"Full House" by M J Farrell (Molly Keane)

This novel is set in a country house in Ireland. The household is dominated by Olivia, Lady Bird, a matriarch who bullies the servants (particularly poor ineffectual Miss Parker the governess) unmercifully, holding over them the ultimate power of unemployment, and bullies her children; her husband, Julian adores her (despite the fact that we are told in the second chapter that she had "entanglements" due to her "promiscuous generosity" early in their marriage) and spinelessly puts her and her interests first, even before his children. The children respond by hating her. John, the eldest (whom she still refers to as 'Boy'), is returning to the house after being treated for a nervous breakdown; Sheena the daughter copes though subterfuge and defiance, Markie the little boy shows disturbing symptoms: he calls his mother a “silly bitch” (all three refer to their parents as Olivia and Julian rather than mum or dad), he kicks his pet dog and shows a bloodthirsty interest in hunting and fishing. 

The monstrousness of Olivia's behaviour has made this family dysfunctional. They all seem mad; John's behaviour is the least of the problems. Nevertheless, the plot rests on the assumption that the madness in the family resides in Julian's genes (he had a mad ancestor) so when Sheena proposes to marry Rupert (who also had a mad forebear) the young people themselves accept that any children they might have are almost certain to be mad. The resolution of this quandary doesn't seem to solve the problem.

The love affair of Rupert and Sheena is the principal plot, a classic comedy (in the sense that two lovers are kept apart by opposing forces and yet reconciled at the end); the sub-plot of the adventures of Miss Parker never actually goes anywhere and we are forced to conclude that Miss P is herself to blame for being subservient and bullied because she is too weak to stand up for herself, a conclusion which left a rather unpleasant taste in my mouth, since the reader had been led to pity Miss P, to no avail.

It's not much of a plot (the problem is that when you write a story about bored people it can easily become boring) though it is well paced with significant turning points at the 25%, 50% and 75% marks and a classic peripeteia (a twist which is unexpected and yet which has been well-signalled) in the last 10%.

The characters, though more caricatures than nuanced, are beautifully drawn. MJF is also brilliant at description, often milking the pathetic fallacy:

• “A double, twining staircase of lovely swinging curves - two airy curves perfectly resolved in wood. A romantic staircase, perpetually pleasing.” (Ch 3)
• “All the sofas that had been superseded in other parts of the house seemed to have gathered themselves here in ungainly hordes.” (Ch 4)
• “The sun was gone. The lake was the colour of a grey boat and the colour of the last primroses and the colour of moonlight. And the sky was grey. There was no bright sun to make the water dance and glitter offensively. But whenever they lifted their heads to the mountains those heights were changed a little, for the light was not dead.” (Ch 18)
• “It had a disheartening effect upon her, this lovely gateway, for it was sad as many gateways are. The curves of its walls were melancholy and the perpetual damp of the climate had greened each separate fluting of the four cut-stone pillars.” (Ch 22)
• “The sky arched pale and tremendous over the sea, and the headlands and the mountains were as dark in the evening as the red fuschias.” (Ch 27)

It is written in the 3rd person  omniscient and the past tense and the style uses short pithy statements, often splitting up longer sentences in favour of sentence fragments, thus: “Sheena had learnt to accept Julian's attitude of defence towards Olivia. His standing between her and her own idiocies and between her and their children's unkindness. It was no good questioning it. There it was. And one could often work round Julian and get the inside turn of Olivia. So long as he knew she suspected no conspiracy or understanding between any of them against her. But he would sacrifice any of them or any of their schemes rather than hurt her. For he loved her best. They all knew this.” (Ch 6)

But what let it down was the tendency to interject exposition. The omniscient narrator is forever commenting upon what has just happened. There is a moment of action or dialogue, and then MJF tells her readers what to think. It is as if she doesn't trust her readers to infer what has just happened, she has to make it clear. For example: “Rupert depended on his own power too much. He was not particularly vain but it did not occur to him that he could lose Sheena like this, or ever. He kissed her, and because she responded defenselessly with virginal ardour he thought all argument was over. There were no words or reasons left against such love as this. This was not an older love such as understands itself, keeping its rules and knowing its own brief limitations, knowing how purely incidental its kisses are, knowing how time love changes love and asking no imperative question of the future hour. Such love as they had was not schooled at all by accepted experience. They knew of no great lovers but themselves. Love was theirs alone for they had found it and the very meaning of these embracing lay in their belief that such happiness can be changeless.” (Ch 18) This is not character thought because the whole point is for the narrator to point out that Rupert and Sheena are making a mistake due to their inexperience. This comment accompanies a delightful section of dialogue between the two which is full of illogicalities and inconsistencies. Nevertheless, MJF has to tell, rather than show. She particularly uses exposition to create character, for example:

• “The inconsequence and the obviousness of all her posturings and nonsense. How could she blind herself to the fact that they could not deceive her reasonably intelligent and spiteful offspring? They did not even see the shadow of her pretended self, only her pretences.” (Ch 4)
• “Why was Rupert romantic? Partly because he looked romantic, which really meant nothing at all. Partly because he did dangerous and skillful things well. But neither of these given things imply romance. Romance is a quality some people have the power of keeping within themselves. A power to be alone and secret. Rupert had this and with it he had a great simplicity of spirit.” (Ch 11)

