March 3, 2025 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry

For Reading Ireland Month 25, I am reading Sebastian Barry’s three novels that are part of the Dunne Family series. Here, I introduce the four works and review the first novel Annie Dunne.

Three novels and a play

Humewood Castle Kiltegan County Wicklow Sebastian Barry The Dunne Family novels and play

Sebastian Barry wrote a series of four literary works about one strand of the fictional Dunne family (inspired in parts by his own ancestral lineage), who for seven generations were stewards of Humewood Estate, 470 acres of parkland and a castle in Kiltegan, County Wicklow.

Originally built in the 15th century, the property was sold by the last of that continuous line of family, Catherine Marie-Madeleine (Mimi) in 1992 and she would present most of the estate cottages to the sitting tenants. The castle is now owned by an American billionaire.

Barry says he did have some “inkling” that he might want to explore other family stories. “But I had absolutely no idea that 20 years later these people would still be with me. I’m in a book of quotations saying that, as our ancestors hide in our DNA, so do their stories. I don’t remember saying that, but over the years I’ve come to believe it. It’s as if these hidden people sometimes demand that their stories are told.” The Guardian

The Dunne Family Tetralogy

The play is about the first son Thomas, who did not become a steward, the next Annie Dunne (2002) is about one of his daughters Annie, then A Long Long Way (2005) is the story of his only son Willie Dunne, who joins the Dublin Fusiliers and goes to the Great War (WWI), and the final novel On Canaan’s Side (2011) is about Lily Bere (or Dolly as we know her), the youngest of the three sisters, who left Ireland for America.

Dunne Family #1 The Steward of Christendom

The play The Steward of Christendom (1995) centres around Thomas Dunne, the high-ranking, ex-chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan police, looking back on his career built during the latter years of Queen Victoria’s empire, from his home in Baltinglass in Dublin in 1932.

He was Catholic, and loyally in service to both the British King, and his country (Ireland), however those twin loyalties collided in the period leading up to the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), when he found himself on the ‘wrong’ side of history to his countrymen, culminating in a sense of failure, including the recurring memory of the handover of Dublin Castle to Michael Collins.

I haven’t read the play, but I know that he becomes a broken man, committed to an asylum, unable to reconcile what had happened, as if it were the downfall and undoing of himself, his family and lineage.

Dunne Family #2 Annie Dunne

Following the play, he wrote the novel Annie Dunne (2002), about the unmarried middle daughter of the superintendent, which takes place over one summer in her early sixties, when she is staying at her cousin Sarah’s cottage and small acreage in Kelsha, “a distant place, over the mountains from everywhere”, having found herself homeless after the premature death of her sister Maud and the downfall of her family.

Seven Generations of Caretakers, Coppicers, Caterers and a Cop

Dunne Family tetralogy 5 children hold hands playing ring a ring a rosy, a whitewash irish cottage in the background

In the opening pages of Annie Dunne, we learn a little about that family history, the prestige of the line of stewards of Humewood Estate, the different direction her father took and his demise, having to put him in an asylum. The guilt over the end of her once regular visits, his lonely death.

Compared to her childhood in Dublin Castle and that long line of important roles that sheltered her, she too is now alone in these latter years, grateful to her cousin for taking her in. Their glory days behind them, she senses eyes on her without sympathy, in that way people regard someone perceived as having been superior, then find themselves without a safety net.

Those days are gone and blasted forever, like the old oak forests of Ireland felled by greedy merchants years ago.

A New Purpose, Another Marital Threat

When her sister Maud was dying, Annie tended her and the children. Now one of those boys is going to London with his wife, while his two children, four and six will stay under Annie’s care for the summer.

Words are spoken and I sense the great respect Sarah has for their father Trevor, my fine nephew, magnificent in his Bohemian green suit, his odd, English sounding name, his big read beard and his sleeked black hair like a Parisian intellectual, good-looking with deep brown angry eyes. He is handing her some notes of money, to help us bring the children through the summer. I am proud of her regard for him and proud of him, because in the old days of my sister’s madness I reared him.

Billy Kerr, a local man who does odd jobs, arrives unexpectedly early two mornings in a row to share a tea, Annie wonders why. And how her life became like this. The attention he gives Sarah unnerves her, “it is the air of the man”, and much of the novel delves into Annie’s inner world and outer efforts to secure her place.

At the mercy of influences outside her realm of control, she struggles to remain calm, and fears what she might be capable of. She must defend what she sees as her last refuge, her last stand.

Poor Annie Dunne, they must say, if they are kind. They will find other things to say, if they are not. Well, if we were something then, I am nothing now, as if to balance such magnificence with a handful of ashes.

A Strange Innocence, New Understanding

Annie is a complex character, she worries for the children, tries to care for them, observes behaviours that disturb her, jumps to conclusions, looks for support and doesn’t find it, fears herself and her reactions most of all. Her insecurities have made her paranoid, her need to blame risks falling on the innocent. Her desire to harm frightens her.

