Shy: A Novel | Max Porter | Book review | Faber & Faber

 

Ever since first reading Lanny by Max Porter, I have been in awe. That little book had so much power that after these four years, I still think of it as one of the best books I have ever read. I haven't taken my eye off Porter's work since, and I had been looking forward to his latest, Shy, ever since its publication was first announced.

But what can I say that I haven't said before? For the sake of literature, I will write my thoughts again: that Porter is brilliant, outrageously clever, creative and powerful. To me, he is one of the most vital and masterful contemporary writers.  

Like his other works, Shy is a short book of 122 pages. It is a snippet of a few hours in the life of a teenage boy: we are dropped into the plot sort of in medias res, but we know where we are from the first few pages. 'The night is huge and it hurts'. There, in summary, is the plot, but in Porter's case I always find it to be just one element on equal standing with so many others.

Reading Shy is like listening to a piece of music. The author has a sense of pace like that of a conductor, and the writing quickens and slows like waves cresting and falling. This is why I believe Shy, and the rest of Porter's oeuvre, is best enjoyed in one sitting – because like his other works, every word, thought and section is carefully placed. Some pages have to be turned fast. Others read and reread. Did I register that sentence or word? And if not for the sake of the plot, did I register just how brilliantly written it is? I know of no other writer who places this much emphasis on making sure nothing is accidental. Nothing, not a single word, is superfluous.

And the language! Please, allow me to quote this paragraph that stopped me in my tracks:

"He smells of pond. Everything smells of pond. He feels like he could sniff his way into individual microbes, earthy worming growgreen liquid stink, newts and shoots, silty, fruity, and as he walks he gathers in the smell of dry leaves, crinkly things, brown oily smells, good rot, herby hydro deep woodlousey sticky mushroomy smells, things turning, things that go on smelling this way whether or not a wet teenager is here to smell them. He is all sense. He isn't having any thoughts, he's all smell and shadows and ruined trainers, a frighteningly awake sleep creature sloshing along."

The musicality of the language throughout is amazing, and though the book reads at a pace like a stream of consciousness, when observed closely it feels too beautiful, too carefully placed for that. What's left out speaks as loudly as what's in. Scenes shift like dreams, reality mixes with imagination. Locations ripped from under our feet like a rug, feeling like a lucid dream. This is fiction at its absolute finest. 

Less so than in Lanny, but there is some boundary-pushing formatting in this too, and rather than disrupting the flow, it elevates it to a completely different level. It is unexpected, and it is brilliant. 

Because I'm already a convert, I find it hard to imagine what it is like, coming to Max Porter's work from the outside. Perhaps, like I was, you're suspicious, or confused, or unsure. I hope I didn't give the impression that his books are high-brow, or difficult to follow: quite the opposite. It is deceptively easy to read Porter's books, which is why I'll often read them more than once. Shy too is short, exciting, sorrowful, very readable; and once you've got that out of the way, it is a piece of art with layer after layer to be peeled back.

If you want my advice, it would be a mistake not to read Max Porter. 

Entangled Life: The Illustrated Edition | Merlin Sheldrake | Book Review | Bodley Head & Vintage

 

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

By his own admission, from a young age, Merlin Sheldrake’s superheroes ‘weren’t Marvel characters, they were lichens and fungi’ and from the incredible knowledge, research and insight that is reflected in Entangled Life, it is clear he isn’t just being dramatic.

The book was first published in 2020 in a traditional hardback format, and Sheldrake dazzled readers around the world. He revealed in fascinating detail the world of fungi, who wear so many hats that it would be almost impossible to name them all. They form the core of the ‘wood wide web’; they influence the weather; they can alter our minds; they even played a role in the decline of the Roman Empire we apparently like to think so much about. But it is the ever-present mycelium – the network of fungal threads underground – that steals the show, with just one teaspoonful of healthy soil potentially housing anywhere between 100 metres and 10 kilometres of these threads invisible to the naked eye. Sheldrake refers to mycelium, in turn, as ‘a body without a body plan’; ‘polyphony in bodily form’; ‘one of the first living networks’; and ‘a sticky living seam that holds soil together’.

