Peirene Press Readathon, No. 7: 'Maybe This Time' by Alois Hotschnig

So, here we are at post no. 7 of mine and Sam's full and wonderful Peirene Press Readathon, throughout which we are reading all the Peirene books published to date and interspersing them with discussion posts every fourth week, grouped as they are in thematic series of three. For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative European novellas which have not been translated into English prior to now. 

Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig, a highly-acclaimed Austrian writer, is something of an anomaly in the Peirene Press series, being a collection of nine short stories rather than a novella. The stories themselves have a surreal, Kafka-esque feeling of disquiet about them, being opaque and confusing like dreams with enough of a grounding in reality to make them enormously affecting. Thematically, we have voyeurism, alienation, loss of identity and great lashings of that insidious feeling of looking at a scene or hearing a story and feeling somewhere low down in your gut that all is not fine. Narratively, we have a man obsessed with his neighbours, a man who wakes up and doesn't know who he is, recounted town scenes that bely a recent tragedy, a frighteningly realised encounter between insects, and a man, in the final story, whose identity seems to alter and shuffle like an ace through a pack of cards.

In short, I loved them. Nothing pleases me more than left-field, open-ended fiction that leaves me wistful and worried for the characters' future and leaves me with few reassurances. I mean, doesn't that sound like life? Or maybe I spent too long studying East Asian cinema, lol. But I found these bizarre and alarming stories utterly refreshing, and at times, grotesquely hilarious. This quote is from Then a Door Opens and Swings Shut, where a man comes face-to-face with a woman and the dolls she keeps, one of whom looks just like him:

My name is Karl, I said, but the woman didn't answer. I didn't know how to handle the situation or how to deal with my new friend - a friend I was obviously starting to accept.
He's not a bad kid, she said. Peculiar, yes, but you already knew that and, let's face it, you're all he's got. And he's been waiting ever since you abandoned him. That's when he came to me. He can't talk to you about it, at least not yet. But things will work out now you've finally come back. And now I'll leave the two of you alone, she said, and stood up and left the room.

 That is the doll they're talking about, FYI. One thing that really struck me about this short story collection is how easy it is to read: one might presume that high literature will be a slower read than the lighter stuff, but this I swallowed down very easily indeed. It was a delight, in fact. 

Otherwise, I have little to say, most likely because with a collection of stories it is harder to pinpoint and single out trends and details, so my sum thoughts are that this book is brilliant, undoubtedly my favourite of the 'Male Dilemma: Quests for Intimacy' series, and that this would be the perfect intelligent, unsettling read to while an hour away with over a big coffee. And it's quietly terrifying, so I'll get back to you about the nightmares.

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine) ¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (mine) ¦ (Sam's) 
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen (mine) ¦ (Sam's) 
 
Title: Maybe This Time
Author: Alois Hotschnig, translated from the Austrian German by Tess Lewis
Date: Original 2006, translation 2011
Format: Paperback, 107 pages, and I was sent it by Peirene Press for review as part of this readathon series.







Links and an Update

My new logo!

Hello all, I have a few new links to share with you before my next Peirene post on Thursday:

My beautiful, new, shiny website - click to find all my links, writing and info in one happy place.

A link to Homespun Threads, a fairytale e-anthology featuring my first ever children's story, Firefly Mountain, which is available via Amazon and Smashwords and is raising fab funds for Homespun Theatre to take their latest children's show on tour in 2013. So buy it for all and sundry this Christmas!

And lastly, my latest post on Side B Magazine, as part of my fortnightly Small Island Culture series on the site, about the Peirene Press literary salon I attended on 1st December with Andrew Motion in attendance, which might interest those of you following mine and Sam's Peirene Press readathon series.

Thanks all! :) 

  





Peirene Press Readathon, No. 6: 'Tomorrow Pamplona' by Jan van Mersbergen

Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen is the fifth book in the epic Peirene Press Readathon that Sam and I are in the midst of, where we read all nine of the Peirene Press books currently published, and then discuss them thematically in threes. This book is the second in the 'Male Dilemma: Quests for Intimacy' series. For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative European novellas which have not been translated into English prior to now. 