Her words are so simple, small, and low. Whispery. I feel myself the greater criminal by far than Billy Kerr. I should have kept my own opinions to myself, and let this story take its course, as I have always allowed every story that has come to me. She is open and raw to my wounds. That is why I have wounded her.

Taking place over that summer, the first half is rather mundane, the second half more dramatic as events occur that Annie is implicated in or threatened by, in which she takes some action, some thought out and calculated, other times over-reactive and hysterical. We wonder if she is becoming unravelled like her father, nothing is ever certain in a world that is constantly changing.

The summer comes to an end and none of them will be the same again; changed by their experience, further along in their understanding of themselves and others.

Even the halves of songs I know, our way of talking, our very work and ways of work, will be forgotten. Now I understand it has always been so, a fact which seemed to heal my father’s wound, and now my own.

I enjoyed the novel, but I admit I started it some time ago and set it aside, then went back to start again. It’s more of a winter read when you set more time to pushing through when a novel isn’t quite gripping you. The second time I started it felt very different and I had no trouble continuing on, but by then I also knew I was going to read all three and get the bigger picture.

There are issues in Annie Dunne that are not fully explored, and Annie represents that past characteristic of the Irish to knowingly suppress certain issues, lest it disturb their current situation, however over the course of the summer, she has transformed.

Author, Sebastian Barry

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. The 2018-2011 Laureate for Irish fiction, his novels have twice won the Costa Book of the Year award, the Independent Booksellers award and the Walter Scott Prize.

He had two consecutive novels shortlisted for the Booker Prize, A Long Long Way and The Secret Scripture and has also won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in County Wicklow.

January 16, 2025 by Claire 'Word by Word'

heart, be at peace by Donal Ryan

It has been 10 years since The Spinning Heart (my review), and in this small town in rural Ireland, County Tipperary, not a lot seems to have changed, or maybe it has. Previously it was economic collapse, lack of employment, toxic masculinity and how the actions of one man affected a community.

In Donal Ryan’s heart, be at peace we meet many of the cast from the past, another 21 voices some years further on, with a new set of troubles affecting the community.

Some are faring rather well financially, but not everyone is happy about the activities they are involved in and their loved ones who might be affected. Suspicion, mistrust, grief, regret prevail and all manner of connections have been formed and remade.

Births, Deaths and Estrangements

One of the most intriguing characters that I could have happily read a novel on and one of the few characters that does stand out was Lily, described as a witch by training and a whore by inclination, estranged from her son, then made up over her granddaughter Millicent who turns up at her door one day.

Having the gift of insight, she can see her granddaughter will find little solace with the boy she’s seeing. When she asks her granny for a spell to bind him always to her for fear of losing him, she knows there will be trouble ahead.

I explained to her again that the spells weren’t real magic, that the power of them was already inside the people who wanted them, the spells just allowed them the use of it, that the magic was in their faith that the magic would work and she screamed at me then, That’s what I want, Granny, that’s what I want, to have faith that he’ll always love me, that he’ll never leave me. I can’t bear the thought of losing him, of some other bitch touching him. He’s MINE, Granny, he’s mine.

A Chorus of Voices

The way the novel is written with short chapters from multiple character viewpoints, we can only discern what happens next to some of those we meet along the way, as we imagine the implications of all that is revealed. It is a novel that might be better understood after multiple readings, as it takes some work to connect and reconnect the different voices. It’s a kind of fly-on-the-wall polyphonic chorus.

In a way, the novel reading experience is like being in the presence of a community but not really knowing them, observing for a while reveals some connections but not others.

Some men can lie with such ease that they quickly begin to believe themselves, and so in a way their lies become truth and their sin is expunged.

21 voices a community in Tipperary follow up to The Spinning Heart

I have a few of Donal Ryan’s novels and I do recall having a little difficulty with his Booker longlisted debut mentioned above, and then absolutely loving All We Shall Know (reviewed here), then not being impressed at all by Strange Flowers. So a bit hit and miss for me, but one I’ll keep reading as he seems to have his finger on the pulse of contemporary community issues.

I enjoyed heart, be at peace and its themes, but it is a novel that is unlikely to stay with me due to the vast cast of character voices that too often became indiscernable for me.

Author, Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan is an award winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary where this latest novel is set. His work has been published in over twenty languages to critical acclaim.

heart, be at peace won Novel of the Year and the Overall Grand Prize of Book of the Year at the An Irish Book Awards in 2024, described by the Irish Times an “absorbing, emphatic story of a community in trouble”

Maria Dickenson, Chair of the Judging Panel, said:

“Heart, Be at Peace was the unanimous choice of the judges from among the fantastic array of titles shortlisted this year. Donal Ryan’s writing has earned him a place among the greatest names in Irish literature and this lyrical novel speaks to the very heart of modern Irish society. Weaving twenty one voices together, Ryan portrays the passions, frailties and sorrows of one Irish town with compassion and clarity. Heart, Be at Peace is a masterful achievement and we congratulate Donal warmly on winning this award.”

