What we’re reading… Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Annabel by Kathleen Winter

"Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgemental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful."

In 1968, into the beautiful, isolated environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once.

Wayne’s father, Treadway decides to raise their baby as a boy, whilst secretly his mother Jacinta and her friend Thomasina nurture the girl curled up inside of him. Kathleen Winter takes us on a journey through two decades of Wayne’s struggle to come to terms with the female identity inside of him, known to him and Thomasina as Annabel. Not only is it a story about Wayne but it's also the story of his parents over these years; as well as Thomasina who studies to become a teacher and travels Europe sending postcards to Wayne; and a childhood friend, Wally Michelin, a young girl with a passion for music. Winter teases out the inner emotions of the characters, and their change over time, without judgment but with obvious love. It's hard not to care for every character fleshed out here, and empathise with their flaws as well as celebrate their triumphs over the raw land, relationships changing over time, regrets and their attempts to make amends.

The novel is a beautiful and haunting portrait of a person trapped in a body that the outside world sees as a dreadful mistake. An exploration of small town life as well as gender and sexuality, this book is extremely worth reading.  

Kathleen Winter will be discussing the multi award-winning Annabel in an event with Megan Abbott on Sunday 14 August at 3.30.

What we’re reading…Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu...

Three Sisters tells the story of Yumi, Yuxiu and Yuyang who grew up in Wang Family Village, China, a place attuned to the rhythm of work and the slogans of the Cultural Revolution. Split into three parts, the book follows the sisters’ lives as they struggle to change their destiny in a China that does not belong to them.

Famed for the characterisation of women in his novels, and his ability to get inside the Chinese female psyche, Bi takes the reader on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery for the sisters as they move to the emerging cities, tackling the themes of sex, power and loss of face.

The women’s lives depend heavily on the influence and decision making of the men in the book - their husbands, fathers, teachers, employers and lovers. Once the first sister Yumi realises that her future is beyond her control Bi writes, 'She began to see herself as a sheet of paper floating in the air, no matter where the winds took her, the result was always the same, she was either ripped to shreds or trampled to the ground.' The text is peppered with these proverbs or idioms common to traditional Chinese literature called chéngyŭ, giving the book a wonderfully strong identity that manages to remain intact even after translation in to English, due in a large part to the renowned translator Howard Goldblatt.

A thoroughly interesting novel that offers a deep insight in to the lives of women in China only 20 or 30 years ago, it is no surprise that Three Sisters won the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, the most respected prize for Asian writers.

Bi Feiyu will appear with other writers shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, Tabish Kahair and Manu Joseph, in Voices of Asian Literature on Thursday 25 August at 7pm.Tickets cost £10 (£8 concessions).

What we’re reading… Pure by Andrew Miller

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Pure by Andrew Miller...

1785. Jean-Baptiste Barratte is a young engineer sent by the king to demolish the church of les Innocents in Paris and remove “every last knucklebone” of the thousands buried there. A modern man, not given to superstition, Barratte is full of ideas but unsure of his position in the world. He recruits an old friend from the mines at Valenciennes, and a gang of enigmatic miners for whom digging up thousands of old bones is a better job than the one they’ve left. He buys a suit and falls in love. The stench and putrefying decay of the cemetery hangs over the district, as the spectre of the forthcoming revolution hangs over the novel.

Full of detailed observations and atmospheric description, Pure shows us Paris and its people through the eyes of Barratte, coming to the city from the provinces and finding his optimism and view of the world sorely tested. It’s a rattling good story guaranteed to have you gripped from the opening lines to the bittersweet end.

What we’re reading… Bed by David Whitehouse

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s Bed by David Whitehouse...

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you went to bed, never to get up again?

That’s what Mal did. And David Whitehouse’s extraordinary story tells the tale of what happened to him, and to his long-suffering parents, his loyal brother and his neglected girlfriend.

Mal was no ordinary child. He was a dreamer. A non-conformist with a penchant for taking his clothes off at inappropriate moments.

When the harsh realities of the grown-up world failed to meet his expectations of how life should be, Mal decided to do something drastic, something extraordinary. And so, on his twenty-fifth birthday, he went to bed, forever.

What ensues is a life story told in graphic yet surprisingly un-shocking detail about what happens when a man takes to his bed for decades with food as his only comfort. Whitehouse's style is refreshingly straightforward. His observations about the everyday things with which we are familiar makes us see them in a new light. Whilst his matter-of-fact descriptions make the extraordinary aspects of the story seem mundane: the realities of what happens to the human form when over-fed and starved of movement; the basic practicalities of housing an ever-expanding body; the complex relationships that enable and perpetuate the situation by killing with kindness. These are all territories that Whitehouse explores with his sparse, honest wit, providing a vivid account of what life is like when affected by extreme, ever-expanding, all-consuming obesity.

Tender, touching and funny, Bed is ultimately a story of love in its many forms: the accepting love between brothers; the understated love of a father for his children; the unconditional, yet stifling love of a mother for her favourite son; the twisted, adoring love of strangers for a local celebrity/freak-show; and the bitter-sweet, all-consuming, unrequited love and its slow transformation into something tangible.

David Whitehouse will beappearing at the Book Festival on Monday 15 August at 5pm. Tickets cost £7 (£5 concessions)

What we’re reading…The Raw Man by George Makana Clark

Here at Book Festival HQ we’re lucky enough to have every book in the programme at our disposal. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you some reviews of what us Book Festival folk have been reading. Today it’s The Raw Man by George Makana Clark...

‘I built my house from borrowed memory, every detail as it was described by Gordon long ago in the complete darkness, three miles beneath the earth.’

Sergeant Gordon is a white man from Scottish and African descendancy. He is a soldier, war criminal, prisoner, convicted pervert, and a raw man. He can also read a person’s history through their blood. 

George Makana Clark’s haunting debut is a work which delves into the ritual of organic storytelling; storytelling not only as a means of resurrecting ones ancestral history and the memories of ones own past, but also as a device of confession and reconciliation. As the narrator recounts the stories of Gordon’s past (as told to him during the years of darkness they spent imprisoned in the guts of a copper mine), his own past is intertwined with that of his friend, as his friend’s memories had already interweaved with the lives of those whose blood he read.

The roots of the finished tale stretch deep into the territories of war, slavery, racism and violence, while desperately clinging onto the brighter aspects within everyday life: love, sex, family and friendships. All the while time ticks on like the rhythm of your heart ‘da diddly da dee da dee da dum’, ‘the women wail for their lost children’ and the roots of the mahogany tree grow deeper into the ancient earth. A powerful and life-consuming novel.

 

George Makana Clark will be appearing at the Book Festival on 15 August