 I compared MJF with Ivy Compton-Burnett who also wrote books about domestic tyranny, such as A House and Its Head. The settings - a large house whose inhabitants have no need to work but live lives of meaningless leisure - are more or less identical. But ICB employs dialogue as her principal method of getting the reader to penetrate and understand the characters, a technique that requires a lot of the reader. M J Farrell's primary technique is that of exposition; she believes in telling rather than showing. This technique requires considerably less effort from either author or reader and may explain why her novels are so much more popular than those of ICB. But this ceaseless telling not showing irritated me. I felt I was being patronised.

Selected quotes:

• “To be young is to care too much.” (Ch 3)
• “Greetings of any sort are mainly futile, futile whether they mean nothing or anything.” (Ch 4)
• “She knew her only use and power with her friends. She loved and she was of use to them. They loved her for her use but not for her love.” (Ch 4)
• “There was Sheena holding her breath as it were in one hand and her shoes in the other.” (Ch 7)
• “Because she was for once without people she was less lonely. For it was the loneliness of being with people that Miss Parker knew about, not the divine loneliness of being by herself.” (Ch 17)
• “She looked so like a choir boy who had gone wrong (very wrong) that it was touching indeed to see her with that fat, hardy old tart Silene, talking sense to her there in the sunlight.” (Ch 18)
• “Miss Parker read it through again, and as she read it the sense of not being to others a person filled up at the first time with anger.” (Ch 27)
• “Olivia ate an immense meal, complaining a great deal as she did so about the way her cook cooked French beans, about the way her cook made curry, about the way her gardener grew lettuce, about the way her cook made cream cheese, biscuits, plum tarts, and coffee.” (Ch 28)

Notes:

• I wasn’t sure whether “she was as greedy as a bird” (Ch 5) meant she gobbled like a gannet or ate almost nothing.
• Who or what is the WG?
• At one moment they play Heavy Saturn; my research suggests this my be a Victorian parlour game in which the players had to blow a ball of wool sitting on a table so it fell off the table on their opponent's side rather than theirs. 
• I couldn't decide, given the evidence of this passage, whether MJF approved or disapproved of fox-hunting.
• “Below the moat [was] a gorse covert where a famous breed of foxes habited and reared their children now in great peace and comfort, and heaps of leisure to teach them to be straight-necked and to smell strong like all their uncles and aunts, and to enjoy their gallant deaths when the proper time came.” (Ch 11)

March 2026;315 pages

First published by Collins in 1935

My Virago Classics paperback was issued in 1986.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Open Water" by Caleb Azumah Nelson

 This extraordinary debut novel, written in the 2nd person, present tense, about the experiences of a young black man in present-day south London, garnered many awards when it was first published in 2021 including winning the Costa debut novel award, the Betty Trask award, and the Somerset Maugham award,  being shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year, and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott prize and the Dylan Thomas prize. It was named one of the top ten debut novels of the year by the Observer and one of the best novels of the year by TIME.

It chronicles a love between the unnamed protagonist ("you") and his equally unnamed girlfriend, the anonymity and the second person narration plunging the reader into deep empathetic identification with the characters.

The prose is lyrical and poetic. The author frequently uses repetition to bludgeon the reader into acceptance of his ideas, thus:

• "You think about what it means to desire your best friend in this way. You think about holding onto this feeling for so long, holding it down, holding it in, because sometimes it's easier to hide in your own darkness than to emerge, naked and vulnerable, blinking in your own light. You think about whether she has been doing the same. You think about spillage, and whether this is something that can be mopped up. You think as you walk through the night ..." (Ch 13)
• "It's summer now, and you're looking forward to worrying less. You're looking forward to longer nights and shorter days. You're looking forward to gathering in back gardens and watching meat sputter on an open barbecue. You're looking forward to laughing so hard your chest hurts and you feel light-headed. You're looking forward to the safety in pleasure. You're looking forward to forgetting, albeit briefly, the existential dread which plagues you, which tightens your chest, which pains your left side. You're looking forward to forgetting that, leaving the house, you might not return intact. You're looking forward to freedom, even if it is short, even if it might not last." (Ch 14)

But there are also many phrases that recur like leitmotifs, separated bu pages, even chapters, but popping up time and time again. These repetitions, like a heartbeat, like a drum keeping a rhythm in the background, reminded me of the style of At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, another book about the black experience but in a very different context.

The book refers to Zadie Smith's NW, a story about black character in north London. The experiences and feeling of doomed black youth strongly reminded me of Poor by Caleb Femi, a book of poetry gathered from the experiences of black youths in London.

The novel provides a visceral description of what it is like to be a talented (he's hugely artistic, immersed in music and paintings and theatre and literature and photography) young black man in London. Many of his experiences resonated: I, too, have been in situations he describes and have shared these emotions, but I haven't had the relentless exposure to jeopardy day in day out that creates an existential dread, a foreboding of inevitable doom. Mostly, I felt like an outsider. But it was a privilege and an education to gain a glimpse or two of his reality.