January 14, 2025 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain

A friend gave me this book to read recently and I brought it with me on holiday intending to read it on the plane, which didn’t happen. It is indeed an ideal holiday read, Rose Tremain being one of those reliable authors so adept at storytelling, at drawing you in to a character’s perspective, imagining their predicament.

When we first meet Marianne, it is the 1950’s, she is fifteen, the only child of regular middle class parents from a semi-rural district in southern England and in her prime for falling helplessly in love with the boy who is paying her attention, Simon Hurst. They are both coming to the end of their schooling years, he with great expectations, she with few.

When I was fifteen, I told my mother that I was in love with a boy called Simon Hurst and she said to me, ‘Nobody falls in love at your age, Marianne. What they get are “crushes” on people. You’ve just manufactured a little crush on Simon.’

When Simon fails to meet the expectations of him, his life plan changes and this will impact Marianne. Her parents dismiss her feelings and put it down to a schoolgirl crush, she describes it as being in the Love Asylum. Unable to let go of her ideas about a life with Simon, she flounders for a while, will eventually move on, but the pattern of unrequited love is never far away from her experience.

Photo by Miquel R. Calafell @ Pexels.com

At school studying Romeo and Juliet, she relates to the Juliet character and wishes for a character like Nurse in her life, one who understands what Romeo and Juliet are doing and how they feel, one kinder than her mother who could hold her and soothe her erratic emotions.

I imagined her listening attentively while I confessed to her that my head was so burdened by my obsession with Simon that I was afraid of becoming a total imbecile. And she would stroke my hair and reassure me that this was a perfectly normal state for young people to be in, that we were all inevitably headed for a stay in the Love Asylum, but that in time the spell would be overcome and normal life would resume.

It is an absorbing story of turning points in people’s lives, the different people they meet, how that can change their trajectory, including the presence of those absent and the illusions harboured of lives not lived, not meant to be lived. It is also a thought provoking depiction of the relationships between generations and the expectations of those coming-of-age in the 1960’s England.

Absolutely and Forever was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024.

September 16, 2024 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Booker Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2024

Today the Booker Prize Judges shared their shortlist of six novels, narrowed down from the 13 novels in the longlist from an original list of 156 novels.

The panel is chaired this year by artist and author Edmund de Waal, joined by award-winning novelist Sara Collins; Fiction Editor of the Guardian, Justine Jordan; world-renowned writer and professor Yiyun Li; and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.

The Shortlist of Six books below includes five women and authors from five countries including the first Dutch author to be shortlisted, the first Australian in 10 years. Below the description is a brief comment from the judges and the reason they think reader’s will love that book:

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Netherlands) – An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes – and the legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest tragedies.

Set in the Netherlands after the war, a quietly devastating novel of obsession and secrets, in which a relationship between two women in a perfectly ordered Dutch household becomes a story of the Holocaust.

We loved how atmospheric this book is. The austerity of these years is powerfully evoked, the particularity of where each teaspoon and coffee cup belongs is beautifully calibrated. But we adored the dynamic of the relationship between Isabel and Eva, the way they inhabit this charged space, always aware of each other and their bodies.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey (UK) – Six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

This brief yet miraculously expansive novel, set aboard the International Space Station is inflused with such awe and reverence that it reads like an act of worship.

This novel is superbly crafted and lyrically stunning. Sentence after sentence is charged with the kind of revelatory excitement that in a lesser book would be eked out of plot alone.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (US) – A woman is caught in the crossfire between the past and the future in this part-spy novel, part-profound treatise on human history.

A thought-provoking novel of ideas, wrapped up in a page-turning spy thriller. Kushner’s prose is juicy, her narrator jaunty, her world-building lush.

Novels that investigate what it is to be human can veer into the sentimental; this one is utterly flinty and hard-nosed. And yet, there’s mystery at its core – both the mystery of human origins and of individual identity. ‘What is it people encounter in their stark and solitary 4am self? What is inside them?’ As with the caves that play such a key part in the book, Kushner taps into something profound.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Australia) – The past comes knocking in this fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and female friendship.

Set in a claustrophobic religious retreat in rural Australia, this is a fierce and philosophical interrogation of history, memory, nature and human existence.

Contemporary issues – climate change and a global pandemic – can sometimes appear as flat concepts or stale ideas in fiction, but Stone Yard Devotional is able to make both topics locally and vividly felt as haunting human stories.

James by Percival Everett (US) – A profound meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

A powerful, genre-defying, revisionist exploration of slavery, the indomitable resilience of the human spirit and the pursuit of freedom. It subverts all expectations.

