The Blade Artist

The Blade Artist

by Irvine Welsh
Published April 2016.

I've been a quiet fan of Irvine Welsh for years - quiet in that I tend to forget about him completely for years, only to randomly stumble across one of his books and remember just how much I enjoy his writing. The Blade Artist is quite possibly his best one yet.

Irvine Welsh has an undoubtedly unique voice and a way of bringing Edinburgh's seedy underbelly to life in all its dark, gritty glory. The Scottish accent is thick throughout (every now and then you need to read a sentence out loud to figure out exactly what it says) and the atmosphere brilliantly expressed. It's like the Scottish equivalent of what Marlon James does so well in A Brief History of Seven Killings - both authors can take a time and place that I know absolutely nothing about, but somehow make it feel very real and even a little familiar.

 What's unique about The Blade Artist is the somewhat jarring juxtaposition of the rough neighbourhoods of Edinburgh against the much softer (and arguably less interesting) privileged lifestyle of main character Jim Francis, an acclaimed artist living a quiet family life near a Californian beach. Successful, comfortable and apparently quite content, Jim has turned his life around, leaving behind a jailbird past to become a redeemed character far from his home town of Edinburgh.
A sudden death in the family sees Jim back in his old neighbourhood and he is quickly pulled back into the same old social circles and the same patterns of drunken violence.

Like the best of Irvine Welsh's novel, The Blade Artist is funny and dirty and dark in parts. It's fast-moving, graphically violent and action-packed with never a dull moment. It's jam-packed with vivid, memorable characters, many of whom are making return visits from earlier novels - to enjoy The Blade Artist, you certainly don't need to have read Trainspotting, but there are some beautiful little gems in there for readers who loved the earlier book and wondered what became of the characters...

Where are they now..? Wouldn't you like to know...

The Blade Artist proposes that even the most irredeemably violent and horrid of characters can be saved. But then it turns this idea completely on its head - has Jim Francis really changed? Is a talent for art and an overseas move enough to change a person from bad to good, or has he just gotten better at hiding his real nature? In trying to prove that he's changed, is Jim only fooling himself? Considering that the story is largely told from Jim's point of view, Irvine Welsh does a beautiful job of keeping these questions up in the air throughout the book; Jim's character seems constantly in flux and this grey-area mentality is seen in many of the other characters too. Most of the people in The Blade Artist are neither good nor bad; they're people who've done terrible things but they're more than just the drugs they've taken or the fights they've started. These are fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional characters and they bring some real weight to what could otherwise be a fairly simple story of murder and revenge.

The Blade Artist starts with this quote from Camus - could not be more appropriate, really.

I knew nothing about this book before I read it, so I don't want to say too much and ruin the fun for anyone else. Don't worry about the plot of The Blade Artist or where you've seen these characters before - just get yourself a copy as soon as possible (it's available from the 7th of April) and read it. I promise you'll love it.

10/10

The Passenger

The Passenger
by Lisa Lutz
Published March, 2016

Sometimes, a good book can tear out your heart and leave you in tears. Sometimes it can make you think about social issues from a completely new perspective. Sometimes it will even leave you pondering the very meaning of life. And then there are the books that don't do any of these things, but are fabulous nonetheless because they are just such fun. A fast-paced ride from start to finish, The Passenger is one of these books.

In the opening pages of The Passenger, Tanya Dubois has been freshly widowed, husband Frank having taken an accidental tumble down the stairs. While apparently blameless in Frank's death: "In case you were wondering, I didn't do it. I didn't have anything to do with Frank's death. I don't have an alibi, so you're going to have to take my word for it", Tanya is not at all keen to stick around and instead, she flees the scene. Within forty-eight hours, she's assumed a new look, new name and new identity - but it's not so simple to get away and she's pursued across the country by mysterious figures from a mysterious past.

Presumably, Tanya's disguise was very convincing. Much like this. 

The Passenger starts with a bang and just keeps going from there at break-neck speed - it's perfectly paced so that just when you're about ready to put the book down for the night, something else happens and you just need to read a bit more. It's like the book version of a fantastic-if-slightly-trashy TV series that you can't stop binge-watching.
The book is certainly not perfect (the supporting characters are a little flat and there are a few plot holes that are never really explained), you don't really notice any of the flaws because you're so caught up in the story itself to concern yourself with minor details.

