with making an instrument for the unpredictable camp commander Sauckel (a real life Nazi who was hanged after the Nuremberg trials). If he fails, he learns, his life will be traded for a case of Burgundy wine with the sadistic Dr Rascher (another real-life war criminal), who wants healthy bodies for his dreaded experiments.

As he applies himself to the task of making the violin, Daniel rediscovers his humanity and sense of pride – once more he feels like a human being hard at work, not just a number, a piece of meat waiting to be exploited or frivolously murdered. The question is, will Daniel have done enough to save himself? What will be his fate?

The Auschwitz Violin was completely panned by the Metro, which called it: “A saccharine paean to the strength of the human spirit [that] does nothing to justify the flatness of a story lacking any sense of the unimaginability of hell.” It is held up as “an example of the unfortunate industry of Holocaust fiction: neat, moral tales that borrow historical resonance to inject drama into their earnest pages”. So, is it fair to accuse Anglada of jumping on the ‘Holocaust bandwagon’? Does her story justify its telling?

I do think the Metro review was harsh – I didn’t find the book saccharine, but you could argue that there was a certain flatness to it. Possibly because the book was so short, it was difficult to invest in Daniel in quite the same way as one might normally – we are only privy to a very short period of his life. The book didn’t hold me in a vice-grip but it was well-written and interesting and it gave a very personal vision of concentration camp hell. As is her prerogative, Anglada doesn’t focus on the physical hardships of camp life as much as the uphill struggle of trying to remain positive in the face of hopelessness. Her emphasis is on the human need to keep a sense of dignity and identity and in this way I think she does add something worthwhile to the canon of Holocaust fiction.

I was ambivalent about her liberal use of extracts from historical documents – sometimes these didn’t seem to add anything to the story – but a couple of them really brought a poignant sense of context to Daniel’s tale. The most notable of these was an inventory of items recovered from particular concentration camps, which read like this:

“Men’s clothing, used (not counting white clothing), 97,000 items”

“Women’s hair, 1 wagon, equivalent to 3,000 kilos”

These dispassionate lists are harrowing, especially when set within a very human, personal story, and they remind us of the sheer scale of Nazi atrocities – as well as the way they were perpetrated – often in a very businesslike manner.

Overall then, is Anglada’s book worth the read? I would say yes. It’s certainly not a big commitment; I read it over the course of a couple of days in short sittings. At its heart, it’s an eloquent little novella, refreshing in the way it doesn’t wallow in the degradation of the Holocaust, choosing instead to give a small snapshot of dignity, snatched from the jaws of humiliation.

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The Hairdresser of Harare – makes it feel real

The Hairdresser of Harare is the story of Vimbai, the queen bee of the hair salon where she works. Though she is estranged from her family after a dispute over money, Vimbai’s job gives her status and satisfaction at a time when unemployment is soaring and so is inflation. Then Dumi turns up.

Dumisani, a charming young hairdresser who has his customers announcing that they ‘look like Halle Berry’ when they look in the mirror, impresses Vimbai’s boss Mrs Khumalo straight away and soon Vimbai finds her crown slipping….

I enjoyed this book and I found Vimbai an engaging character. She is haughty and bossy and yet good hearted and vulnerable in a way that resonated a lot with me. Tendai Huchu paints a vivid picture of life in Harare, which goes on as normally as it can do given the inconvenience of lugging huge bricks of banknotes around with you, the scarcity of opportunity and the seeming impossibility of looking ten years ahead into the future.

Dumisani is keen to befriend Vimbai, despite her reservations about him and the pair get over their rocky beginning to find friendship blossoming – but Dumisani is not all he seems. Vimbai, in her innocence, has no idea of the nature of his secret, even though the reader surely will, but the success of the story doesn’t hinge on shocking plot twists and turns (although it is not without its surprise moments).

The Hairdresser of Harare is about capturing an atmosphere, a moment in time and place. Its characters are all ordinary in their own ways and yet they are not ordinary. No one is entirely good, no one is entirely bad – everyone has their reasons, their secrets, their scars – and this is what makes the book so readable. Huchu’s accessible style keeps the pages turning and I invested in his characters – they felt entirely real.