While the book deals with the horrors of slavery, it also examines universal themes of identity, freedom and justice. Everett challenges us to question, and reflect on, the nature of morality, the corrupting influence of power and the indomitable resilience of the human spirit.

Held by Anne Michaels (Canada) – In a narrative that spans four generations from 1917, moments of connection and consequence ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds.

A lyrical kaleidoscope of a novel created from the scattered images and memories of four generations of a family. Few books could sustain a pitch of poetic intensity.

We loved the quietness of this book: we surrendered to it. The large themes are of the instability of the past and memory, but it works on a cellular level due to the astonishing beauty of the details. Whether it is the mistakes that are knitted into a sweater so that a drowned sailor can be identified, or the rituals of making homecoming pancakes, or what it feels like to be scrutinised as you are painted, the novel makes us pause.

The Verdict

So I’m surprised and disappointed not to see My Friends by Hisham Matar on the list, I thought it was excellent; it is great to see Percival Everett’s masterpiece James there, I loved it. I have read Orbital and it was okay, though I felt quite detached from it and the characters, while reading.

Of the others, I’m curious enough to read an extract from Stoneyard Devotional, and Held, though the Anne Michaels might be a bit much for me if its anything like her much earlier Fugitive Pieces. I’m not sure about Creation Lake, it’s giving me Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton vibes, so likely not for me. And now I have these two previous Booker Prize winning novels to read, thanks to a lucky book haul at the Vide Grenier in Ansouis Village yesterday.

So what do you think of the shortlist? Any recommendations? Disappointments?

Read An Extract

If you want to check out some of the first chapter of any of these books, you can read an extract here.

The Booker Winner

The announcement of the winner of the Booker Prize 2024 will take place at a ceremony and dinner held at Old Billingsgate in London on Tuesday, 12 November.

September 16, 2024 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Ansouis Village Annual Book Sale

Yesterday (Sunday) was the annual ‘vide grenier‘ (garage sale) in the medieval village of Ansouis in the South Luberon area of the region Vaucluse. It’s a village I drive through at least once or twice a week for work. It’s a nice place to stop for a while.

The village has a population of around 1,000 people and is dominated by the fortress like Château d’Ansouis, sitting on a rocky perch overlooking the village and valley all around.

Every year the local French library has a few tables, where they sell second hand books, in both English and French.

It’s my favourite book sale, because it’s set up in this beautiful location, there’s easy parking and it’s always on a sunny day in mid September. If you arrive early, you are guaranteed to be rewarded.

I like to cull the bookshelves every year and donate to this market, and then try not to buy back too many. However this year I arrived just as another woman was depositing her donation and I saw those two Booker Prize winning novels that I haven’t read yet, Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

And then there were more…

In addition to the other impulsive purchases you can see in the image above, I found Northern Irish author Jan Carson’s The Raptures, a signed copy of Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends, Japanese author Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs translated from Japanese and more. Oops. 12 books later…

Often these are books I have seen reviewed and I’m interested in, but not enough to rush out and purchase a copy, however they are the kind of books I would borrow from a library, so I guess this is like an annual library visit. Isn’t it?

I had heard about the Cazalet Chronicles Quintet by British author Elizabeth Jane Howard and couldn’t pass up the opportunity when I saw all four of them sitting in a box waiting to be claimed. Anyone keen for a buddy read?

There are lots of other things that people are selling, old china and glass, cutlery, clothes, old linens, the contents of workshops, old music albums – brocante. A treasure trove of things we don’t need, but definitely fun to look at.

The only other thing I look out for are old postcards, like these of Marseille’s Le Palais Longchamp, the Route de la Corniche and Le Parc Borely, all of which I found in Ansouis a couple of years ago. And all places I connect with and have fond memories of.

Even though they have already been used and written on (many many years ago), I like to give them a second life, sending them as bookmarks, to friends who also know and remember these places.

I didn’t find any today, well, there were some very small but beautiful old black and white photos of Berlin, but I didn’t connect with them in the same way as I do with the southern French locations.

Have you read the Cazalet Chronicles or any others from this haul that you recommend?

August 5, 2024 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Tidal Waters by Velia Vidal (Colombia) tr. Annie McDermott

Women in Translation

Tidal Waters is my first August read for #WIT month. Reading Women in Translation.

What an original, good-hearted, open, vulnerable read. I’m not sure whether what I read was fictional or not, because much of what is described in the ‘letters to a close friend’ coincides with elements in the author bio inside the front cover of the book and the main character is Vel.

The Epistolary Novel

epistolary novel of letters, reading, literacy, poverty, Afro Colombian

An epistolary narrative, it is about the return to a place and finding new purpose, along with the motivation to pursue it and taking others with you – told through a correspondence that bears witness and though we don’t see the replies, we can tell that they encourage and support both the idea(s) and the woman pursuing it.

