I couldn't let the A level season pass without mention of an extraordinary book that Celia studied for her English. Gone are the days of a fiction syllabus defined by George Eliot and Jane Austen; instead, bring on the contemporary fiction..... and they don't get much more contemporary, or hard hitting, than Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor which was published in 2010. It is a remarkable book, written in a fractured, dislocated style (which takes some getting used to) from which the stories of a collection of homeless people emerge and from which we see how deprivation and addiction create a social underclass. In this world, in a nameless British city, sex, alcohol and drugs distort relationships and addictions fill barren lives. Despite this, in its way this novel is a thing of beauty and there are some memorable passages. Vivid characterisation, from Falklands veteran to teenage smack addict, makes this an entirely believable and engaging novel.
Rather startlingly, we saw Even The Dogs played out on the streets of California this summer. The sheer number of homeless in Los Angeles and San Francisco was startling - all ages, both sexes and clearly many were addicts. It was sobering to realise that the US veterans problem is obviously not a media or political fabrication.
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Another good read by Jon Mcgregor is If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things.Having Abandoned The Savage Detective I have fallen back on the familiar and exquisitely beautiful writing of Toni Morrison and just finished Love. Written in 2003 and at just over 200 pages it made me realise why she won the Nobel Prize for Literature and is writing Professor at Princeton.Set in 1990s East Coast America, it explores what happens when young women are deprived of parental love and guidance with wonderfully colourful characters and poignant story lines.
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