A quirky, likeable book with a great cover from a writer who can conjure up a real sense of atmosphere and authenticity. The Hairdresser of Harare is well worth a read.

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Fifty Shades of Grey – a dark mirror

I was determined not to buy Fifty Shades of Grey, as I’d heard it was poorly written, cringingly sexed lifestyle porn. That said, when a colleague offered to lend me her copy (which was complete with what looked like teeth marks) I was curious.

When I started reading it, I was surprised it had been slated to such an extent (that’s the price of popularity, I suppose). It was by no means as awkwardly written as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (which was beloved, seemingly, by everyone but me). OK, I wasn’t a fan of the way Ana kept referring to her ‘inner goddess’ or repeating ‘holy crap’ but everyone is entitled to their own style. I have read many more poorly written books – at least E.L. James can hold a story, write a reasonable bit of dialogue and produce characters you can get your teeth into.

Yes, the book is lifestyle porn in the sense that it explores the pleasures of the playboy lifestyle, the joy of having nice things and being able to buy exotic experiences – but it’s not an endless exercise in product placement as some people would have you believe. James is no Stieg Larsson, faithfully recording the exact make and model of each of her characters’ possessions. Anyway, it’s escapism – why should Grey be forced to be a noble but poor supermarket worker?

As for the sex, there are repetitive bits and there were times when I was getting on the tube first thing in the morning and I really wasn’t in the mood to read about bondage, but I have read much cringier sex in my time. The problem is, though, that there’s too much sex in the book to call it anything other than porn, but it’s a bit too long-winded and chick-lit-esque to be proper porn – not to mention that at one point Grey pulls out Anastasia’s tampon in order to have sex with her. I cannot think of a less sexy or more horrifying inclusion in a porn book. I actually dry-retched when I got to that point. WHY?

Moving on from that though (I think we’d better), I’m ambivalent about where the book sits in the world. Is it, as some people say, a revolutionary sex manual for unfulfilled wives and girlfriends across the globe, or is it a monstrous piece of misogyny that is putting back the cause of feminism fifty years?

Well it must be at least partly the former. I admit that I was shocked to find that the book’s subject matter was still considered shocking to the public at large. I saw men on Twitter saying they would be horrified to see their partners reading the book – this shows that the book is necessary and boundary-pushing to a certain extent. Can we really still be shocked by the idea of women as consumers of porn? This seems weirdly Victorian. Madonna was years ago, people!

On the other hand, detractors (I saw a program where Rachel Johnson, editor of The Lady and sister of Boris, was practically apoplectic with disgust for Christian Grey) say that it is misogynist filth that is anything but liberating to women. Is that fair? Well, there were bits of the book that made me decidedly uncomfortable. I found myself wondering why women were worshipping a protagonist who wanted his partner to eat from a prescribed list of foods, who wanted her to obey him in and out of the bedroom and who wanted to punish her painfully for any perceived transgressions. I got that it turned him on in the bedroom but forcing a grown woman to clean her plate in a restaurant when she’s not hungry is controlling in a deeply, deeply unsexy way.

I suppose the thing that made me most uneasy was that I could imagine so many women in abusive relationships superimposing their own partner’s face over Christian Grey’s and finding new excuses not to leave. The book plugs the reader firmly into those fallacies that say: real love is jealous and possessive. It’s OK to submit to the will of an attractive man even if what he is asking of you makes you anguished. Being rich makes for a happier, more exciting life. If a man is troubled, he should be excused for his kinks. Attempting to change and help him is not foolish but heroic. God help us if we believe these things.

Every time Christian commanded Ana to eat, I found myself wanting to pick up the plate and throw it in his face with a few choice words. Couldn’t we have a protagonist who just likes bondage but isn’t weird and screwed up and controlling outside of the bedroom? I think that would be more revolutionary.

Having said that, though, I think that E.L. James does strive to show reality in the book. She documents Ana’s difficulties with the lifestyle Christian is offering, she shows her pushing back sometimes successfully against his boundaries and she doesn’t excuse all of his behaviour. She also never set out to write a moral guide for troubled relationships – she writes fiction and she should no more have to make her characters agreeable than Dostoyevsky or Dickens. If we think Fifty Shades of Grey is damaging to women, romance and relationships everywhere, perhaps we should think why this is.