I don’t know if I mentioned this specifically, perhaps not in a letter, though maybe when we met up before I left to come and live here here for good, but part of what pushed me to make this radical life change was the need to feel that my existence had meaning, that I was spending each day doing something I cared about and could feel proud of at the end of my life. And that’s just what I found in being Seño Velia, the woman who has meetings with people about books, who tries to motivate children to love reading and books as much as she does, and who supports the teachers.

Finding Purpose and Motivation, In Community

The letters span 3 years from May 2015 and they track a significant change in Vel’s life as she decides to return to Choco (to the Afro-Colombian community she was raised in) to start a new venture to bring reading, literacy and a love of books to it. The correspondence exhibits the growth and expansion of her writing, the letter becomes a safe harbour and she tests it by taking her writing to another level, stretching into a more personal yet contained arena.

Tomorrow I start a diploma in reading promotion, and with it my project, Motete. We’ve chosen three areas of Quibdo where I’ll start running the workshops.

She is taking a risk starting a new venture, but believes in it and is surrounded by extended family and connections, which facilitate her ability to reach out even further into the community and invite everyone in, to be part of or benefit from her shared love of reading.

And so this project is coming together. This basket, this Motete, is filling up. The slogan for my project is ‘Contenidos que tejen’ – contents that weave – and every day I like it more. Every day I realise that these contents are weaving fulfillment and happiness within me…

The thing is, motetes have been used to carry food for the body: plaintains, bushmeat, fish. Our is to fill them with food for the soul: art, culture, books. And just as motetes are woven by hand, I thought these new contents would also form a fabric: the fabric of society, of community, the fabric of souls.

Letter Writing

Her unnamed friend that she writes to is someone she hasn’t known long, he occupies a space between the familiar and the unfamiliar that she claims as a freedom to express herself, to be vulnerable and open, someone who has mentored and shown her how to get funding. The range of things she will write to him of, span a wide spectrum.

We never see the replies but the continuation of her own correspondence displays her life, her dealing with health problems, the double bind of her wounding and love, of being raised by doting grandparents, while having complicated relationships with a teenage mother unable to mother her and an emotionally absent father. Her later sadness and depression, helped through therapy, tears and conversations, to ways of coping and healing. Her optimism for her venture, and the community connections she creates keep her going.

I grew a lot. I learned. But most of all I tried to weave a new way of relating to my father that hurt as little as possible.

The Sea, The Sea

One of the themes is the sea, the absence of sea, the way the river meets the sea and her relationship to it. She yearns for it when it has been absent for some time, just as she yearns for the letter writer and the relief that comes in the act of writing to him.

She describes herself in her current role as being like the sea at that place where it meets the river.

I’m like the Pacific Ocean, pressing at the river with its tides to make it flow the other way, or lapping at the land when its waters rise, when it feels like gaining inches of new ground. You need strong motivation to stick to this way of life, which isn’t exactly a fight against the world, but rather the certainty of forging your own path.

An Homage to Correspondence

I loved this slender book, it’s project and generosity, its intimate sharing and platform for expanding and learning and having the courage to venture into new areas. It made me think of an exquisite title I’d forgotten about, Leslie Marmon Silko’s slim book of correspondence The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright.

That correspondence was written when Silko was 31 years old and Wright 51. They had planned to meet in the Spring of 1980, mentioned in letters of Oct/Nov of the previous year, not knowing he would be gone before then.

They discuss her novel, his poetry, language, his travels, her adventures with animals, their speaking engagements, their mutual challenges and experiences as university professors, and soon began to share more personal feelings, as she acknowledged the tough time she was having and he shared his own experience, expressing empathy.

Velia Vidal dedicates her book:

To my recipient,
simply for being there.

and when I read about her own projects in society, her love of the sea and shared readings and efforts to help move children and young adults out of poverty, it is all the more inspirational to read these letters, understanding the difference a letter can make, to see someone take a risk and pursue something that will help others from her community, while fulfilling her own dreams and aspirations.

Highly Recommended.

Velia Vidal, Author

Velia Vidal (Bahía Solano, Colombia, 1982) is a writer who loves the sea and shared readings. In 2021 she was a fellow at Villa Josepha Ahrenshoop, in Germany.

For her book Tidal Waters she won the Afro-Colombian Authors Publication Grant awarded by Colombia’s Ministry of Culture. She is the co-author of Oír somos río (2019) and its bilingual German-Spanish edition.

She is the founder and director of the Motete Educational and Cultural Corporation and the Reading and Writing Festival (FLECHO) in Chocó, one of the most isolated, complex and neglected regions in Colombia with the highest afro-descendant population density in the country.

Vidal graduated in Afro-Latin American Studies and has a Masters in Reading Education and Children’s Literature. She is also a journalist and specialist in social management and communication. In 2022 she was included in the list of 100 most influential and inspiring women in the world by the BBC.

She writes children’s literature, fiction and non-fiction, and poetry. Her work has been translated into German, English and Portuguese.

