BOOKS | REVIEWS
MEMOIR KERRY HUDSON Lowborn (Chatto & Windus) ●●●●●
Deceptively easy to read, Kerry Hudson’s unflinching memoir takes us through some of the author’s most traumatic moments with a firm but gentle hand. The prize- winning novelist gives us a glimpse into a working-class childhood fragmented by upheaval and dislocation, but perhaps the most distressing thing about it is the fact
that it’s not an isolated story.
Lowborn is a book about people crushed on the edges of society, surviving despite the daily, grinding pressures of poverty and desperation. Or not, as the case may be. Or surviving and not thriving, which is even more commonplace for individuals facing socio-economic deprivation. Hudson has constructed a life for herself that’s very different to the one that may have been expected. While there are personal attributes that helped her on the way, there are also other, less tangible factors which allowed her to assume a life which that upbringing didn’t exactly equip her for.
There’s an easy assumption that the very fact the author ‘passes’ as middle-class suggests her childhood in poverty can’t have been all that bad after all. But Hudson is a tiny dot of data in a huge statistical swathe of evidence that suggests transcendence is an unlikely option. As food banks proliferate and funded support shrinks, Hudson’s memoir draws our attention to all of the stories that slip through the cracks in a thoroughly personal and captivating way. (Lynsey May) ■ Out Thu 16 May.
SHORT STORIES ALEXANDER TROCCHI The Holy Man and Other Stories (Calder Publications) ●●●●●
As an integral part of the European avant-garde literary scene of the 50s and 60s, Glasgow-born Alexander Trocchi’s work may have been dubbed by Hugh MacDiarmid as ‘metropolitan scum’, but his posthumous career (he died in 1984) has blossomed delightfully. The Holy Man and Other Stories, written in the late 50s but unpublished as a standalone collection until now, features four tales, ‘A Being of Distances’, ‘Peter Pierce’, ‘A Meeting’ and the eponymous story.
A quartet strung together by loneliness, death and alienation, they feature people on the outermost margins of society (such as a one-eyed hawker whose cocoa-making skills are negligible and a mystery man isolating himself in a darkened hotel room for years) or those who ultimately failed to make something of themselves. So, in ‘A Being of Distances’, we meet a man who has ostensibly been outcast for not continuing in his family’s business, while in ‘A Meeting’ the grinding tedium of lifelong office work is heightened by the intolerable summer heat, insects landing on the paperwork, and ‘the endless paper clips’.
While some of the topics and language are firmly
rooted in another century, the timeless existential malaise at the heart of the foursome’s key characters will easily resonate with a contemporary audience. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Out now.
69 THE LIST 1 Apr–31 May 2019
MUSIC BIOGRAPHY JON SAVAGE The Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division – The Oral History (Faber) ●●●●●
When does a compilation of offcut interviews – many of which have already been used in other media – become a vibrant, worthwhile book possibly destined to be a classic in its own right? When it has the immortal subject matter and perfect chronicler found in Joy Division: The Oral History. From our place in 2019, it’s fair to say Joy Division have stood the test of time both as composers of enduring music, and as an evocation of their time and place in post-industrial Manchester and Cold War Europe.
Music writer Jon Savage, meanwhile, is known for his works on music in an anthropological context, including 1991’s punk opus England’s Dreaming and 2015’s 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded. He also has a close affiliation with the Joy Division story; he provided the foreword for Ian Curtis’ widow Deborah’s biography Touching From a Distance and wrote Grant Gee’s comprehensive 2007 documentary. The bulk of the interviews here were taken from that project, as well as Savage’s past books and articles, and some fresh conversations.
There’s an intensity and a sense of detail to the lack of authorial moderation in the words of the band (including Curtis, very briefly), and in the wider memories of the Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley, journalist Paul Morley and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, a breadth of context which brings Joy Division’s time and place to life. (David Pollock) ■ Out Thu 4 Apr.
MYSTERY DRAMA JESS KIDD Things in Jars (Canongate) ●●●●●
The wild and wonderful imagination of Jess Kidd ensures that no story from her pen will be staid. Her latest – Things in Jars, a Victorian mystery crammed with curiosities and exoticisms – may in some ways be very different to Kidd’s earlier books (Himself and The Hoarder), but they are linked by a delight in the fantastical. That said, our hero, detective Bridie Devine, has
no truck with the supernatural, even when it’s flexing its muscles and showing off its tattoos right in front of her. And she is right to be circumspect, because if there’s one lesson we’re left with, it’s that an excess of curiosity (both of the rubbernecking and sanctified scientific kind) is likely to lead to calamity. Bridie is hired to find kidnapped child Christabel Berwick and the case is as creepy and unsettling as could be from the very start. There are hushed hints and secrets surrounding the girl, who was not seen by a soul even before her disappearance. There are tragedies old and new woven throughout the search. Not only is a child’s life in peril, Bridie’s past rears up and threatens to throw the investigation off track.
Gilded with humour, even the darkest moments have a shine to them and there’s always a new chimerical twist to the tale. As with Kidd’s previous works, Things in Jars is hard to classify; and that’s one of the things that’s so delightful about it. (Lynsey May) ■ Out Thu 4 Apr.