Mushrooms and mycelium

There is a quality of joy in Sheldrake’s writing, turning phrases that sound like song, as when ‘trilobites ploughed silty seabeds using spade-like snouts.’ He is incredibly knowledgeable yet writes modestly, employing a casual throwing-in of almost inconceivable facts, such as ‘Globally, the total length of mycorrhizal hyphae [fungal branches, in crude terms] in the top ten centimetres of soil is around half the width of our galaxy’. Now read that again.

For those here to confirm their conspiracy theories after watching The Last of Us, stay tuned: various types of ‘zombie fungi’ do indeed exist, with some versions living within the bodies of insects, able to alter their hosts’ behaviour for their own benefit. ‘Once infected by the fungus,’ writes Sheldrake,

‘ants are stripped of their instinctive fear of heights . . . In due course the fungus forces the ant to clamp its jaws around the plant in a “death grip”. Mycelium grows from the ant’s feet and stitches them to the plant’s surface. The fungus then digests the ant’s body and sprouts a stalk out of its head . . .’

The text-only version of Entangled Life reads like a shock of pure electricity, giving insight into this most mysterious of organisms (and one must note the stunning cover design of the original hardback). Now, the illustrated edition, finished to an extremely high standard by Bodley Head, arrives to shelves just in time for Christmas and, although I’m not normally one to fall for sprayed edges or ‘special’ editions, I instantly fell in love with this. One hundred images add a whole new layer of enjoyment to this mind-blowing book, bringing all that rich detail to life in vivid colour. Fungi, lichens and mycelium glow on the pages, and their look is as surprising as their various abilities.

Sarcodes sanguinea

While one can see why the abridgement was necessary, it must be noted that this, in turn, is a somewhat different book from the original work. The images line up nicely with the content, but often we will have a line of thought per page, which makes the text lose some of its captivating narrative that wound its way through the unabridged version. This edition caters more to the casual reader: it is put-downable and pick-uppable at leisure, but is nevertheless a unique coffee table book (offensive as that label may be to this impressive work) that is actually worth reading. It is great to see a brilliant piece of non-fiction get this kind of royal treatment in a book world often biased towards fiction.

Seaweed Rising | Book Review | Rob Magnuson Smith | Sandstone Press

 

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

Seaweed Rising by Rob Magnuson Smith is the type of book where the mood and plot both creep up on the reader like the many wet fronds of the seaweed that play a central role in this deeply disturbing, captivating dystopia.

We meet Manfred, a fifty-something teacher on the gloomy beaches of a Cornish village, where mizzle and fog mingle with the smell of dry vegetation circled by flies, salt-air crust lingers on the tongue, and everyone wants to get away. The splash and suck of the sea is constant: ‘It was a sound both relaxing and frightening, like the sleep-inducing cacophony of a pumping heart.’ Here begins his obsession with phycology, after discovering a huge kelp on the shore and relocating it to a bathtub in his garden.

Importantly, from the very beginning, nobody’s point of view seems rational: not Manfred, not his colleagues, not even Nora, our second central character whom he meets at the local farmers’ market. She is selling edible seaweed, of course, and a fatal attraction is forged.

To say that Manfred is convinced that seaweeds are rising is a rather simplified explanation; the brilliance of the novel lies in the fact that we never fully comprehend what it is that we should fear – or not. For the most part, we don’t know whom to believe. The points of view shift between that of Manfred and Nora, one quickly disintegrating into an unreliable narrator while the other seems to hold the voice of reason for slightly longer. As the story unfolds, we delve deep into psychosis, obsession, compulsion and suicide, and the impulse is spreading. So could algae be to blame after all?

The strangely cold and detached relationships between characters are weighed against the collective experience as the novel explores questions surrounding the potential apocalypse, whether caused by sentient vegetation or not: should we bring new life into the world if it is doomed to fail? Would it be better for the planet if humans disappeared altogether? As the characters travel across the globe, from the UK to Spain and the Arctic, signs of our imminent downfall are everywhere: meth addicts and alcoholics pepper the city streets, and the corporates are pushing into the most pristine landscapes with drills.

When compared to the strategic aim of the seaweeds – that is, to become the dominating species – humanity seems destined to fail. But children are conceived; alliances forged where there were none to be found. Rossman’s agrarian imperative, which argues that some of us have a genetic need to provide for our fellow humans, keeps cropping up. Whether we care enough is the ultimate question that the novel poses, and it lingers bitterly on the tongue.