Narrated by Tanya, The Passenger carries a wry note of dark humour, right from the first sentence: "When I found my husband at the bottom of the stairs, I tried to resuscitate him before I ever considered disposing of his body. I pumped his barrel chest and blew into his purple lips. It was the first time in years that our lips had touched and I didn't recoil". While the other characters in The Passenger are arguably a  bit thinly drawn, Tanya herself is given a unique voice, her character well developed throughout the book as we learn more about her past and better understand her motivations. There are an awful lot of half-decent suspense novels out there with similar stories, but one of the things that sets The Passenger apart is this wonderful, humorous tone - it's a book that doesn't take itself too seriously, which just makes it even more fun. 

Entertaining, well-written and perfectly paced, The Passenger is a great ride.

8/10

Everyone Brave is Forgiven

Everyone Brave is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave
(21st April, 2016)

    

Having enjoyed a couple of Chris Cleave's books in the past, I was pretty damn excited to get a copy of Everyone Brave is Forgiven and expectations were fairly high. Suffice to say, I was not at all disappointed.

Both Incendiary and Little Bee (there's another one called Gold that I have yet to read but assume is equally good) were unique, absorbing and well-written; good, solid reads that I would highly recommend. Everyone Brave is Forgiven though - it's something else altogether. Where Chris Cleave's previous books were good, this one is an absolute masterpiece.

Starting on the first day of World War II, Everyone Brave is Forgiven follows the stories of three unique Londoners. Socialite Mary leaves Finishing School to sign up for the war effort: "War was declared at eleven-fifteen and Mary North signed up at noon". Young, spirited and opinionated, Mary is assigned to work as a schoolteacher to children rejected for relocation to the countryside because of physical disability, intellectual impairment or unsuitable skin colour. 

Education administrator Tom chooses not to enlist, but is distraught when his best friend Alistair signs up and leaves for war. 

All three (along with a sizable cast of distinctive supporting characters) are fabulously written, three-dimensional characters and seeing wartime events through their eyes puts a whole new spin on an already well-documented story.

Chris Cleave writes beautifully. There are so many perfectly crafted sentences in Everyone Brave is Forgiven that I've ended up highlighting half of the book. It feels as if every single sentence in this book has been carefully re-written until it's perfect - there's not a dud note to be found. There are these wonderfully novel similes, like: "She hated being eighteen. The insights and indignations burned through one's good sense like hot coals through oven gloves" or "He held his rifle slightly away from his body when they marched, the way one might carry a child that had wet itself" or "You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs".

The author also has this wonderful talent for creating beautiful little scenes, small moments in time that are so very vivid - "He scissored his skinny brown legs over the top of the gate, using the penultimate and the ultimate wrought-iron O's of LONDON ZOO as the hoops of a pommel horse, and was immediately lost to sight". The imagery throughout Everyone Brave is Forgiven is like nothing I've ever read before. It's absolutely stunning. 

Evacuee children leaving London for the countryside, World War II

It could be argued that we tend to look back on the Allies of World War II with slightly rose-tinted glasses - history is told by the victors, after all. It's easy to demonise the German forces and see the English as some kind of enlightened warriors for freedom and equality, but Everyone Brave is Forgiven provides a vivid reminder that all was not idyllic in British society at this time either - at least, not for everyone. One of the strongest supporting characters in the book is one of Mary's students. Presumably dyslexic and with a penchant for running away, Zachary is also "coloured". And that's the nicest word that's used about him. The casual racism demonstrated by almost every character in the book is all the more jarring because these are not awful people - this is just a time and place where black people are seen very, very differently to today and black-and-white minstrel shows are the height of hilarity. The way in which Zachary is treated because of his skin colour; well, it may not be quite like Nazi Germany, but it's heart-breaking nonetheless. Things aren't much better for the "cripples" of Mary's class: "They had wheeled him inn to the village hall where the evacuees were being chosen. He had waited all night. No one had wanted a polio boy, twelve years old and pimpled. They had not wanted him in the next village either, and finally his mother had gone out to bring him home".     

This unflinching honesty recurs throughout the book - the characters are imperfect but wonderfully believable. Their motivations are often admirable, but more often pragmatic or even self-serving. The repercussions of war are seen in all their gory detail; there's no shying away from unpleasantness or pulling punches. It all feels very real. 

I don't want to say too much about the storyline for fear of ruining any surprises, but Everyone Brave is Forgiven is moving, compelling and unique. Without a doubt, this is the best book I've read this year.

Apparently, Everyone Brave is Forgiven is loosely based on the stories of Chris Cleave's own grandparents. I cannot imagine a lovelier tribute than this absolutely beautiful book. 