Is it not offensive to women to assume they cannot critically assess a book and dismiss a cruel protagonist when they see one? Maybe some cannot, but that is a problem that has deeper roots than literature. I don’t think E.L. James can be blamed – all she does is hold the mirror up.

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Gold – with slight tarnish

Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand was my favourite book last year, so I was incredibly excited to get hold of his new novel, Gold, which follows the fortunes of three Olympians preparing for London 2012. There is Zoe, the beautiful but troubled cycling fanatic; Kate, who is sweet and good-hearted but nevertheless Zoe’s biggest competition; and Jack, the happy go-lucky boy racer who is married to Kate, though Zoe has come between them more than once during their relationship. The final piece to the puzzle is Sophie, Jack and Kate’s Star Wars obsessed daughter who, as the Olympics approaches, is battling with leukaemia.  When the rules of the Olympics are changed (as they were in real life, so that only one competitor from each country can compete in certain events) Kate and Zoe can no longer race each other to the gold as they’ve long expected to and their lives are turned upside down.

Cleave says at the beginning of Gold: “the way you [the readers] talked about my last book gave me the licence to push myself even harder with the next one. You showed me that there are intelligent, warm-blooded, curious readers out there who I can write up to.” I was therefore hoping for something hard-hitting and engrossing – but on that note, I was pretty disappointed. I hate to say this as I wanted so much to love this book – but I have to. The characters veered off into cliché far too often for my liking. Zoe was the stereotypical troubled but talented tearaway – with the ubiquitous tragic event in her past making her who she is today. Kate is a saint, bland and self-effacing, and Jack is just a general lovely dad type. None of them really grabbed me and neither did the story – at least not in the way The Other Hand did.

To be fair to Gold, it was still very good. Cleave’s style is accessible and I think his books will always be readable and entertaining. He got me really excited about the Olympics and gave me a real depth of appreciation for what the athletes (and cyclists in particular) go through in the attempt to achieve their dreams. However, as much as I enjoyed the atmosphere Cleave creates in Gold, and as much as it did become a page turner when the agonising choices kicked in and disaster began to loom large over the athletes’ (and sick Sophie’s) lives, I just didn’t feel like the story had the same depth as The Other Hand. There are so many Zoes out there in the world of fiction that the hard-girl-hiding-private-pain thing feels a bit obvious and I didn’t think she was really that three-dimensional.

No doubt if I didn’t have such high expectations I would have enjoyed this book more, although I wouldn’t have been blown away. The author has praised his publisher for giving him the three years it took to write this book, saying “kudos to them for that, because it takes guts and conviction to resist the commercial pressure to bang out half-baked books.” And it does indeed, but I fear that this approach doesn’t show in Gold. Rather than using the platform created by The Other Hand to do something outrageous, Cleave seems to have gone for a basic, safe crowd-pleaser. It would be hard to hate Gold but it’s hard to fall in love with it too. It was a great read for the Olympics and a good general read but I expected so much more from my new favourite author. Maybe next time.

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The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. – an examination of the secret soul

I chose The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. because I fancied an easy beach-style read. Nichole Bernier’s debut novel concerns two families, the Martins and the Spensers, in the wake of Mrs Elizabeth’s Martin’s tragic plane-crash death just before the 9/11 disaster. In her will, Elizabeth has requested that her trunk of journals go to her friend Kate Spenser in the event of her demise and the book opens with Kate dutifully visiting Elizabeth’s widower, Dave, to collect the trunk.

Just before Kate leaves, Dave mentions that Elizabeth left her most recent diary on the nightstand before she left to catch her plane, and his reading of it suggested she was flying, not to an art retreat as she told them both, but to meet a man called Michael. The suggestion that Elizabeth was having an affair hangs heavy in the air but Kate finds the prospect of such a betrayal impossible to comprehend. Surely not Elizabeth, doting super-mum and cheerful, considerate housewife – the all-baking, all-loving leader of the playgroup who gently organised the lives of everyone around her – including Kate. But when Kate begins to delve into the diaries, much to the resentment of Dave Martin and the frustration of her husband, Chris, who rather thinks she should mind her own business, she finds that there was more to Elizabeth than she ever expected and the diaries open up all sorts of questions about her own life and what it means to truly know someone and be known in return.

