We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

NoViolet Bulawayo came to attention with her win for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story Hitting Budapest.  That short story detailed the lives of street children in a Zimbabwean shantytown.  We Need New Names, the debut novel from Bulawayo, expands that short story.

Darling and her friends live in a place called Paradise.  It is a messy sort of place, impoverished, rural, the sort of places that breeds boredom in its children.  Darling and her friends make up games to pass the time – Find Bin Laden, for instance – or steal guavas from their neighbours.  Then one day, the adult residents of places like Paradise and its surrounding shantytowns decide to reclaim their country from the white men that live there too and Paradise soon descends into violence.

Violence is omnipresent in the first half of Bulawayo’s novel.  The violence is often seen by Darling and her friends in brief snapshots – they never truly understand what it is they are seeing – but the reader knows, and this lack of knowledge in the children and the knowledge the reader has of what bloodshed is to come, gives We Need New Names some incredibly palm-sweating pages, especially when a gang of men begin to threaten a family. 

To her credit, Bulawayo doesn’t allow Darling to become witness to the sheer brutality that rages, but more impressively allows Darling and her friends to witness the aftermath in interesting ways.  They break into the home of the family that have been evicted (and undoubtedly murdered), where Darling answers a telephone call from the missing family’s relatives.  Such perspectives shake up Bulawayo’s novel, and allow us another perspective on a story we think we know.

However, just as Bulawayo’s novel seems to be taking us towards a dark heart in Africa, Darling is whipped away to DestroyedMichygan (or Detroit, Michigan to everyone else) and the characters, lives and stories of Paradise are forgotten, so Bulawayo can tell the story of a young girl adrift in a very different, unknowable (to her) country.  This tears a hole right in the middle of We Need New Names – and this proves both good and bad for the novel.  The insights into American culture Darling has are often illuminating, but her lack of engagement with many of the new characters Bulawayo must introduce means that the second half of the novel remains distant to the reader in a way in which Paradise never was.

Africa is a huge continent with many problems, and sometimes in her novel Bulawayo seems like she’s throwing everything at the page at once: we have racial and political violence, childhood pregnancy, bodies hanging from trees, the spectre of AIDS (Darling’s father is dying from it), street children and incest – and sometimes this overwhelming torrent of ‘issues’ means that We Need New Names can read like a playlist of all the big issues on that continent.

What stops We Need New Names from falling apart due to this rupture is the sheer verve of Bulawayo’s prose.  She is an extremely talented novelist.  Her sentences fizz and pop on the page, they crackle with energy.  It is not all fireworks, though, for she proves equally adept at creating characters, and the friendship between Darling and her gang is wonderfully drawn. 

Will it be shortlisted?

The subject matter is clearly important, and is very well written, which could see it slip easily onto the shortlist.  Equally, the rupture that occurs half-way through the novel might cause some to feel that We Need New Names is less rounded than it could otherwise be.  In a year where some very fine novels have been long-listed, this is a tough one to call.

Unexploded by Alison Macleod

Britain in war-time.  Scenarios suggested by such a simple line are plenty, and there are many hundreds – if not thousands – of novels that portray such lives.  Alison Macleod has stepped into this crowded marketplace with a novel of quiet beauty.  Unexploded, her fourth novel, introduces us to the Beaumont family – Geoffrey, Evelyn and their eight year old son Philip.  It is 1940, and war is threatening to spill onto British breaches.  In Brighton, the tension is palpable.  Geoffrey, a bank manager, has been appointed in charge of an internment camp close to the holiday resort.  Evelyn, becoming disillusioned with marriage, is looking for something to fill her days.  Philip, meanwhile, is imagining the day Hitler strolls down the promenade.  Into these lives appears a disruptive element: Otto Gottlieb, a ‘degenerate’ German-Jewish painter, and resident of the internment camp.

