September Picks
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
Reviewed by Ruby ConwayIt feels painful to talk too much about this book because I bare it like my own loss. It is one of those novels that consumes you and becomes part of your life whilst you read it, so unending are the pages’ depths of despair, it can feel hard to lift your head back above the surface and keep on going as if it wasn’t in your life.
The novel begins by spotlighting four young friends; driftless, with big dreams, and a little lost in New York: Jude, Willem, Malcolm and J.B. But the novel quickly centres on Jude, the emergent protagonist, and the traumatic and truly horrific history that will forever set him apart from the others. Try and succeed though he may, to become successful, to become affluent, to create safety, to attain those things he could never, ever have thought possible, he is unable to leave behind a childhood of physical and sexual abuse, and the enduring scars, physcological pain and physological trauma it has left in its wake. Slowly, very slowly, we are drip-fed the truth of Jude’s beginnings. Jude, patron saint of lost causes, is doomed from beginning to end.
But even though amidst A Little Life’s pages are some of the darkest moments of abuse, human endurance, self-harm and suffering I have probably ever encountered in a book, what lies between are some truly touching and affecting moments of the utmost kindness and love possible, from a collection of remarkable friends and guardians, in particular, Willem and Harold. Displayed in the same space are the polar opposites of humanity, and how, as Jude remarks, can it be possible that these two types of people can both in fact belong to the same species at all? It is rare to see masculine friendship and love splayed so remarkably across the pages of fiction, and for this reason, A Little Life feels even more important, and not so little at all.
The Herd, Emily Edwards
Reviewed by madeleine knowlesDescribed as the ‘thought-provoking and unputdownable must-read book club novel of 2022’, Emily Edwards’ The Herd revolves around the contentious and topical issue of vaccines. Elizabeth and Bryony are lifelong friends and godmothers to each other’s children, despite their differences. But when tragedy strikes and the contentious issue of vaccination comes to a head, the relationship unravels. This timely debate is explored in full force, with all of its nuances.
Ti Amo, Hanne Ørstavik
Reviewed by Madeleine KnowlesA slender novella of under 100 pages, Ti Amo is a quiet meditation on the cruel anticipation of loss.
Notable Norwegian writer Ørstavik’s Ti Amo tells an account of a husband and wife whose lives are upturned when the husband is diagnosed with cancer and refuses to find out his own prognosis. His wife, however, has to contend with the brutal knowledge that her husband has less than a year to live, and she has to contend with this knowledge alone, while caring for her dying partner.
What follows is a kind of anticipatory grief diary, as the wife begins to document the mundanity of her life in order to somehow make sense of her new reality. The contrast between the seismic experience of managing a terminal illness and the wife’s loving stumble through memories of their relationship and the minutia that make up a life is irrefutably affecting.
Throughout this searingly touching narrative, the affirmation ‘I love you’ or ‘Ti amo’ is repeated and exchanged as a constant reminder of what was loved and what was lost.