Although I chose this book on its beach-read potential merit, it actually had a lot more depth than I had expected. The characters were authentic and sensitively drawn, the writing was elegant and emotive and the story was a real page-turner. If you are nosy like me and you love the thought of poking around in someone’s diary but have enough sense not to go poking around in the private affairs of people you actually know, then this book is for you.

Bernier covers the full range of emotions here and she writes intelligently about the big topics – intimacy, love, fear, death – and the nuances of human interaction. There are twists, turns, and moments where you don’t know which way the book will go; I found it hard not to be drawn in to the world of the diaries.

Bernier’s novel inhabits the world of secrecy that exists inside everyone and explores the idea that everyone has a private mental landscape and things they don’t care to share, or that they’re afraid to say out loud. A fascinating examination of the difference between the secret soul and the public facade, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. is much more than just an easy, beach-friendly read, and Nichole Bernier is an author well worth watching out for.

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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – leading us all by example

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is the story of a retired man trapped in a loveless marriage, estranged from his son and, it seems, from the world around him. He makes a break with his assumed destiny when he receives a letter from his old friend and colleague, Queenie Hennessey. She is dying of cancer in a hospice in Berwick-on-Tweed and Harold resolves to send her a letter, but when he reaches the postbox, he can’t bring himself to post it; instead he carries on walking.

Harold is not equipped to walk to Berwick-on-Tweed from his home in Devon, of all places. He is wearing yachting shoes and has left his mobile phone at home. When he phones his wife, Maureen, to tell her of his plan, her reply is her usual, clipped ‘I think not.’ She reminds him that he is the sort of man who only walks to and from the car but, though he knows this to be true, Harold declines to return home. He has phoned the hospice and informed the staff that Queenie Hennessey must wait, that she must live, until he arrives.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is a gentle book, in the most best sense of the word. It is not predicated on knife’s-edge action or shocking revelations (although there  are moments of both in the story); it is the tale of a man who changes his life, not in a moment but by putting one foot in front of the other and plodding towards an unexpected, unplannned future.

It’s essentially about an ordinary person moved to do an extroardinary thing. It’s about the people he meets along the way and what he discovers about himself. But if this makes the book sound formulaic then I’m doing it an injustice. It’s a lovely, original book with real, flawed, loveable characters. It’s heartwarming without descending into mush and I found it genuinely quite inspiring. Harold got under my skin, I suppose you could say. Sometimes now, when I feel like I really can’t be bothered to do something, I think of Harold in his yachting shoes, with his angry blisters and the shooting pains in his leg, with all the odds of age and previous character stacked against him, with no moral support, just a cold ‘I think not’, and I am reminded of the benefits of not looking too far ahead, of just putting one foot in front of the other and moving, however slowly, towards your goal, daft though it might seem at times.

You might think it sounds like I’m going soft in the head but I dare you to finish this book and still feel cynical. I dare you not to be charmed by lovely old Harold Fry and his unlikely cross-country adventure.

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Ursula, Under – its ups and its downs

Ursula, Under is the story of Ursula Wong, a young, half-Chinese, half-Finnish child who falls down an abandoned mine in the woods. As her distraught parents begin a mine-side vigil and the rescue teams pour in, Hill takes us back, way back, into Ursula’s family history. She is the last in her family line and we learn all about her rich history before we learn her fate.

I’m going to start by admitting, right now, that I’ve never been interested in genealogy. I’ve always been a bit mystified by those programs where people break down and weep upon discovering that their great-great-great-aunt was a geisha/criminal/street-sweeper. I find history interesting – especially the human side of it, but I don’t feel more interested in someone’s long-forgotten story if they share a bit of common blood with me. As far as that goes, I’d only be interested one generation back from a relative I actually knew in life. A great-grandmother – ok – let me enrich my understanding of my grandmother – but go back more than that and they’re a bunch of complete strangers! Ah well, that’s just me. If you do have an interest in that kind of connection you will probably take to this book a lot more readily than I did.