July 30, 2024 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Booker Prize for Fiction Longlist 2024

Today the longlist for the Booker Prize for Fiction 2024 was announced, 13 books, featuring three debut novels and six previously nominated writers.

It features blackly comic page-turners, multi-generational epics, meditations on the pain of exile – plus a crime caper, a spy thriller, an unflinching account of girls’ boxing and a reimagining of a 19th-century classic.

The long listed selection was chosen from 156 books published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024. The Prize is open to works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.

The list includes the following titles, of which I have read three (reviews linked to title):

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Ireland) – A story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence, set in County Mayo.

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (US) – Funny, propulsive, obsessive and ecstatic, Headshot is equal parts subtle and intense, as it brings us to the sidelines of the boxing ring and above and beyond it.

James by Percival Everett (US) – A profound meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (US) – A woman is caught in the crossfire between the past and the future in this part-spy novel, part-profound treatise on human history.

My Friends by Hisham Matar (US/UK/Libya) – An intensely moving novel about three friends living in political exile and the emotional homeland that friendship can provide.

Held by Anne Michaels (Canada) – In a narrative that spans four generations from 1917, moments of connection and consequence ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds.

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud (US) – charts the Franco-Algerian, Cassars’ unfolding story, in a work of breathtaking historical sweep and vivid psychological intimacy, from June 1940, as they move between Salonica and Algeria, the US, Cuba, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and France.

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange (US) – A tender, shattering story of generations of a Native American family, struggling to find ways through displacement, addiction and pain, towards home and hope.

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry (UK) – A story of love and astronomy told over the course of 20 years through the lives of two improbable best friends.

Playground by Richard Powers (US) – Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonise and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Netherlands) – An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes – and the legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest tragedies.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Australia) – The past comes knocking in this fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and female friendship.

* * * * * * *

Both My Friends by Hisham Matar and James by Percival Everett were 5 star reads for me, that I highly recommend. Orbital was a unique and different read, but one that at times I felt a little disengaged from.

Plenty more to explore here, have you read any from this list that you highly recommend or are looking forward to reading?

The shortlist of six books will be announced on Monday, 16 September.

July 3, 2024 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Hypocrite (2024) by Jo Hamya

I came across The Hypocrite randomly and was intrigued firstly by the Sicilian setting and secondly by its premise of being a clash of generational perspectives.

I was also intrigued, having recently read Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad, to discover another novel with a theatre setting. It is a thought provoking novel about the family dynamics of a daughter and her parents, played out one afternoon as she lunches with her mother, while her father watches the play downstairs. It is an awakening of sorts for them all.

A Daughter Creates

A young woman Sophia, has written a play. It is set in a summer holiday house on one of the Aeolian islands of Sicily, a place she spent a month with her father, typing his dictated novel, mostly hanging out alone, quietly observing the women he bedded nightly. That was 10 years ago.

The Father Watches

literary fiction a daughter writes a play about her fathers generation referencing a holiday in Sicily

Today, her father, the (in)famous author, attends a matinee showing of his daughter’s work for the first time. He knows nothing about the play prior to being seated in the theatre. He swiftly realises that much of the set and characters are familiar to him. This might even be about him. About that holiday. He begins to feel uncomfortable.

No stories are entirely imaginary, cherub, he’d said then. Everything is always a little bit real. Sometimes you steal things from other stories and change them until they work how you like.

He wonders if the people sitting either side of him know who he is. He begins to prepare defences in his mind. He decides to interact with the young woman who had been seated next to him.

He thinks, I have never been any good at arguing. I have only ever said what is on my mind. So he asks her, without malice, whether she dislikes him because of what they’ve both watched; does his best to keep his breathing steady in the interval between his question and her answer.

Round Glasses is blunt. She disliked him before, she says. And the play is no great shakes.

The Mother Bitches

a mother and daughter eat in a theatre restaurant — Photo by Rene Terp on Pexels.com

Upstairs in the theatre restaurant, the daughter dines with her mother. She spends most of the meal talking about her ex-husband. She has re-experienced living with him for a period during lockdown. Unaware, she begins to create a scene.

The narrative shifts between the father observing the play unfold, the daughter listening to the mother complain of him and that month long holiday in the past that inspired her to write the play.

In Sicily, Sophia had looked forward to spending the longest uninterrupted time with her father she had ever had. She did not realise that she would spend most of the time alone or in the company of Anto, the nephew of the woman who cleaned the house. Her father would be absent to her, except when dictating his chauvinistic novel. She would observe and learn things.

We Are all Products of Them and Ourselves

The novel explores the unmet expectations of each character in the family trio, their deafness to each other’s desire and the clash of generational perspectives.

The contradiction of the time had been the heightened moral obligation to consider other people as a means to keeping one’s own self-interest afloat. Showing other people care meant avoiding them.

theatre stage play audience in a theatre red curtain — Photo by Monica Silvestre on Pexels.com

The scenes pass in a kind of circumambulation, one after the other, progressing onward.