And the prose!

Selected quotes:

• "There should be no shame in knowing what one wants." (Prologue)
• "You lost your god so you can't even pray, and anyway, prayer is just confessing one's desire and it's not that you don't know what you want, it's that you don't know what to do about it." (Ch 7)
• "There are really only two plot devices when writing: a stranger comes to town, or a person goes on a journey." (Ch 9)
• "The intense mess of being intimate with another." (Ch 10)
• "You look like you got hit by a bus, and you dusted yourself off, and did it again for the hell of it." (Ch 11)
• "To be you is to apologize and often that apology comes in the form of suppression." (Ch 12)
• "You want to find yourself in a basement, neck loose, bobbing your head as a group of musicians play, not because they should, but because they must." (Ch 14)
• "You ... pushed apologies towards her in the way one would do when diffusing a bomb in the movies: one eye closed, snip at the wire and hope for the best." (Ch 15)
• "You're like a pair of musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians but your love manifests in the music. Sometimes, your head tucked into her neck, you can feel her heartbeat thudding like a kick drum. Your smile a grand piano, the glint in her eye like the twinkle of hands caressing ivory keys. The rhythmic structure of a double bass the inert grace she had been blessed with, moving her body in ways which astound. A pair of soloists in conversations so harmonious, one struggles to separate. You are not the musicians but the music." (Ch 17)
• "You're scared that she might not just see your beauty, but your ugly too." (Ch 18)
• "He had spent a life so close to death that it was less a life lived and more one survived." (Ch 25)
• "You gaze in the mirror and you see that you are not a coward but you have done a cowardly thing and that you're not malicious but you have hurt her and you're not an embarrassment but you are ashamed." (Ch 26)
• "Freedom is really the distance between hunter and prey." (Ch 27)

A wonderful book.March 2026; 145 pages

First published by Viking in 2021

My Penguin paperback was issued in 2022

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Trumpet" by Jackie Kay

When Joss Moody, a famous jazz trumpeter, dies, it is discovered that 'he' was a woman, who lived as a man. His grieving widow, the only one who knew the truth, is on the run from the press. His adopted son, Colman, shocked by what he sees as a betrayal, is giving exclusive interviews to a woman, Sophie Stones, who wants to write the authorised biography. We also hear from others: the doctor, the registrar, the undertaker, the cleaner, the drummer and an old school friend who used to know 'him' when she was a girl. 

In this way, the Joss's identity is explored from a variety of viewpoints, like a 360-degree appraisal in a work-place. Those who talk of him also reveal their own selves in the process, and how they see themselves. Thus, the writer, who sometimes refers to herself in the third person, as Sophie, loves buying clothes, becoming in a sense a reflection of the musician, who always dressed smartly, and as a man. The son wonders whether he should revert to his birth name. The widow remembers that the musician used to refer to himself as a little girl in the third person. The text itself plays between first person and third person viewpoints; the son adopts both. There is even one moment of deliberate head-hopping, almost at the centre of the novel (in 'Interview Exclusive') when we are first in Sophie's head ("He's a bit of an asshole really, she thinks. But cute." and a few paragraphs later, in the same scene, we are in Colman's head (He can't stand all those scented teas."); clearly the opportunity to hop from 'she' to 'he' was not to be missed.

The tense can vary too. Most of the key narrators talk in the present tense, some of the incidentals narrate in the past tense. This miscellany of styles emphasises the incoherence of who we are and underlines the truth that we can change in fundamental ways.

A fascinating book.

Selected quotes:

• “I met a man once who wouldn't let me take his picture with Joss. He said it would be stealing his soul. I remember thinking, how ridiculous, a soul cannot be stolen. Strange how things like that stay with you as if life is waiting for a chance to prove you wrong. Joss’s soul has gone and mine has been stolen. It is as simple and as true as that.” (House and Home)
• “The girl I was has been swept out to sea. She is another tide entirely.” (House and Home)
• “It's a tall order when you are expected to be somebody just because your father is somebody. The children of famous people aren't allowed to be talentless, ordinary fuckwits like me.” (Cover Story)
• “I liked the dark corners of sulking.” (Cover Story)
• “He always spoke about her in the third person. She was his third person.” (House and Home #2)
• “Her letter says, with hindsight would you have done anything different? You don't live in hindsight though, do you? Hindsight is a different light. It makes everything change shape.” (House and Home #2)
• “The word transvestite has got more in it than the word cross-dresser. What is a cross-dresser anyway when he or she is at home? someone who dresses in a fit of fury.” (Money Pages)
• “Are you trying to bribe me? Away and raffle yourself.” (People: The Drummer)
• “I went about, according to my mother, with a huge chip on my shoulder. Not just a chip, my father would say, a whole fish supper.” (Interview Exclusive)
• “Sophie Stones smiles a huge mile of a smile.” (People: the Cleaner)
• “Shopping staves depression.” (Style)
• “Life is just a journey from milk teeth to false teeth with fillings and crowns thrown in between for relief.” (People: The old school friend)

