Arts: Literary Reviews

Middle England by Jonathan Coe

VIKTORIA PRACZKO |

LITERARY REVIEW EDITOR ‘So as well as hating you, they also hate them – whoever they are – these faceless people who are sitting in judgement over them somewhere, legislating on what they can and can’t say out loud.’ Jonathan Coe’s 2018 novel, Middle England, displays the increasingly clashing politics and evolving social values of England in the height of the Brexit Referendum. Coe’s humorous approach to everyday life conflicts with the ongoing political tensions, creating an undeniable parallel between the absurdity of English reality and the persistency of hope within the nation.

Middle England’s narrative begins in 2010 and uses a variety of alternating perspectives to highlight the power of humanity during a time of crisis. Coe’s multi-generational cast of characters are collectively representative of nearly a decade of English life and history. Using the contrasting experiences of different households and cultures within England, Coe documents one of the most significant events of the decade and its impact on British national identity. Whilst the novel is unarguably founded on the Brexit Referendum, Middle England also explores the strength of unity within a population and the interconnectedness of human relationships. Through the character of Benjamin Trotter and those around him, one gets an insight into some of the most prevalent elements of reality: marriage, separation, love, grief, teenage rebellion, sexuality, and racial prejudice. Coe’s flowing narrative of different voices both aims to teach the readers to embrace their differences and demonstrates the necessity of harmony for universal happiness. Coe’s often praised Centrist prose is seen to relentlessly generate empathy and understanding for both those that voted for England to Remain, and those who voted to Leave the European Union. By maintaining a politically neutral approach, Middle England simultaneously remains optimistic, painting the possibility of a peaceful future and creates a sense of ongoing fear and powerlessness. Coe does not only use the division between the North and South of England, but the extreme split within the class system and the growing antipathy amongst the Labour and Conservative parties. His address of increased immigration displays the clashing of the old and the new, further reiterating the inevitability of social change and the potential chaos which may accompany it. Middle England utilises England’s changing politics to both educate and entertain the reader with the country’s absurd state. Coe’s calm tone forms an almost unnoticeable Brexit debate between those for and against it, showing both the overpowering notion of home and a nation’s aim to democratically function through major disagreements. Middle England does not only represent a relatable and truthful England, but is a captivating piece of literature that draws readers in from the beginning till the end.

Source: The Telegraph

Our Wives Under The Sea – Waiting for the Ocean to End HARRISON PITTS | CONTENT WRITER

Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield, is a simple explanations seem to pale before an answer far more Holloway graduate, writes with an elegiac lyricism, novel about ghosts. Not whitesheeted spectres or misty apparitions but the very real ghosts that memories of loved ones lost leave us teeming with. Armfield gives readers an artful examination of how lives can change, and more importantly, the excruciating ways they stay the same, after a loss. After a routine, three-week submarine voyage is delayed without contact for six months, Miri is forced to assume that her wife, Leah, is dead. As she begins mourning however, Leah is returned to her without explanation or ceremony and Miri is expected to return to life as normal with a wife she cannot help but feel is vastly different from the one who left. The small oddities and discrepancies in her character are easy to write off, at first, as a response to the trauma. After all, side effects after spending so long at the bottom of the ocean are to be expected. But as the symptoms fail to fade and instead become increasingly disturbing, the eldritch. Interspersed between Miri’s struggles are entries from Leah’s diary while on the illfated voyage. Mere moments after they slip beneath the surface, a quiet disaster strikes. The radio goes silent, and the lights sputter out. Nothing seems mechanically broken and yet the submarine remains stubbornly out of their control as they fall indefinitely far from the sun. What follows is a deeply claustrophobic horror mystery as Leah grapples with an immutable fate below the sea. How has the craft failed in such a specific way as to keep the crew alive but unable to resurface? And why was so much food stocked for what was supposed to be a short three-week trip? From the opening pages, any moments of levity readers are afforded are already in the distant past. The forays into a remembered life of connection and tenderness only serve to further juxtapose the drowning, silent loneliness of the present. Armfield, a Royal lamenting loss with a beautiful bluntness that never fails to give you chill to the bone. The novel moves slowly, almost begrudgingly, through the motions of grief and, unlike most romances, here there is no great fanfare or climactic confession but an inexhaustible march to the end that can be expected from the moment the cover is opened. However, as with all endings, its inevitability does nothing to make it any more bearable. Our Wives Under the Sea is a must-read masterclass in learning to let go. Dive in. Source: Unsplash

THE FOUNDER September 2022 LITERARY REVIEW 15 Treacle Walker: Garner’s telling of time and history

SEB GARDINER | CONTENT WRITER

Alan Garner’s debut novel, a young-adult story named The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. The novel, just shy of 300 pages, leads readers into a world of magic and friendship, the narrative of which spans centuries, and remains a popular read for anyone old enough to pick up a book. The relationship between past and present, young and old, is unmistakably Garner. 61 years and eight novels later, Alan Garner becomes the oldest person ever nominated for the Man Booker Prize, with his new, compact novel Treacle Walker.