On the upside, Ingrid Hill’s writing is beautiful – she reminds me a lot of Pearl Buck – her style is very rich and very descriptive, even down to someone’s ‘spatulate’ fingernails. I like a good made-up word if it conjures something vivid and Hill does a lot of this – she has a true talent with the English language, which makes for a very picturesque read.

However, when it came to the book’s plot, there was something a little irritating about the way all these ancestors kept popping up out of nowhere – a Chinese alchemist, a Finnish foundling turned queen’s playmate turned exiled leper, a Jesuit tutor playing sperm donor to a disabled Chinese princess – there was something a little overwrought about the whole thing. On top of that, there was so much going on in every vignette that the book felt quite choppy.

No sooner had you gotten into one of the stories but you were whisked off elsewhere by Hill, perhaps to one of the less interesting cameos. I wanted to know about Ursula down the mine and, frankly, I got a bit peeved that the author kept trying to distract me with a load of shiny past-baubles! I guess it comes back to my distaste for the genealogy craze: even if Ursula has a Chinese alchemist in her history, what actual difference does that make? I can take an interest in her life on its own and I can take an interest in her ancestors’ lives individually, but the fact that they have a vague DNA connection doesn’t really make the story hang together – not for me anyway.

One thing I really did like, however, was Hill taking up the position of an omnipotent god and informing us what would have happened if this father had lived, or this accident hadn’t happened. Looking into what almost was really appealed to me. After all, history already gives us what was – authors are the only ones who can give us what might have otherwise been.

All in all, there are plenty of good things to say about this book. It’s beautifully written, it’s a rich tapestry of painstaking research and it has its compelling characters – especially in the more modern sections – but did I savour every page of it? I can’t say I did.

There’s something of The Children’s Book in Ursula, Under – in its epic scope and feel. If you loved The Children’s Book you will probably like this…but if you only read one, there’s no contest. Byatt’s epic weaves the stories of interconnected families and generations together, whereas Hill’s gives you one family’s selected history in fairly random stop-start chunks. I personally think that, given her considerable talents, Ingrid Hill could have done better.

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The Quiddity of Will Self – curiouser and curiouser

I’m going to preface this review by saying that I’ve never read any Will Self. To me he’s always just been a media personality with rather furious looking eyebrows. I once read an article about him, though, in which he described how and where he writes. Answer? In a very nice room and on a typewriter. The luscious literary study made me feel jealous that I don’t even have a desk and the typewriter business made me feel rather sorry for the junior staff at his publisher. I bet they curse his name when they’re typing up his manuscript! But I digress.

I plan to give his books a go now, after reading Sam Mills’ twisted homage to him – How The Dead Live will probably be my first port of call. The idea of the dead just moving to a different part of London appeals to me. It’s original.

I suppose originality is what drew Sam Mills to Will Self, and it’s what, in turn, will draw readers to The Quiddity of Will Self. It’s a sort of meta-novel with so many layers and so many worlds wrapped up within it, it makes your head spin. Described as quirky and highly original on its jacket, it certainly lives up to that promise. I’ve read a lot of books and I’d be stumped if I was forced to compare it to anything else.

Mills quickly draws you in to a shadowy world and leaves you unsettled as the parameters of reality within her narrative shift constantly. It’s hard to tell, a lot of the time in this book, who is mad and dangerous and who is the victim of a bigger, more sinister conspiracy. You’re often left wondering whether you’ve bought into the fantasy version of events – whether you’re stumbling around in a dream world, not quite grasping the truth. In that sense, you share her characters preoccupations.

At the same time, Mills offers you a vision of a future (in 2049) that feels unnervingly possible, where sesquipedalians are being wiped out and vocabulary has been halved. This, Mr Literary Kitty tells me when I settle down to watch The Only Way Is Essex, is the sort of future I’m helping to create. (I try to argue that being an editor cancels that out but he never looks convinced.)

Anyway, Sam Mills has gone some way to convincing me that Will Self is not a curmudgeonly luddite but a real lover of the English language. Mills herself, it seems, is another disciple. There are surprises lurking in every corner in this book, and among the best are the little nuggets of language I’ve never come across before – the concepts of quiddity (whatness) and hacceity (thisness), for example.

So if you’re looking for something to get your teeth into, or a book to push you out of your comfort zone, give this dark and refreshingly different tale a try.

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