March 2026; 278 pages

First published in 1998 by Picador

My Picador paperback was issued in 2016

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Snow Ball" by Brigid Brophy

 

Elegant. Glittering. Intoxicating. But is this account of a costume party at a rich man's house, with overtones of Mozart's Don Giovanni, style over substance? It certainly reeks of snobbery but more of those familiar with high culture than those who have money, the spelling mistakes in Ruth's diary and “Edward’s own taste preferred cars that crouched low as though over dropped handlebars.” (3.16) are sneers at the rich, as is the comment: “The rich have libraries, whereas people like us have books. People like us read books. The rich have them catalogued.” (2.6). The rich host and hostess are fat and ugly. There is a whiff of pretentiousness, as evidenced by the repeated use of the word 'declivity' when another author might say 'dip' or 'dent' and the choice of 'discomfortable' over 'uncomfortable'. Perhaps she is just being precise, but I had the impression that shje was flaunting her vocabulary.

Elegant, glittering, intoxicating and, to that extent, entertaining, but very little happens. There is a ball. The New Year is sung in. Three couples, one married, have sex. 

Selected quotes:

• “The neat whisky she had been drinking brought her heart not to her mouth but, much more discomfortably, to the flat part of her chest, to what seemed to be a precise location on top of the flat bone above the breasts.” (1.1)
• “Anna, whose own answer had long been Yes, she could tolerate it, cherished her face without pity or special pleading.” (1.2)
• “‘You’re made of money, aren't you, Rudy?’ ... ‘and you're made of flesh and blood, but you'd squeal if you had to part with any, just the same.’” (1.4)

February 2026; 196 pages

First published in 1964

My Faber paperback was issued in 2020

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Also reviewed in the blog:

• Hackenfeller's Ape by Brigid Brophy

"Gently Does It" by Alan Hunter

 The book that introduced Chief Inspector George Gently who went on to solve crime in another 46 novels, not to mention a TV drama starring Martin Shaw that ran for eight series. 

Gently, a methodical homicide expert with Central on holiday, clashes with the local police whose attitude is more to gather evidence implicating the prime suspect. Of course the tiny discrepancies in the case are sufficient to locate the real culprit. The problem is not so much whodunnit but how it can be proved.

It was an enjoyable classic of its kind, although the protagonist's tic (he eats so many peppermint creams that one fears for his dental health and imminent diagnosis of diabetes) was a little annoying; I was reminded of Inspector Claud Eustace Teal's obsession with chewing gum in The Saint books by Leslie Charteris. The clash with the local plods is also a trope of this style of fiction.

Very much of its time. Gently is a sexless bachelor who lives with a landlady, several other male characters are rather less sexless bachelors living alone with women who do for them. There is a servant, a classic working class vamp, and a daughter of the rich dead man who speaks with a strong foreign accent despite apparently having lived entirely in England and her brother having no accent at all. Everyone has big lunches: "what does one's figure matter when one is one the wrong side of fifty?" (Ch 11)

Nevertheless, it is thoroughly entertaining.

Selected quotes:

"Susan was a pretty, pert blonde girl with a tilted bra and an accentuated behind. She wore a smile as a natural part of her equipment. She had a snub nose and dimples and a pleased expression, and had a general supercharged look, as though she was liable to burst out of her black dress and stockings into a fierce nudity." (Ch 4)

February 2026; 250 pages

First published in 1955

My paperback edition issued by Robinson in 2010

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Model Behavior" by Jay McInerney

In Bright Lights, Big City the 2nd person narrator works for a New York magazine as a fact-checker although his employment seems precarious; his girlfriend is a model who has vanished off to Paris and he is afraid she has left him. In this novel, the 1st person narrator works for a New York magazine as a writer although his employment seems precarious; his girlfriend is a model who has vanished off to Paris and he is afraid she has left him. So there was a distinct sense of deja vu.

The 'gimmick' this time is that the story is broken up into small sections, some no longer than a paragraph though most manage more than a page, as if the novel is in the style of a magazine article.

I found this rather tedious at first. I forgave him because he can write wonderfully wise-cracking descriptions (see the selected quotes). And because of one brilliant scene in which the narrator's mum and dad take him and his depressed sister to a meal at a posh restaurant and the conversation unwinds into a hilarious show-down.

The ending is pretty clever too.