Reading Unexploded I felt reminded of Graham Greene, in particular The End of the Affair, another novel about passions explored against the backdrop of war, but the literary heart that throbs behind Macleod’s novel is Virginia Woolf (who briefly appears here).  Evoking such literary giants automatically brings comparisons – and Macleod is no Woolf (but then, who is?) – but Macleod doesn’t evoke Woolf simply as homage, she has Woolf’s death play a part in the decision Evelyn makes.  Such decisions reveal Macleod as a considered, intuitive novelist.  Such decisions allow her characters to breathe on the page: they are given reality by their reactions to such events, rather than being pieces moved about on a chessboard by an authoritative voice. 

I mention this as sometimes Macleod’s novel slips into authorial voiceover in its early parts – she has information she needs the reader to know (“They moved into Number 7 on the 1^st of May 1928 and shocked her mother by dispensing with a live-in maid.”)  Such authorial description provides knowledge of the characters personality to the reader, but it has been told to us, rather than revealed through the actions of the characters.  As with the appearance of Woolf – which first appears to be a pleasure Macleod has allowed herself, until it is revealed to have purpose – show Macleod to be a finer novelist than these few, early flaws might suggest.

There are other flaws too – I found many of the early chapters with Philip, the son, went nowhere and provided little insight into the life of a child living in war-time Britain (but even these early chapters coalesce into something altogether more startling, and provide the nail-biting finale).  Evelyn’s access to Otto, after being resolutely denied by her husband, comes too quickly and without latter challenge that it stretches credibility.  Also, Otto’s later, and secret, residency on her street enhances that feeling of incredibility, as this was a time in which people were keeping such close eye on one another.

However, despite these flaws (which do not in any way derail the novel, or ones enjoyment of it), Unexploded is a novel of quiet, restrained beauty, of lives threatening to explode.  She has bought to life Brighton in 1940 with crystal clarity – you can see it, smell it, feel the threat of danger in the air.  The whole novel feels impeccably researched, and yet never once feels that Macleod is wearing her learning visibly – this simply is the world, alive before our eyes.  The lives of the Beaumont family remain engaging and, through to the cinematically intense finale, never steps into melodrama.   Unexploded is a very fine novel, deserving of wide readership. 

Will it be shortlisted?

There is always the danger that its subject matter might appear a little too obvious to see it shortlisted – there really are too many novels that show British romantic life during the Second World War to count – but Macleod’s considered prose deserves rewarding. 

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Subhash and Udayan are brothers.  They do everything together, inseparable as children.  They conspire together, plot together, play together and trespass together.  Then, as they age, their lives begin part.  Subhash is drawn to America and Udayan to the politics of the Naxalite movement.  These threads begin a novel that spans decades and in which family secrets become the things that bind people together and keep them apart.

The blurb for The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest novel, is very keen not to spoil any of the many emotionally powerful twists this novel takes.  It is only fair that I keep them hidden as well – for there is great joy in reading a novel about which you know little beyond the points of inception.  It is, however, difficult to review a novel without at least spoiling a few of its delights.  So before such spoilers abound, I shall say that Jhumpa Lahiri is a fine prose stylist, and many passages in The Lowland sing with great power, some dextrous writing and an appealing, engaging and emotionally powerful storyline.

This is not to say that The Lowland is without flaw.  Lahiri’s scope is vast – decades in the lives of her protagonists (who are Subhash, his brother’s widow Gauri whom he marries, and his brother’s daughter, Bela, whom Subhash treats as his own daughter  - Udayan is killed early on, in a piece of police brutality) – and this scope sometimes means that emotional decisions her characters make do not always feel justified.  We learn early on that Gauri is intellectually curious, and extremely bright, and her future career as an academic feels earned through this ground-setting.  Gauri, however, becomes withdrawn from Subhash and her daughter, and while they are both in India, she flees, breaking off contact with her own child for decades.  This decision, which reverberates through the second-half of The Lowland feels less justified – even a little confusing – though it does lead to a truly affecting final scene between mother and daughter.  Also, because of its scope, some of the more minor characters in The Lowland feel underwritten – they are characters who appear to justify some emotional change in Subhash or Gauri, and then promptly vanish from the narrative.