Revelation comes slowly to the father seeing himself from another’s perspective, through actor’s on a stage, where he cannot interrupt or change the narrative, he is forced to bear witness.

Held To Account, Punished and Portrayed

The mother is witnessed by both the daughter and the waiter, who forces her to account for her deteriorating behaviour. This is not the family home, no dsyfunction permitted.

The daughter equally will be challenged by a random stranger in a public place.

It is not quite a reckoning, but a challenge to each of them to see what they are not seeing, to pause from the habit of inflicting a perspective on others.

The novel puts on stage personal power, public perception and creative potential and asks it audience to consider the responsibility and ambiguity of creating art, mining lives and the sanctity or not (for art) of relationships.

So who is the hypocrite?

Everyone it seems.

Jo Hamya, Author

Jo Hamya was born in London. After living in Miami some years, she completed an English degree at King’s College London and a Masters in contemporary literature and culture at Oxford University. She has worked as a copyeditor for Tatler, edited manuscripts published by Edinburgh University Press and Doubleday UK.

She has written for the New York Times, Guardian and Financial Times. Currently, she works as an in-house writer and archivist for the Booker Prizes and its authors and is a PhD candidate at King’s College London.

Her debut novel was Three Rooms (2021). She lives in London.

May 7, 2024 by Claire 'Word by Word'

bell hooks: The Last Interview and other conversations

The Last Interview is a series of books each entitled, The Last Interview and Other Conversations that offers a fresh look at some of the world’s leading innovative writers and edgiest cultural figures by gathering conversations from throughout an artist’s career and collecting them in one volume. There are currently 41 books in the series and the next one coming will feature Sinead O’Connor.

Having read two of the books in bell hooks Love trilogy, All About Love and Salvation (the third book Communion, I have – but yet to read), I was interested to read these interviews. They provide more background on the author and allow for the greater understanding and depth in a subject that conversation can bring. They include an exploration of her affiliation and interest in Buddhist thought.

Overall, while the interviews are interesting, I think it is great to read the work of bell hooks, as she was quite prolific on a number of topics and a very engaging writer and thinker. If you have read all her work, this will be a bonus read and if you haven’t these interviews, some of which you can find online are a great introduction.

Meet and Read bell hooks

feminist interview bell hooks on writing criticism

bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins) (1952-2021) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on education, political theory, the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination.

The pseudonym she used, was the name of her great-grandmother, to honour female legacies, spelling it always in lower case letters, to focus on her works and message, about ideas and not herself.

She published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern female perspective, she addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism.

The bell hooks theory

She is most well known for her feminist theory that recognizes that social classifications (e.g. race, gender, sexual identity, class, etc.) are interconnected, and that ignoring their intersection creates inequality and oppression towards women and changes the experience of living as a woman in society.

On Love

nonfiction essays love effect of domination patriarchy black woman perspective

In her book All About Love, bell hooks perspective is heart lead, her definition of love leaves behind conditioned perceptions of romance and desire and the traditional roles of carer, nurturer, provider – and suggests that it might be ‘the will to do for oneself or another that which enables us to grow and evolve spiritually’ love becomes a verb not a noun.

“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”

I find her work particularly interesting as it sits alongside the work of another cultural commentator, Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade and Nurturing Our Humanity in addressing those systems of domination such as class, gender and race that interfere with our ability to commune with one another.

It is also in alignment with the work of Anita Moorjani, another heart based spiritual commentator, who wrote Sensitive is the new Strong, Dying To Be Me and What If This is Heaven?.

The Interviews – No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?

One of the interviews addresses the controversy of her decision to appear on a live talk show, something she did as a way for her to reach a different, wider audience. It was a strategy that in one sense did not work that well for her, due to the hard time she was given on the show. However, despite the public take-down, her aim was still achieved, as the silent majority who watched it from their homes, will have become more aware of who she was and the message she was trying to portray, in particular to Black women.

In the collection of seven interviews, stretching from early in her career until her last interview, she discusses feminism, the complexity of rap music and masculinity, her relationship to Buddhism, the “politic of domination,” sexuality, and love and the importance of communication across cultural borders.

Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.
– Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003

Whether she was sparking controversy on campuses or facing criticism from contemporaries, hooks relentlessly challenged herself and those around her, she inserted herself into the tensions of the cultural moment, and anchored herself with love.

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?
– in conversation with Maya Angelou, 1998

On Tough Love, Loving Environments and Community

This was an interview by Abigail Bereola for Shondaland in December 2017 on self-love, discussing why we know so little about it or how to even cultivate it, and how a lack of it has played into the patriarchal culture of workplace abuse and assault.