Selected quotes:

• “Phil calls Brooke the scrambled egg head.” (Immediate family)
• “Watching the other men. Sorry bastards. ... And I am one of them. Sitting at our tables naked with yearning, inappropriately dressed for the party. We are penises trussed up in wool suits and silk ties.” (Mount Olympus) He is in the audience at a lap-dancing club.
• “There are exactly two kinds of movie star, the Solipsist and the Seducer: one speaks only of himself, not believing in the existence of anyone else; the other still seems not to believe in his or her own existence at all, and has to seek constant verification from every possible fan in the room, working it like a politician, looking into the great round mirrors of our eyes, trying to seduce us all one at a time.” (Connor among the plutocrats)
• “As a straight male I am viewed as the urban equivalent of the village idiot - harmless, perhaps, but kind of a communal embarrassment.” (How I got my job)
• “Somewhere between the middle and the end is always the best part, but we never know exactly where it is until it's over.” (The first time)
• “Within the year we moved to New York - which is to monogamy what the channel changer is to linear narrative.” (Tokyo, autumn 1993)
• “I've always found the minute portraiture of nineteenth century fiction fairly useless. For me, those precise descriptions of the hero's nose/ mouth/ eyes/ moles/ forehead never come together as an actual face ... they always end up jumbled, like a portrait in the analytic cubist mode.” (Physical appearance)
• “You know I don't like drugs that make me feel stupid. I feel stupid enough to begin with.” (Psychopharmacology)
• “I didn't want other guys to fuck her, honest. I just wanted other guys to want to fuck her.” (The Silk route)
• “Sent the cleaning lady away last week ... because I was embarrassed even for her to see the wreckage, with the result that it has grown and compounded itself as rapidly as the interest on an unpaid VISA balance.” (House call)
• “It should be counted to Jeremy's credit that he is generally unaware of the interest he excites in the opposite sex, though an ill-wisher might chalk up this obliviousness to self-absorption.” (Another literary mystery solved.)
• “Not the limelight, exactly. More like the lemonlight, the reflected
  glory experienced by one-day sensations and the sexual partners of the stars.” (Connor faces the Press)

February 2026; 230 pages

First published in 1998

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Devil's Elixirs" by E T A Hoffmann

This Gothic novel, a classic of doppelganger fiction, is heavy on plot, if you can call this convoluted picaresque a plot, but light on character. Having drunk a wine associated with the relic of Saint Anthony and reputed to be one of the Devil's elixirs, with which Satan had unsuccessfully tried to tempt the Saint, Brother Medardus has an interlude as a highly successful preacher which puffs him up with pride before, as a penance, he is sent by his Abbot to Rome. On the course of this journey he assumes the identity of a Count who he has just seen fall from a cliff, falls in love with a noblewoman and murders her brother, escapes, travels to a Princely court, wins a fortune gambling, encounters his doppelganger, meets a smooth-talking barber, is arrested for murder, escapes, and continues his journey to Rome where he repents of his sins and seeks redemption. I may have missed a few dozen incidents out and confused others. After a while, I stopped paying attention.

All of the usual Gothic tropes are here: 

• the hero is a mad monk (there is even a name check to the English novel The Monk by Matthew Lewis which was published in 1796), 
• there is the usual Protestant hysteria over Roman Catholicism, 
• there is murder, 
• there is a doppelganger, 
• there is imprisonment in a dungeon (and the doppelganger tunnels his way into the cell in what seems like the source of a similar episode in the Count of Monte Cristo which was written by Alexandre Dumas pere in 1846), 
• there is a mysterious painter described as the Wandering Jew, 
• there's a secret trapdoor set in motion by a spring, 
• there is the phrase “odour of sanctity” (2.2) which always makes me wonder what sanctity smells of, I personally imagine a mix of must and floor polish
• there is the phrase "subtle cruelty" (2.2): something in Gothic romances of the time always had to be subtle.
• there is a thunderstorm

It is written in the heightened headlong hysteria common to the genre at the time: “Are you then free from sin, that you dare to look in loss to my heart as if you were the purest man alive, yea as if you were God Himself, whom you despise; that you dare to pronounce the remission of my sins - you, who will struggle in vain for forgiveness, for the blessedness of haven which will always be denied you? Despicable hypocrite, soon the hour of requital will come, and you will be grounded in the dust like a venomous serpent, rising in mortal shame and moaning in vain for release from your unutterable agony!” (1.2) When a writer uses words such as ‘unutterable’ or ‘indescribable’ I always think that, if they had sufficient skill, they would be able to utter or describe it.

Descriptions are equally rococo:

“As the coach moved off there were flashes of lightning in the distance and the clouds which the wind had hurled together and was driving across the sky, became blacker and blacker; the thunder rolled in a thousand echoes, and red lightning rent the heavens as far as the eye could see. The tall pines cracked, shattered to their roots, and the rain poured down in torrents.” (1.3)

Did I enjoy it? Not much. It just went on and on. Madness gets boring quite quickly. I did enjoy the barber who had a joie de vivre he expressed in wonderfully impetuous language, at once similar to and different from the standard prose of the book: “You will see the modern gentleman of fashion in every conceivable refinement - now boldly outshining everyone, now morose and disinterested, now naively flirting, now ironic, witty, ill-tempered, melancholic, bizarre, dissolute, graceful, jovial.” (1.3) He claims he isn't mad but a clown: “Is not a barber of genius inevitably a clown right from the beginning? Clowning is a protection against madness, and I can assure you, reverend sir, that even by north-northwest I can clearly distinguish a church spire from a lamp-post.” (2.2) This is clearly quoting Shakespeare. In Act 2 Scene 2, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw".