Tomorrow Pamplona is about Danny, a Dutch boxer who we find stood hitch-hiking on the side of the motorway, soaked to the skin, who is picked up by Robert, who is on his way to Pamplona to participate in the famed annual bull run there. Eventually he invites Danny to travel all the way with him, which Danny accepts, and it is interesting to note the contrast in circumstances between Robert, a family man who runs with the bulls annually to alleviate some of the boredom and responsibility of family life, and Danny, who is running from a bad circumstance, the actual details of which only become clear as the book progresses. One has too much order, one has too much chaos, and neither know how to deal with it. Let's just say, it became clear to me early on why this book was part of a series exploring male dilemma and intimacy issues.

I found Robert and Danny both to be interesting characters, increasingly so as the book progresses; I wasn't immediately grabbed by the first few pages. Danny is the central figure and through chronologically-arranged flashbacks we find out what lead to the horrific incident that has left him on the run, as he explores them on the course of the drive from the Netherlands to Pamplona inside his own head. You'd think the bull run would be the actual climax of this book, but it's not: the key moments come as they make decisions about the future and how to face it, or not, as the case may be.

This book made me sad for men. The pervading message of it, as communicated to me, is that literally staring down a bull or patting a crocodile is easier than having an honest conversation with a woman you're in love with. I can't even imagine being that emotionally inarticulate. Obviously, not all men are like this (thank god), but the men in this book were not unfamiliar to me, and I'm sure they wouldn't be to any reader. Anyway, male judgements aside, this book is macho through and through, in theme and character and tense, unromantic language, and the women in it are either distant wives, deceitful girlfriends or waitresses to be ogled at; they seem to have little idea, the pair of them, how to really cross this great gender divide to where real intimacy lies. Robert, the family man, even describes the birth of his children as an awe-inspiring but ultimately alienating experience:

Do you know what the problem is with childbirth? You can't do a bloody thing. As a man, you can be there with her, but there's sod all you can actually do...
...So you just stand there looking. Well, that's what I did. I didn't have a clue what to do...I kept on saying: You can do it, you can do it. Until finally she just screamed at me to shut up. With the second one, I just sat by the bed and kept my mouth shut...All that time you're just sitting there. And you know what? You'd rather be facing the bulls.

I mean, I can't even imagine.

As you may be beginning to guess, the tone of this book owes rather a large debt to a certain Mr. Hemingway, with the bulls and the machismo and lots of talk of blood pumping and staring down the barrels of things, which, rather pleasingly, is something van Mersbergen readily acknowledges:

He shows them a framed photograph that's screwed to the wall.
This is Esteban Domeño.
It's a portrait of a man with a dark moustache. He's wearing a black jacket and a hat.
Esteban, the man repeats. He sniffs. They even took his name from him.
What do you mean?
His name. Esteban Domeño. An American wrote a book about the fiesta. He's described Esteban's death, but in the book he was called Vicente...Everyone goes to the bull running and they all know the name of Vicente Girones...

I enjoyed this contextual reference to The Sun Also Rises, which felt delightfully meta, and I enjoyed this book as a whole, especially as it progressed. 

My only bug-bear would be that the dialogue is not demarcated in any way, as there are no speech marks or anything, but this is not the only book guilty of that. I'd also have appreciated it if the language had been a bit less sparse - although an excellent imitation, I didn't hear a deep echoing sadness between the words, as I did when I read The Old Man and the Sea the other day - but it was a good fit for the topic and themes of the book, and added to the deliberate intensity of the experience. 

I look forward to the third book in the present series, Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig (FYI, I can't see that title without playing the Cabaret song in my head) and also the discussion post about the Male Dilemma series, which Sam will be hosting the Thursday after next.

Other readathon reviews:

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine) ¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (mine) ¦ (Sam's) 
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen (Sam's)

 Title: Tomorrow Pamplona
Author: Jan van Mersbergen, translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson
Date: Original 2007, translation 2011
Format: Paperback, 189 pages, and I was sent it by Peirene Press for review as part of this readathon series.

  





'The Inimitable Jeeves' by P.G. Wodehouse

Being in the midst of a readathon as I am, I picked The Inimitable Jeeves off the bookshelf for the perhaps-not-so-flattering reason that I knew I could skim through it quickly, therefore not interrupting my scheduled readathon flow. We have ten Jeeves & Wooster books in the house, all lined up on the shelf, a rainbow of colour, because I bought a collection for my husband for his last birthday: he loves P.G. Wodehouse and the abundance of sets available makes it feel either very silly or just foolhardy to buy them one by one. 

Rather confusingly, this is the first Jeeves & Wooster book listed on the list at the front of the book, but this book does not start at the beginning of the saga, where Jeeves and Wooster meet, as in the TV series; that takes place in another book altogether.