10/10

Out of the Ice

Out of the Ice (2016)
by Ann Turner

So, I received an advance copy of this book (it'll be properly released in June 2016) in exchange for an honest review. While this was terribly exciting, it also left me a little conflicted... To be honest, I don't really do book reviews. I just do recommendations for books that I like. After the first chapter of Out of the Ice, I was starting to wonder whether it would be ok to change my blog's title to Fifty Good Books... and One Painfully Mediocre One.
However, if you happen to be reading Out of the Ice and find yourself tempted to give up on it; just keep going. After a few chapters, the uninspired writing resolves itself into something kind of interesting. By half way, you'll be finding it quite difficult to put down. By the three-quarter mark, you may well find that you're still awake at 1am because you simply must finish this book. Possibly that's just me. But if you're looking for a genuinely enjoyable page-turner, Out of the Ice is well worth a go.

Out of the Ice is largely set on a tiny Antarctic island, where environmental scientist Laura Alvarado has been sent to check out an historic, long-abandoned whaling settlement, to assess the potential environmental  impact of opening up the township to visitors (it's been an exclusion zone for decades, to protect the unique local wildlife). Dedicated to the protection of whales, Laura is fairly unsettled by her time in the whaling village, where there are plenty of reminders of its nasty past - abandoned butchery sheds, giant barrels for boiling blubber, even whale skeletons on the beach. On top of that, the penguins and seals in the area are behaving very strangely and the scientists stationed at the nearby base are acting like a weirdly secretive boys' club. When Laura starts to find signs of habitation in the long-abandoned township, she can't be sure whether she's stumbled onto something terrible, or whether she's starting to lose touch with reality after so long in Antarctica. As things get weirder, the suspense builds towards a satisfyingly explosive ending.

A real-life abandoned whaling station, complete with creepy whale-slaughtering machinery

There's a piece of advice often given to aspiring authors, that you should always "show, not tell". A great author doesn't talk you through a character's back story - it should be more subtle than that. Instead they drop little details throughout the text so that information reveals itself over time. In the first chapter of Out of the Ice, Ann Turner does far too much telling. For example, Laura's friend Kate is "A lanky 185 centimetres tall, thirty-three years old, she was pale skinned and freckled, with a shock of unruly red hair that shimmered in the sun". Why step in as the author to tell us directly what she looks like? Why not let this reveal itself through conversations between Laura and Kate, or observations made by other characters? The author then spends far too long dwelling on Laura's past relationships, her family, her job placement... It's all just a bit unpolished and clunky.
I know this is a bit picky. There are many, many authors (Lee Child and Nelson DeMille spring to mind) who write equally awkward passages and are still hugely successful because they are so good at writing a good page-turner. The reason I found this particularly frustrating in Out of the Ice is that it's so close to be much more than another likable page-turner .

Adelie penguins are pretty awesome, as it turns out.

Out of the Ice has a fabulously unique setting in Antarctica. There are penguins and seals and whales. There are snowstorms and high-tech science labs and this fantastic whaling village, apparently abandoned overnight and preserved in 1963 forever more. It's inventive and different - it's a great place to start a story. Ann Turner is also very, very good at describing these surreal scenes : "Icebergs studding the bay shone blue and white, with deep green shadows. Adelies huddled at the edges peered nervously into the sea - then the group jittered and pushed one lone penguin into the water. Checking to see it hadn't been eaten by a leopard seal, the rest followed in a fluid movement" . These passages really set Out of the Ice apart as something a little different, which is very cool.

There are plenty of surprises, a healthy dose of suspense and some genuinely lovely writing in Out of the Ice. It's a solid, extremely readable thriller - a very good book that was almost a great one.

7/10  

Delicious Foods

Delicious Foods (2015)
by James Hannaham

So, it's been a REALLY long time since I last posted anything on here, but it seems apt to start back with a bang, much like Delicious Foods itself.

In the first few pages of Delicious Foods, we meet Eddie. It's an introduction with some impact: "After escaping from the farm, Eddie drove through the night. Sometimes he thought he could feel the phantom fingers brushing against his thighs, but above the wrists he now had nothing. Dark stains covered the terry cloth wrapped around the ends of his wrists; his mother had stanched the bleeding with rubber cables". It's certainly enough to get you paying attention right from the first sentence, and Delicious Foods never really lets up until the very last pages, where we finally learn what happened to Eddie's hands.