It had its moments. I wondered whether the Elixirs were a metaphor for drug addiction, whether the Devil was a pusher: “O Brother Medardus, the Devil walks the earth unceasingly, offering his elixirs to men. Who has not at some time or other delighted in his potions?” (2.2) There were some wonderfully wacky moments which often seemed to include owls. But I struggled to finish it.

Selected quotes:

• “Just as Classical forms of architecture have been preserved in the churches, so a ray of light from the joyful age of Antiquity seems to have shone into the dark mysticism of Christianity, bringing with it something of the radiant glory which surrounded the ancient gods and heroes.” (1.1)
• “Satan ... leered mockingly at The Saint and asked him whether he would like to taste the elixirs that were in the bottles he was carrying.” (1.1)
• “Let us climb onto the roof beneath the weathercock, which is playing a merry tune for the owl’s wedding. Up there we will fight with each other, and the one who pushes the other over will become a king and be able to drink blood.” (1.3)
• “You wobbled about like a badly-made skittle.” (2.2)
• “Banished from the church, excluded like a leper from the gatherings of the brethren, I lay in the vaults of the monastery, ekeing out a pitiable existence on tasteless herbs boiled in water, whipping and torturing myself with instruments devised by the most subtle cruelty, and raising my voice in self accusation, in contrite prayer for my redemption from hell, whose flames were already glowing within me.” (2.2)
• “There was a confused rustling and whispering; people I had known before appeared, madly distorted; heads crawled about with grasshoppers’ legs growing out of their ears, and leering at me obscenely; strange birds, ravens with human heads, were beating their wings overhead. I saw the choir master from B — and his sister, who was wildly dancing a waltz while her brother accompanied her by playing on his breast, which had become a fiddle. Belcampo, with the ugly face of a lizard, was sitting on a horrible dragon; he made a rush as if to comb my beard with a red-hot iron comb, but he did not reach me. The chaos became mad and madder, the figures more and more weird, from the smallest ant dancing with human feet to the elongated skeleton of a horse with glittering eyes, its skin a saddlecloth on which was sitting a knight with a shining owl’s-head; his armour was a mug with the bottom knocked out, his helmet a funnel turned upside down.” (2.2)

Hoffmann was also author of The Sandman, which formed the basis for the first act of Offenbach's opera Tales from Hoffmann and the ballet Coppelia by Delibes; another of his short stories formed the basis the The Nutcracker, the ballet by Tchaikovsky. 

First published in 1816

My OneWorld Classics edition, based on Ronald Taylor's 1963 translation was issued in 2008.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Science of Storytelling" by Will Storr

This fascinating book starts with neuroscience to discover how to grab a reader’s attention and hold it. It assumes that since people are fundamentally interested in other people, a storyteller should focus on character rather than plot. In particular, our brains are wired to notice change. Change can indicate danger or an opportunity. So a good story uses change to prompt curiosity so the reader keeps turning the pages, trying to satisfy this curiosity. "The place of maximum curiosity ... is when people think they have some idea but aren’t quite sure." (1.2)

He then analyses characters. Most of us have a sort of default set of behaviours (Storr calls it a 'theory of control', terminology I find difficult) to help us cope with the world. These behaviours have been learned through past successes, adapted to one's personality (eg extrovert, neurotic, conscientious etc), and distorted by one's culture. Once we have created, usually during adolescence, a model of ourselves, we defend this.  The classic 'hero's adventure' type of story is one in which the behaviours of the protagonist prove inappropriate to the challenges they face, so they are forced to change them. This process involves unlearning old behaviours and learning new ones, all while "a riotous democracy of mini-selves.” (3.1) battles for supremacy.

It's a compelling (and enthralling) narrative from which he draws a toolkit for the creation of character. It makes a great book.

Selected quotes:

• “A successful poem please on our associative networks as a harpist plays on strings. By the meticulous placing of a few simple words, they brush gently against deeply buried memories, emotions, joys and traumas.” (1.7)
• “Beneath the level of consciousness we’re a riotous democracy of mini-selves.” (3.1)
• “A gripping plot is one that keeps asking the dramatic question ... to repeatedly change and gradually break the protagonist’s model of who they are and how the world works before rebuilding it.” (4.2)
• “Find out what people believe to be sacred, and there ... you will find rampant irrationality.” (The Sacred Flaw Approach: the sacred flaw)
• “Many of the most memorable characters in fiction ... derive their fascination from the fact that they're making a fundamental mistake about the human world and their place within it. We can see their mistake but they can't.”  (The Sacred Flaw Approach: finding the flaw)

February 2026; 255 pages
First published by William Collins in 2019
My paperback edition was issued in 2020

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"All the Days I Did Not Live" by Anna Vaught

The trope of the husband who controls the wife, so she has a less than fulfilled life, is now so common it has become a genre. It has a long history stretching back at least as far as Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. More recently we have had The Names by Florence Knapp. This novella-length addition to the genre differs in that Gabriel the controlling husband does not physically abuse his wife, Catherine, nor seek to lock her in an asylum, nor steal her children; Gabriel's sins include driving too carefully, not liking sex in the afternoon or sleeping in bed naked, not being much of a drinker, and thinking that social media was only for young people. His most serious transgression, judging from the fact that it appears just after the half-way point, is that he failed to protest when Catherine's father suggested she was stubborn, unlike his wife who was "really quite pliable these days. You have to break them in." (Ch 10)

Whilst I sympathised with Catherine, I also felt sorry for Gabriel. I'm not sure he had much fun in life. Perhaps he controlled his wife but only to the extent that everyone in a lasting relationship has, from time to time, to compromise and to modify their behaviour, to suit their partner. 