Such criticisms as outlined above seem likely to derail a novel – but it is testament to Lahiri’s skill as a novelist that they do not disrupt The Lowland too dramatically.  The inherent dramatic potential of her subject matter – a brother marrying his own brother’s widow and adopting their child as his own – means that for the majority of its page count, The Lowland is a riveting, engaging and incredibly well-researched novel.  I devoured it in one breathless sitting.

Will it be shortlisted?

I think so.  It is dramatic power, is emotionally engaging and vivid in its depictions.  Lahiri has a fine, subtle prose stylist whose pen provokes some startling insights.  Its flaws are dampened by everything else around them, and ultimately The Lowland is a novel with massive reader appeal that can withstand critical scrutiny.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Anybody who has read Ruth Ozeki’s third novel, A Tale for the Time Being, would not say that it is a simple novel.  It has two strands – the diary of a Japanese schoolgirl called Nao, written just before the tsunami and earthquake that left thousands dead, and the life of the reader who discovers Nao’s diary, named Ruth, and based on Ozeki, in the Canadian wilderness.  There are various subplots – the letters of a Japanese kamikaze pilot, the life of a one hundred plus Zen nun, and missing animals, Japanese crows, and some stolen underwear.  And yet, at its heart, Ruth Ozeki’s novel is a simple novel.  It is, at its heart, a novel about a schoolgirl trying to find her place in the world, and a novelist trying to find the end to a story.

The principal strand – Nao’s diary – is a well-written evocation of a Japanese schoolgirl’s interior life.  Nao uses slang, emoticons, and switches with ease between English and Japanese, and who feels entirely adrift back in Japan after her formative years spent in America.  Sometimes Nao’s narration does tug on the heart-strings, and sometimes I feel Ozeki is deliberately dialling the emotion up to 11, but for the most part this is an entirely successful and moving account.  The secondary strand, that of the life of Ruth and her husband Oliver, is used for dual purposes: to allow Ozeki to elucidate on matters Nao’s narration cannot make entirely clear (for she is unaware of them) and to echo many of the novel’s deeper themes.  Her relationship with Nao’s words causes occasional friction with her husband, and provides a necessary counterbalance and gulp of fresh air for the reader from Nao’s narration, though even Ruth’s storyline is not avert to exaggerated emotions to tug at the reader’s heartstrings (a missing cat strand is particularly manipulative, emotionally speaking). 

A Tale for the Time Being is long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2013.  As it is such a complex and loaded novel, and one whose secrets might require a second reading to fully appreciate, it is quite possible that it will be shortlisted too.  Ozeki’s decision to engage with such weighty and profound themes – and I have barely touched upon them, and not even mentioned others (there are strands here about the reader/writer relationship, upon the power of fiction, Schrödinger's cat and the lifecycle of barnacles) – make it a novel worth reading twice. 

A Tale for the Time Being is not always successful however – its blend of Zen Buddhism and quantum mechanics, the 9/11 bombings and kamikaze pilots, and peculiars of Japanese culture, requires 163 footnotes and appendices to fully explain Ozeki’s novel.  But when she focuses on Nao’s life, and her fraught relationship with her suicidal father, or on Nao’s bullying at school, her prose truly comes to life and is thoroughly engaging.  For long stretches Ozeki’s novel is very good indeed.  I also suspect that you need to be a Zen Buddhist priest (as Ozeki is) to fully appreciate everything that is on display here.

Will it be shortlisted?

Quite possibly.  There is much to admire here, and Ozeki’s ambition surely needs some kind of recognition.  It might, however, be a little too quirky to gain that coveted shortlist place. 

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

The Irish economy crashed in 2008.  The Celtic Tiger was slain, and modern, cosmopolitan Ireland was left in ruins.  From the ashes of this once mighty land, from amid the smouldering, empty ghost towns around Dublin, there are whispers of song, of voices trying to be heard, of a people trying to say: we’re still alive in here, we still matter, please don’t forget about us.  Donal Ryan’s debut novel, The Spinning Heart, gives voice to those people.

