BOOKS | REVIEWS

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A L E J A N D R A L O Ã Å P E Z

SHORT STORIES SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN Mouthful of Birds (Oneworld) ●●●●●

Such was the unrelenting dread of the Man Booker International shortlisted Fever Dream, some readers may be somewhat reticent to pick up another of Samanta Schweblin’s works. Despite and because of its flowering foreboding, that 2017 publication seems near impossible to follow. Perhaps it’s shrewd, then, to skip back and start with the Argentine’s short story

collection Mouthful of Birds, which was written in 2010 but only just translated from the original Spanish by Megan McDowell (a quality Kitemark for translated fiction).

These fabulist half-light tales leave some elements tantalisingly unsaid or off-page, but are sharpened through her technique and clarity of prose. While their terrain feels otherworldly, it is all formed from domestic everyday stresses and relationships spun into off-kilter dreamscapes: a married couple desire to have a child just a little too much; a daughter is considered to be as fragile as a butterfly, when the greatest danger is her father’s protective fist closing in around her.

Like dreams, these 20 tales are all-too ripe for deconstruction. Some seem transparent in their meaning, others are opaque puzzles. But original intent can be inconsequential. Upon publication, meaning is remanded to the custody of readers. Schweblin is among the many Latin American writers currently pushing boundaries (in 2010, Granta chose her as one of the top authors under the age of 35 writing in Spanish). While these earlier stories nod to magical realist masters, such as her compatriot Borges, the writing feels challenging and contemporary and is fresh meat for the English language reader. (Alan Bett) Out now.

DYSTOPIAN FICTION KAREN THOMPSON WALKER The Dreamers (Simon & Schuster) ●●●●●

MEMOIR CATHERINE SIMPSON When I Had a Little Sister (4th Estate) ●●●●● POETRY NADINE AISHA JASSAT Let Me Tell You This (404 INK) ●●●●●

When a mysterious sleeping virus takes over the fictional Californian college town of Santa Lora, the area is put under a cordone sanitaire. Separated from the rest of the world, those who are still awake find themselves in a living nightmare. The Dreamers is Karen Thompson Walker’s sophomore effort after her critically acclaimed debut The Age of Miracles, once more exploring dystopian themes.

A large ensemble cast, from young girls living with a conspiracist father to a psychiatrist investigating the sickness, are shown struggling to cope. As the virus spreads through the air, interesting questions are raised about Western society’s rigid concepts of time and reality, and the value of different lives.

Overall, the novel is highly imaginative and engrossing with a subtle slew of informed references from various aspects of academia. Walker’s writing is luminous throughout and it’s this technical skill that pushes the events with an energy that makes up for the lack of distinct narrative voice. The haphazard structure and sheer volume of characters overbear the plot, with individuals not given the chance to fully form, while others appear briefly, with assumed significance, never to appear again. A resolution seems palpable throughout, but when the end does come, we find more questions and uncertainty in its stead. (Katharine Gemmell) Out now.

56 THE LIST 1 Feb–31 Mar 2019

In December 2013, Catherine Simpson received the phone call she had long been dreading: her sister had taken her own life. For years Tricia suffered from depression and paranoia, leaving her increasingly alienated from her family and the outside world. When her diaries were discovered later, a tantalising glimpse of her voice appears. It took Simpson years to be able to face reading them and search for the cause of her sister’s pain. The result of Edinburgh-based author Simpson’s

agonising inquiry is this memoir, a deep dive into the repercussions of her family’s inability to meaningfully communicate with one another. Simpson reconstructs a complicated portrait of the past with tenderness and unsparing detail, one in which their domineering mother looms large. This eye for detail does at times threaten to derail the narrative, as she veers off into anecdotes about pets, ancestors and holidays that sometimes feel tangential. Yet her impulse to immortalise such memories is understandable, especially when it becomes clear that for Simpson, forgetting means losing a piece of her sister again. In its excavation of the past, When I Had a Little Sister is both an act of personal catharsis and an important rejection of the silence that still surrounds mental illness today. (Deborah Chu) Out Thu 7 Feb.

Nadine Aisha Jassat’s Let Me Tell You This is a debut collection that marks a brilliant addition to Scotland’s poetry landscape. Born in the UK, Jassat is of mixed heritage with roots stretching from Zimbabwe to India. Styled as a self-reflective lyrical peregrination of sorts, the poet cultivates the wild glee of wanderlust, unlocking hidden dimensions of identity that elude immediate perception. As the boldness of the title suggests, a

reclamation of the right to speak burns urgently at its core. In this way, the lyric ‘I’ acting with authority to articulate, becomes a symbolically charged terrain in its own right, gesturing beyond its graphic bounds to wider gender and racial struggles. The book negotiates a poetics of escape from reductive assumptions surrounding race and gender, and from the pre-written narratives society relentlessly seeks to impose. The task gains delightful texture in the poem, ‘Threads’, which begins ‘Gathering frayed ends [ . . . ] Trying to use my words like stitches’. A musicality sings from the pages as does a playful fondness for rhyme, crafting a charming intertextual cohesion. The debut offers a fine display of ‘how to make something beautiful / something useful, from tangled yarn / and threads’, embracing rather than seeking to conceal the chaos and contradiction of identity with all its loose, unruly strands. (Jade Cuttle) Out Thu 7 Mar.