Gabriel, in short, through his moderation and his cautious approach to life, prevented Catherine from being as wild as she secretly wished. She sees her time with him as "days I didn't even live” (Ch 13). His death is therefore not, for her, a cause for mourning but an opportunity to behave in ways that would have shocked him and shock his children, who seek to control her by getting the GP to prescribe medications.

Catherine's father, on the other hand, is a nasty piece of work. There are hints that he might have (sexually?) abused her; when he dies it is because “Sometimes the shock of being known for what you are is too much.” (Ch 20)

In the period shortly after Gabriel has died, Catherine is accompanied by what seems to be poltergeist activity: there is a strange drumming sound in the house, things fall to the floor and smash. This added an interesting and entertaining dimension to the story.

Chapter 9 contains a moment of exposition which drifts away from the close 3rd person narration almost to the extent of breaking the 4th wall, a paragraph of 'author's message'. I found this 'bumped' me out of a closer identification with the narrator; perhaps this was a deliberate moment of alienation a la Brecht.

The book has a gently lyrical, elegant, controlled style: sometimes it felt that the author was more like Gabriel than Catherine. The story is told mostly from the PoV of Catherine (including interior monologue) but sometimes from that of Alec, a widower living in Paris. In common with many modern novels, it is told in the present tense, although there are frequent flashbacks. I enjoyed the way so much is left unsaid, including what the father did, and what Catherine's daughter really feels about her post-mortem transgressions.

Selected quotes:

• “Alec would see men looking her up and down, favourably; women, favourably and spitefully.” (Ch 6)
• “You’re not as sad as you ought to be.” (Ch 13)
• “promise-crammed" (Ch 14)
• “How did time feel when it was measured only in shadows?” (Ch 15)
• “She has puttered out intellectually, allowed herself to be domesticated.” (Ch 15)

February 2026; 116 pages
First published in 2026 by Renard Press

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Anna Vaught has also written (and reviewed in this blog):

• The Zebra and Lord Jones
• Her Winter Song

"Four Letters of Love" by Niall Williams

“When I was twelve years old God spoke to my father for the first time. God didn't say much.” This is the opening of a debut novel of extraordinary lyrical beauty about the war between one's dreams and the reality of life.

The west coast of Ireland is the setting for magic. A young boy gifted with a talent for making music has a fit and is struck dumb and helpless. He lives in little better than a vegetative state while his sister goes to convent school, breaks all the rules, and has an affair and marries a wool and tweed salesman. Meanwhile, the father of a young boy in Dublin is called by God to paint and abandons his family to poverty while he creates abstract masterpieces. There are ghosts and visions. Underpinning the supernatural events is a hard core of reality: the purchase of a single can of soup for supper, years working as a clerk in the Civil Service, shooing donkeys, inarticulate appreciation (Galway, we are told, is "great. Just great. Is there another egg, Mam?") This juxtaposition with everyday nitty-gritty renders the mystical believable, the plain prose passages enable the lyrical flights.

The plot is that of a classic comedy: two lovers who must come together in the end despite all the obstructions placed in their way. It is at once both complex in the evolutions (only a modern comedy could include the obstacle that one of the lovers makes a half-hearted marriage to someone else) and immensely simple. For all that, it is perfectly paced.

The narration switches between the first person PoV of Nicholas, the Dublin lad, and an omniscient PoV; in the final section Nicholas is seen in the third person. It is told in the past tense.

The characters are strong, from the poetry-writing schoolmaster drowning his sorrows in whiskey to the mad artist, from the wayward Isabel to the hapless Seann and the bewildered Nicholas. I absolutely believed in these people and their behaviours. Isabel, guilt-ridden and hormonal, would have proved a wayward teenager and made foolish choices about prospective partners. Shiftless Seann, ruled by his mother, could be a romantic hero but a hopeless life partner. And I do love a villain who has the best of motives.

The descriptions are wonderful. Sometimes they are short and concise:

• “The embedded dagger of one-way love.” (1.10)
• “The air was puffy with fumes.” (4.14)
• “Panic pricked in his lower stomach like a bag of needles.” (5.9)
• “He walks his high frailty into the water, his ribcage and shoulders like a twisted jumble of coat hangers in an empty suit bag.” (1.1)

Sometimes they are extended like epic metaphors:

• “The skies we slept under were too uncertain for forecasts. They came and went on the moody gusts of the Atlantic, bringing half a dozen different weathers in an afternoon and playing all four movements of a wind symphony, allegro, andante, scherzo and adagio on the broken backs of the white waves. Clouds, thumping base notes or brilliant wild arpeggios, were never long in coming.” (3.8)

Much of the joy of this book is based on the transcending beauty of the language so it is perhaps not a surprise that when it was made into a film in 2024 it received poor reviews. 