I think that societies begin with our small units of community, which are family — whether bio or chosen. I am often amazed when I meet people that I see have been raised in loving families because they’re so different and they live in the world differently. I don’t agree that every family is dysfunctional — I think we don’t want to admit that when people are loving, it’s a different world. It’s an amazing world. It’s a world of peace. It’s not that they don’t have pain, but they know how to handle their pain in a way that’s not self-negating. And so I think insomuch as we begin to look again at the family and challenging and changing patriarchy within family systems, irrespective of what those families are, there’s hope for love.

I have enjoyed her books considerably and the interviews extend her work into the joy of what conversation can bring. Though some of her work is clearly targeted at Black women, I believe there is value in it for all, indeed, it is necessary to read outside one’s own race, gender, culture, ethnic group and language, to understand other perspectives and the issues that others face. Sometimes we find resonance, other times, we pay attention, listen, read and learn. There is plenty to learn and consider in the writings and conversations of bell hooks.

N.B. This was an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

April 24, 2024 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2024

The Women’s Prize for Fiction have announced their shortlist of six novels. You can view the entire longlist here.

Identity, Resilience, Migrant Experiences, Family Relationships

Many of the books depict characters who are navigating seismic changes in their identity, undergoing a process of self-reckoning and self-acceptance, with several dealing with the inheritance of trauma and the resilience of women overcoming the weight of the past.

Half of the books in this year’s shortlist explore the migrant experience through different lenses, offering moving, distinct, explorations of race, identity and family, of the West’s false promise and the magnetism of home.

The shortlist encompasses stories that both focus on intimate family relationships, as well as those that convey a sweep of history, always with an eye on the particularity of women’s experience, whether in the home or in the context of war and political upheaval.

The Shortlist

Below are descriptions of the individual titles, along with a quote from a judge, to help you discern if they might be of interest:

The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (Ireland) published by Jonathan Cape, 283 pgs

A psychologically astute examination of family dynamics and the nature of memory. Enright’s prose is gorgeous and evocative and scalpel sharp.

Nell – funny, brave and much loved – is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell’s leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. Across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel’s famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions.

A consideration of love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A generational saga tracing the inheritance of trauma and wonder, it is a testament to the resilience of women in the face of promises, false and true. An exploration of the love between a mother and daughter – sometimes fierce, often painful, always transcendent.

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan (Sri Lanka), published by Viking, 348 pgs (see my review here)

Visceral, historical, emotional. It is 300 pages of must-read prose. A powerful book that has the intimacy of memoir, the range and ambition of an epic, and tells a truly unforgettable story about the Sri Lankan civil war.

Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes her on a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their best friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?

Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville (Australia), published by Canongate Books, 256 pgs

[It] follows the life of Dolly, who really is restless. It begins in the 1880s in rural Australia, and it follows Dolly’s ambitions to live a bigger life than the one she’s been given.

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the 19th century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (Britain/Palestine), published by Jonathan Cape, 336 pgs (see my review here)

How can a production of Hamlet in the West Bank resonate with the residents’ existential issues? Enter Ghost is a beautiful, profound meditation on the role of art in our society and our lives.

After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her sister Haneen. While Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

When Sonia meets the charismatic, candid Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertrude’s lines in classical Arabic with a dedicated group of men who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, all want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer and the warring intensifies, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.

Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite story of the connection to be found in family and shared resistance.

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy (Ireland), published by Faber & Faber, 233 pgs (my review)

A full-bodied, remorseless, visceral deep dive into the maternal mind. It is ultimately a love story between Soldier, the mother, and Sailor, the son.

In her acclaimed new novel, Claire Kilroy creates an unforgettable heroine, whose fierce love for her young son clashes with the seismic change to her own identity.
As her marriage strains, and she struggles with questions of autonomy, creativity and the passing of time, an old friend makes a welcome return – but can he really offer her a lifeline to the woman she used to be?

River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (France/China), published by Duckworth, 352 pgs

Set in Shanghai in the 2000s, it’s a novel about reinvention. It’s original, it’s funny, and it’s sometimes heartbreaking as well.

A mesmerising reversal of the east–west immigrant narrative set against China’s economic boom, River East, River West is an exploration of race, identity and family, of capitalism’s false promise and private dreams.

Shanghai, 2007: feeling betrayed by her American mother’s engagement to their rich landlord Lu Fang, fourteen-year-old Alva begins plotting her escape. But the exclusive American School – a potential ticket out – is not what she imagined.

Qingdao, 1985: newlywed Lu Fang works as a lowly shipping clerk. Though he aspires to a bright future, he is one of many casualties of harsh political reforms. Then China opens up to foreigners and capital, and Lu Fang meets a woman who makes him question what he should settle for.

The 2024 Winners

The winner of both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non Fiction will be announced on June 13th, 2024.

I have only read one from the list, Claire Kilroy’s excellent Soldier, Sailor. I’m most interested in reading V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night and Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost and am reminded that a friend recommended her debut The Parisian back in 2019 (but you know, 700+ pages).

Have you read any of these from the shortlist? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.