The story follows a boy named Joseph Coppock and a mysterious traveller named Treacle Walker, who arrives at his doorstep one day and helps him to realise the world around him. Joseph buys medicine from Treacle Walker to heal his lazy eye, and subsequently sees into new dimensions, between times. Time has been central to Garner’s work for six decades - ‘time is not simply a clock,’ as he says. The novel’s epigraph, ‘Time Is Ignorance,’ from the physicist Carlo Rovelli, frames the story as one that explores the connection between young and old, as Brisingamen did, refusing to adhere to our linear understanding of time. Joseph and Treacle Walker contrast each other as Garner’s potential childhood self and potential older self, had his life not turned out the way it had done. Joseph would have been Garner had he not had the education he had, and Treacle Walker had he not dropped out of Oxford and left academia when he did. Throughout the story, fragments of Joseph’s imagination come to life and illustrate Garner’s fascination with memory and history. When some events are only passed down orally, who is to say what really happened decades ago? Cartoon characters jump out of comics and terrifying figures rise from bogs to illustrate a confused and anxious boy navigating the mysteries of his childhood, attempting to give meaning to everything he sees. Garner has frequently suggested that we are all telling ‘one story’ - equalling his shortest novel Boneland at 160 pages, Treacle Walker is the most compact and clear telling of this story. The use of childhood phrases - whose meanings are clear only to Garner - and the fearless combination of rural middle England and the mythical shows the story as one that is unmistakably connected to its author's earliest works.

Garner has said he fears dying before he finishes a book, but as he enters his sixth decade of storytelling, he shows us another side to his versatile interpretation of history and time.

Little Women: which march sister are you?

ANNIKA SWANSBURY | CONTENT WRITER

Louisa May Alcott’s landmark novel, Little Women, has for decades presented readers with four instantly recognisable characters who keep the pages they reside in alight with not only wit and charm but flaws and struggles. It starts from the very first page where we meet the four sisters dotted around the living room; Meg and Amy on the sofa, Beth in a corner where only the ‘hearth brush and kettle-holder’ can hear her, and Jo laid out upon the rug. All four faces are illuminated by firelight as they grumble about their troubles and behave in ways only sisters could. The scene continues in a manner that perfectly displays each sister’s character. Meg is their pseudo-mother, years before she becomes a mother herself, reminding her younger sisters to be moral and remember their duty to those at war. Jo and Amy squabble as their personalities and opinions clash, something that is set to continue throughout the novel. Finally, Beth tucked in the corner is content with her family, but her place just outside the group foreshadows her untimely death. Each of these young women carve out their place in the novel and demand to be heard, even if they are not always by those around them. Jo March may be Alcott’s heroine but her sisters all stand in a spotlight of their own. There is a reason there are countless March sister personality quizzes online; Alcott writes each of them so distinctively and with such care for their quirks and characters that it becomes impossible to not search for traces of each of them in yourself. A reader may align themselves with Meg for being the eldest or Amy for being the middle child, with Jo for their love of reading, or with Beth because they find joy in playing music. Or a reader may treasure Beth’s gentle nature, relate to Meg’s deep love for those she cares for, and marvel at Amy’s ability to navigate new environments, or desire Jo’s headstrong resilience. All these more positive qualities are not marred by the flaws Alcott gives her little women, only emphasised, rounding out each sister until she becomes lifelike, someone a reader could feasibly meet tomorrow, in their regular life. Over time opinions change and a flaw that upon first reading may be irritating, after the second or third may become endearing and far more tolerable, perhaps understandable. Even if readers wind up resenting Jo for eventually marrying or have a particular distaste for Amy’s childlike habit of ‘always getting out of the hard parts of life’ there is bound to be some aspect of the novel that they can connect with. The familial bonds, the desire for something more out of life, wanting to be great or nothing, or simply the pleasure of good company, good music, and adolescent bliss are just some of the tangible threads a reader can pull from the novel and align carefully over their own life. Source: The Hollywood Archive

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

EMILIE WILLIAMS | CONTENT WRITER

Alice Sebold’s 2001 novel, The Lovely Bones, is a gripping fictional thriller that follows the aftermath of 14-year-old Susie Salmon’s murder from her perspective in the afterlife. Set in early 1970s Pennsylvania, the novel depicts the fear and apprehension that followed the upsurge in media coverage of serial killers at the time. Unlike most psychological murder thrillers that build up to the climax of murder, Sebold’s narrator, Susie, describes the day of her assault and murder at the hands of her neighbour, Mr Harvey, in the first few pages of the text. Both the reader and the protagonist thus become observers who watch over the other characters as they fail to spot the clues to Susie’s disappearance.