Before being nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2013, Ryan’s novel had already gathered much critical attention.  As the first novel published by Doubleday Ireland, it seemed chosen to speak or a nation.  Then Waterstones, the UK book chain, selected it as one of their choice books of the year, after it had won the Bord Gáis Energy Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.  All of which must have been some major validation for Donal Ryan who admits he had been collecting the rejection slips from publishers for this and the novel he had written first (The Thing About December).  None of this I knew when I picked up The Spinning Heart a few months ago and read it.

The first point to note is that The Spinning Heart is a polyphonic novel.  Each of its 21 chapters is a monologue from a different character, some of them quite short, and their points of intersection slowly accumulate, creating an impressionistic vision of small town Ireland.  Ryan has admitted in interviews that his is a difficult novel to pitch. Say it’s a novel about recession and watch their eyes glaze over.  So you say it has kidnapping and murder in it, but James Patterson this is not.  So all you can say about it is that it is an ambitious, beguiling novel about people trying to survive when the world is crumbling and tumbling around their eyes.

Sometimes with polyphonic novels, each of the different voices can begin to sound similar, if not the same.  It is a relief to report that Ryan’s voices remain distinct, mostly due to his canny ear for dialect and turns of phrase – be they from Irish builders, a stranded Serbian immigrant, a single mother or a young child – and that his densely-packed sentences allows us to peer into the very souls of his characters.  There is something very special going on here.  Often with a debut novelist, you hear critics harping on about the ‘promise’ of this author – if he’s like this now, imagine how he’ll be in ten years, with experience and skill under his belt.  With Donal Ryan we have something more than that, we have talent fully formed, prose realised with such skill and beauty on the page it is tough to believe this is a debut (which it isn’t, as he had already finished the novel that will now be his second novel… but still, wow.)

The Spinning Heart, then, is a powerful, incendiary novel that displays immense power from its writer.  It is a novel that speaks to a contemporary problem with heart and grace, and though it offers no answers – there might perhaps be none, there certainly isn’t for the characters we meet here – it is a novel that will remain important for highlighting a moment of major international change through the eyes of some of those on the ground, caught up in the spinning heart of the crash.  Donal Ryan is most certainly a writer to watch.

Will it be short-listed?

Almost certainly, I feel.  Not that long ago a debut novelist won the Booker – Aravind Adiga with The White Tiger.  With The Spinning Heart it could happen again.

Man Booker Prize 2013: An Introduction

Regular readers of my blog will recall that this time last year I set myself the challenge of reading all the novels longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, reviewing them, and having a guess at who might be shortlisted and who might win.  The challenge was such a blast, I'm doing it again this year.

If you've read any of the press surrounding this year's prize, you'll know that it is quite a diverse and thrilling line-up.  It's hard to pick an over-riding theme to the choices.  We've a thriller, a romance, historical novels, contemporary-set novels, from a mere 100 pages to a 1,000.  Good lucking picking a winner from this lot, I say.

So who are the runners and riders.  Well, this is who:

• Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire
• NoViolet Bulawayo - We Need New Names
• Eleanor Catton - The Luminaries
• Jim Crace - Harvest
• Eve Harris - The Marrying of Chain Kaufman
• Richard House - The Kills
• Jhumpa Lahiri - The Lowland
• Alison MacLeod - Unexploded
• Colum McCann - Transatlantic
• Charlotte Mendelson - Almost English
• Ruth Ozeki - A Tale for the Time Being
• Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart
• Colm Toibin - The Testament of Mary

There are some familiar novels to previous Booker long and shortlists : Jim Crace and Colm Toibin.  There are some debutant novelists too: NoViolet Bulawayo, Eve Harris and Donal Ryan.  One of the books isn't even complete as a book: Richard House's The Kills has accompanying films on his website.

This year I'd read one of the novels before the longlist was announced: Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart, and I'd already felt it to be one of the strongest debuts I'd read in some time, so I'm glad to see it getting a nod.  Tash Aw, Colm Toibin and Eleanor Catton I've read before too, and are all excellent novelists.  I'm excited to be discovering these other, exciting voices. 

Over the next few weeks, leading up to the revealing of the shortlist on the 10 September, I shall endeavour to read and review each of these novels.  Join me if you like - I can guarantee it won't be a summer wasted.