Although referring to a glacier, Smith could equally be writing about the very planet we walk: ‘It was as if they had become entranced by an edifice so massive and beautiful – and simultaneously dying.’ We stood by and watched it happen.

Consider the Oyster | M. F. K. Fisher | Foreword by Felicity Cloake | Book review | Daunt Books

 

My edition of Consider the Oyster by M. F. K. Fisher found me on an aimless stroll in Hove, when I came across Cookbookbake, an independent specialist cookbook shop (& demonstration kitchen!). It's a gem, focusing on all things food, so besides cookbooks, they sell food writing and travel writing (best when combined), food-themed knickknacks and gifty things. In other words, bookish foodie heaven.

M. F. K. Fisher's name was familiar from Felicity Cloake's writing (who happens to be my culinary muse since her perfect recipe for a French ratatouille), and she in fact wrote the foreword to this beautiful, shiny, iridescent edition from Daunt Books, which I obviously couldn't leave. And then we haven't even discussed that it considers the oyster.

The thing about reading American food writing from the 20th century, but even contemporary pieces, is there is a glorious admiration, suggestion of expertise (that needn't necessarily be there), and most of all, love, that makes all these books feel like a hug. (I'm especially thinking Julia Child here, but consider of course Anthony Bourdain or even Stanley Tucci.) Could it be that, especially because most foods in US supermarkets are over-processed, over-sugared and mono-flavoured, American foodies assign a dreamy quality to all things proper food in their books? I live in the UK, where things are slightly better with the occasional farmer's market offering beautiful bounty, but where generally the ready-meal dominates, and even I can relate to this pedestal-placing of all things good food.

This collection of essays considers everything from oyster eating (and drinking) etiquette; the life of an oyster; anecdotes and remembered snippets of childhood. Much like her essay on oyster loafs that her mother used to eat at 'midnight feasts' at boarding school ('Those Were Happy Days'), reading Fisher's words, one feels as if these were one's own memories. 'There are stories that in their telling spread about them a feeling of the Golden Age,' she writes, 'so that when you listen you forget all but the warmth and incredible excitement of those other farther times'. And so, although I've never eaten a 'steaming buttery creamy oyster stew' with crackers in wintertime, those mellow flavours linger on my tongue as if I grew up with Fisher in California, and not landlocked Hungary, where oysters were more likely to be a metaphor than actual shellfish. 

Another nostalgia-infused essay, A Lusty Bit of Nourishment, touches on the restaurant to eat Oysters Rockefeller, Antoine's in New Orleans, and the 'inescapable charm of that simple, almost austere room, with mirrors for walls; with the blue gas lamps flickering through all the evening' where 'Huitres en Coquilles a la Rockefeller appear magically, prepared with loving patience for each eager diner as if he were the first and only gastronome' and may I just say, Anotine's still exists and is still serving Rockefellers and is now on my bucket list.

Look at that shine

Perhaps my favourite piece, My Country, 'Tis of Thee, amuses by looking at the various drinks we should or could have with oysters. Pouilly-Fuissé? Guiness? Whiskey? (Absolutely not whiskey, according to Fisher.) But 'Whether they were correctly drunk or not, I was.'

The book does contain recipes, and Daunt have kindly included a conversion table for British readers, and an index for recipes (which, if I may voice a complaint, was seriously needed in Taste by Stanley Tucci), but I don't see myself cooking up an oyster gumbo requiring two dozen (!) of these friendly bivalves, nor taking '300 clean oysters and throw into a pot filled with nice butter . . . ' as a quoted old recipe instructs – as much as I would love to.

Look, I could quote the entire book, because there is a lyrical quality to Fisher's writing that makes a simple supper of bread with sweet butter sound exquisite, and the whaft of oysters simmered in a white sauce reaches me through the pages. Her love of food, knack for writing, experience and indulgence makes this a delightful read, and especially if you like oysters. Note:

'The flavour of an oyster depends upon several things. First, if it is fresh and sweet and healthy it will taste good, quite simply . . . good, that is, if the taster likes oysters . . . Myself, since I was seventeen I have expected all oysters to be delicious, and with few exceptions they have been.'