Sebold’s exploration of the family’s grief is gritty and raw as she exhibits characters ravaged by an unexpected loss, follows their journeys toward peace, and describes the coping mechanisms they construct along the way. Susie’s father, Jack, a devoted and sensitive man, dedicates himself to solving his daughter’s murder whilst Susie’s reserved mother, Abigail, struggles to cope with her grief, and leaves the family to seek comfort in an affair. Susie’s adolescent omniscient narrative voice provides an innocent perspective to the violence she experiences and demonstrates the powerlessness of a child subjected to adult evil, much like Emma Donoghue’s young narrator, Jack, in her novel Room.

Source: @iamthebooktrovert, Instagram

Susie’s experience of the afterlife provides a refreshing escape from the pain and secrecy that occurs in the physical world. The supernatural elements of her afterlife allow her to connect to the physical world through flickering candles and whispers that encourage her grieving father to persevere with her murder investigation. The afterlife also provides Susie with the peaceful environment needed to heal her trauma and release her hold from the physical world, ultimately leading to her emotional meeting with Mr Harvey’s previous victims. As time passes and the Salmon family struggle to gather clues to Susie’s disappearance, her murderer hides the evidence of his involvement.

The Lovely Bones is a tender story of ill-fated death, acceptance, grief, and the evil that lurks in communities. Some may label the novel as ‘too violent’ or ‘upsetting’, but The Lovely Bones’ depiction of nightmarish circumstances also encourages the discussion of taboo and uncomfortable topics. It inspires the appreciation of the beauty of life and its impermanence whilst embodying the unfortunate reality of many unsolved murder investigations and sexual assault cases.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

CHLOE BOULTON | DEPUTY EDITOR

Sally Rooney’s second novel, Normal People, was and in many ways still is, inescapable. Its success brought to Rooney a cult-like following, and with that, great expectations were placed on the shoulders of her third novel. Rooney has divided opinions since entering the arena of popular culture, with some readers delighted to dole out praise in her direction, whilst others critique her prose style and the inherent millennial-ness of her work.

Beautiful World, Where Are You was released with all eyes watching. Very easily could Rooney have followed the same formula of her debut Conversations with Friends, and Normal People; she could have rehashed what so clearly works for her, in another tale of university romance between individuals who cannot stop hurting each other. It is very clear though, from the first few pages of Beautiful World that we are not in Trinity College anymore. In the novel, Alice and Eileen are best friends in their late twenties. They send each other long emails back and forth where they discuss heavy topics such as the commodification of art, the collapse of society and civilisation as we know it, amongst brief and purposefully vague descriptions of their day-to-day lives.

Eileen is a classic Rooney character – a variant of that which we have seen in her previous novels, to an extent – she earns terrible money working for a literary magazine in Dublin, and has a complex relationship with Simon, a childhood friend of hers.

Alice could conceivably be modelled off Rooney herself. She’s a young author who has reached unimaginable heights of literary success with her two novels (she struggles to write a third, claiming to have only had two good ideas) and is now coping – or not coping – with the aftermath of her newfound, but very much unwanted, fame. Alice’s relationship with Felix, a man she meets on Tinder, reveals the depths of her issues brought on by her new life.

The novel follows these four characters falling in and out of love with one another. We learn the excruciatingly human details of each of their lives; Simon being so moral he is difficult to approach, and Felix’s often brutal honesty about himself and his feelings.

A hallmark of Beautiful World is self-awareness; this is seen in each of the four main characters, and Rooney herself. Throughout the novel, there is a constant discussion over literary matters: the place of the novel in the twenty-first century, the morality of writing in the world we live in and the place of the author. Eileen agrees with Alice in her views on these matters, so there is no real debate, giving readers the sense that Rooney is using Alice as a device through which she can share her insight into her newfound fame.

Source: @faberforwaterstones, Instagram

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If it ever was Rooney’s view, as it was Alice’s, that she only ever had two good ideas, then we readers must delight in her having had a third, for this may have been her best one yet. The high regard for the late monarch across the globe has been seen as world leaders have sent their condolences, with US President Joe Biden remembering the Queen as “more than a monarch – she defined an era”, and French President Emmanuel Macron describing her as “a friend of France”. Many Commonwealth leaders have paid tribute, including Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau highlighting her “obvious deep and abiding love for Canadians”.

It has been confirmed that the State Funeral will take place on 19th September at Westminster Abbey. Prior to the State Funeral Service, members of the public can visit Westminster Hall to pay respects during the Lying-in-State in the Palace of Westminster.