Perhaps the thing that I admired most about this book was the control shown by the writer. He could have gone over the top with the language, the magic, and the madness, but every time he showed a hint of straying, he returned to mundane reality, leaving this book like a piece of granite, as solid as can be but with sparkles of crystal.

And it was hugely enjoyable. A real page-turner.

Selected quotes:

• “The grass grew three feet tall, and sometimes in the evenings I went out and lay down hidden inside it, feeling the soft waving motion of its sea around me and above me and watching the blue of the sky deepen to let out the stars. I kept my eyes open and thought of my father, out there, painting the hood of night over me.” (1.3)
• “‘Dad,’ I said and, turning, felt burst in tears the watery balloon of emotion.” (1.4)
• “Wives create their husbands. They begin with that rough raw material, that blundering, well-meaning and handsome youthfulness that they have fallen in love with, and then commence the forty years of unstinting labour it takes to make a man with whom they can live.” (1.14)
• “Back on the island they were prisoners of the weather now. ... The mainland was lost to them, and the freedom there was on a summer's day in seeing the limitless expanse of a blue sky over a blue sea was inversed now, and the stone walls of the houses and the little fields were the still jails of winter.” (2.2)
• “The sky was a steamed glass that cracked daily, letting slant through the falling air the shards of that long winter’s stay.” (2.4)
• “It was five o’clock in the morning, my feet were wet, my eyes stung and I had just learned the first lesson of that week's education in art: once you begin, nothing else matters, not love, not grief, not anything.” (3.6)
• “For him, in his paintings, sea and sky ... were the constant and yet ever-changing monologue of God himself, the swirling language of creation, the closest thing to the beginning of life itself.” (3.6)
• “My father saw God's changing humour in the afternoons and early evenings, the sky in the sea like a face ageing.” (3.6)
• “Time only exists if you have a clock. In our house the batteries in the clock on the kitchen windowsill had long since leaked the acid of Time.” (4.3)
• “He was a man who had found his place, and had ironed everything of the jumbled and frenzied chaos that life had thrown at him into the one, perfect crease of his work.” (4.3)
• “He couldn't easily tolerate the circle of sympathizers and the little hopeless audience of tea-drinkers and prayers, and he stood instead outside in the drizzle letting his despair fragment into the first words and phrases of a new poem.” (4.5)
• “She could have done anything, she seems so. So. Hurt.” (4.7)
• “Angels, my father once said, must pass us in the street every day. They must be as ordinary as birds, he said, and recognisable only in the brief moment of their connection to our lives.” (4.12)
• “Dreams, my father was certain, are the other you talking back.” (4.14)
• “How do you know what to do? how do you ever know?’ ‘You don't.... You ask for prompts, I suppose, don't get any and then just pick one thing or the other.” (5.4)
• “Her guilt swirled in the air like a fine dust; it caught in his throat and he began a coughing fit that lasted minutes.” (5.5)
• “Loss, loss, loss. The word passed across his chest like a knife opening his flesh and spilling his organs. How much easier it would have been to have been wounded, to have lost a limb, to stumble through the day one-legged, flap one-armed and show: this much of me is loss, this much hacked away by grief and despair.” (5.5)
• “Nothing in the natural world is random, was the principle tenet in William Coughlin's philosophy.” (5.6)
• “Muiris was walking a few inches above the surface of the island, carefully placing his feet and taking each step across the air with the concentration of a tightrope walker." (5.8)
• “A curled figure still in his trousers and vest, a hand dangling over the edge of the bed as if to pick up dreams.” (7.1)
• “She looked at him as if he had seven eyes and she could not figure out on which to focus.” (7.7)
• “The world wrinkles dreams quicker than skin” (7.7)
• “She ... put aside her fears that the spots appearing on the back of her hands were the rising to the surface of her sins.” (7.10)

The Latin quote in 3.7: "Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?" is from Virgil's Aeneid (9, 184–185), which means: "Do the gods put this fire into our minds, Euryale, or does each man's passion become his own desire?"

February 2026; 342 pages

First published by Picador in 1997

My paperback edition issued in 2025

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Also written by Niall Williams:

• Four Letters Of Love (1997) 
• Named Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times Book Review
• As It Is In Heaven (1999) 
• Shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
• Shortlisted for the Irish Times Literature Prize
• The Way You Look Tonight (2000)
• The Fall of Light (2001)
• Longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
• Only Say the Word (2005)
• The Unrequited (2006) (novella)
• Boy in the World (2007) (YA novel)
• Boy and Man (2008) (YA novel)
• John: A Novel (2008)
• History of the Rain (2015)
• Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
• This Is Happiness (2019)
• Listed in Washington Post's Best Books of the Year
• Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Best Book of the Year
• The Unrequited (2021) (novella)
• Time of the Child (2024)