Delicious Foods tells the story of Eddie and his mother Darlene. Following the death of her much-loved husband, Darlene has developed something of a drug addiction. By the time Eddie is eleven years old, his mother is working as a prostitute to fund a pretty intense crack cocaine habit. One night out working, Darlene is lured away with promises of a good job on a farm with a steady income and a ready supply of crack. She ends up working for a company called Delicious Foods and it would be fair to say that life on the farm isn't quite so rosy as she might have expected. This leaves eleven-year-old Eddie alone in the city, on a panicked search for his mother, despite very little apparent interest from anyone else.  

Darlene is a woman at the bottom of the heap. She's fallen from lofty heights - once a university-educated mother of one, married to the love of her life (dreamy and intellectual activist, Nat) and co-owner of a successful business, Darlene's worldview is utterly shattered when Nat's political views get him killed. When we first meet Darlene, she is a living embodiment of the "crack whore" cliche - toothless, stumbling, taunted but apparently oblivious to her own situation, singing and smiling vacantly. She's the type of character normally presented as a figure of ridicule and distaste, but James Hannahan handles it much more subtly than this, Darlene is damaged and sad, but she's also somehow relatable and - despite her many poor decisions - likeable. When Darlene is behaving ridiculously while under the influence of her drug, you're embarrassed for her as a reader, but you also understand what she's thinking. It's a testament to the author's considerable talent that he can get a reader to identify with a hopelessly broken drug addict.
Darlene also provides a unique perspective on race relations in America as she first finds joy and acceptance at her progressive and enlightened university, only to come face-to-face with a much harsher reality when Nat is killed. Later she experiences a kind of modern-day slavery on the farm (as well as being constantly enslaved to her drugs) and her heartbroken attitude towards her own situation makes it truly affecting.

The narrator for most of the book is "Scotty". Tough, charming and charismatic, Scotty is crack cocaine. No, literally. The majority of this book is narrated on behalf of Darlene by her one true love, crack. Obviously this is a pretty ambitious move and could have misfired horribly, but again James Hannahan handles it with such talent and class that it is never gimmicky or silly. It just feels right, and it gives even more insight into the hold that the drugs have over Darlene - Scotty is always there for Darlene. Scotty loves her and accepts her when nobody else will. Scotty never judges. As Scotty himself says, "Not to be egotistical or nothing, but I am irresistible". It's a truly unique perspective and it's masterfully handled.

Author James Hannahan - this man is an absolute genius.

The Delicious Foods farm is deeply creepy - not least because places like this really do exist. Lured to rural Louisiana with promises of good honest work for good honest pay (and plenty of drugs on the side), the workers are instead charged exorbitant fees for transport, accommodation and drugs so that they fall deeper into debt daily, their meager wages failing to make a dent in the enormous amounts they owe to their employers.  The workers tell themselves it's not slavery because they're getting paid, but the threats, beatings and generally awful work conditions tell a different story. A quick google search will give you plenty of real-life examples of this - James Hannahan apparently based Delicious Foods on the somewhat unusual case of the Bulls-Hit Ranch in Florida (Google it, it's pretty disturbing) but there are countless other examples of this treatment happening around the world, largely to illegal immigrants who feel that they have no other options. According to the International Labour Union, at least 12.3 million people are currently victims of forced labour. Clearly modern-day slavery is alive and well, and Delicious Foods paints a chillingly convincing picture of just how easy it could be to fall into such an awful situation.

This actually happened. Pretty horrifying, right?

Delicious Foods is dark and upsetting. Amongst other things, it explores themes of racism, drug addiction, parental neglect, workplace abuse, prostitution, kidnapping, assault and murder. And yet, at it's heart Delicious Foods is a hopeful book. It's about the terrible things people can do to each other, but also the wonderful things people can do for each other. It's about forgiveness and optimism and redemption. More than anything else, it's a story about love - yes, part of that is Darlene's self-destructive love for Scotty, but a larger part is the love that Eddie has for his mother and the once-upon-a-time love between Darlene and Nat. There are moments of sweetness and light; there are even moments of real humour, and while there's no happy-ever-after ending, Delicious Foods leaves you with the feeling that maybe - just maybe - everything might turn out ok.

Delicious Foods has received plenty of well-deserved recognition and appeared on plenty of must-read lists for 2015 (New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher's Weekly all featured it on their best-books-of-2015 lists), so chances are that you've already read this book. If not, you're really missing out - read this book immediately!

10/10