Not that that really matters though. In my mind, Jeeves & Wooster operates as a kind of early version of the American sitcom, with humour and exploits aplenty and a revolving set of regular and occasional guest characters, but you know that they will most likely make up and sort things out by the end of each episode/short story so they can start afresh next time. And the books aren't novels; they're actually just short stories and singular episodes arranged in some kind of order, in a rather arbitrary grouping. Therefore, it doesn't really matter that this is not the 'beginning' because the fact that they've met means they once met for the first time, and when they get to the point of sharing that with you it'll be as equally funny as if you'd started there first. So, good-natured hijinks aplenty, and an inertia worthy of The Simpsons. No wonder it worked so well as an actual sitcom :) I presume the fact that no-one ever ages, makes any major life decisions or dies is probably the reason that I read once that P.G. Wodehouse is the most read author amongst hospital inpatients, assuming as I am that all his books proceed along similar lines. I would tell you about the plot, but really, there's no need.

Also, these books are really, really funny. Totally shallow and full of fops and nincompoops doing silly, non-worthwhile things whilst speaking in cut-glass accents, but sweet and gentle and uniquely hilarious. The ultimate end-of-a-busy-day book, if you will. Bertie is adorably useless, all wide-eyed and Aunt-fearing, hanging out with his similarly foppish friends at their London club, unchanged from the first day at boarding school, and Jeeves is the omnipotent raised eyebrow, overseeing and only occasionally commenting whilst saving the day by exercising his formidable mind. I also sympathise with his hatred of purple socks and scarlet cummerbunds, and all the other garish articles Bertie dons - I raised pointed eyebrows myself at a number of my husband's corduroy shorts and multi-coloured rugby shirts before they quietly left the building. Also, there's a lot of a character called Bingo in this collection, a young chap with rather an excess of romantic feeling, which is nice as he's one of my favourites.

So, rather a muddled review, or not a review at all, as I have little criticism and no plot points to explore. Maybe the one point to take from this is that if you or a friend or relative have been a bit down lately, buy them this for Christmas. It's pretty much bright sunshine on a page.

Here's just a little sprinkling:

Title: The Inimitable Jeeves

Author: P. G. Wodehouse

Date: Originally 1923, this edition 2008

Publisher: Arrow

Format: Paperback, 253 pages, with a preview of Piccadilly Jim at the back, and I bought it.







Peirene Press Readathon, No. 5: 'Next World Novella' by Matthias Politycki

Today we are looking at book no. 4 in the Peirene Press series, Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki, which is the first of the 'Male Dilemma: Quests for Intimacy' series and post no. 5 of mine and Sam's epic Peirene Press Readathon; post no. 4 was a discussion post covering the 3 books of the 'Female Voices: Inner Realities' series.   

For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative European novellas which have not been translated into English prior to now. Peirene novellas are organised into groups of three because of thematic and other similarities, the idea being that they inform and comment on each other.

Next World Novella is about Hinrich Schepp, an ageing university Sinologist, and his wife Doro, who he finds dead at her desk at the very beginning of the book, having died in the act of editing some of his writing. He doesn't call an ambulance - clearly the moment for that has passed - and is surprised to find that she had been editing a forgotten fiction manuscript of his that he'd deemed to be a failure, so he'd never shown it to his wife. The story progresses therefore with her dead in the room beside him whilst he reads her comments on his semi-autobiographical manuscript and realises that in many ways both his wife and marriage were really not as they seemed. The story works as a story within a story, as excerpts of Hinrich's manuscript are inserted into the narrative so the reader can draw their own conclusions about Hinrich's rather pathetic mid-life crisis, whilst also reading Doro's increasingly harsh and damning comments upon it, which reveal that she knew much more of what was going on than Hinrich suspected. 

Never have a read a book where a dead character holds the story in such a choke-hold, or has so much to contribute: though dead, Doro is presented as a fascinating, beautiful, aristocratic woman who feared being alone in death so much that she married Hinrich, a promising but ultimately mediocre academic, abandoning her own burgeoning academic career in favour of raising their children and editing his papers. It is made clear that their channels of communication dwindled over the course of their marriage to the extent that Hinrich, re-enamoured with life after mid-aged laser eye surgery, spends his night drinking and mooning over a waitress without realising the effect that this is having on both his marriage or his wife. The fact that Doro is lying dead, first at the desk, then rearranged on the chaise longue, whilst he realises this lends a macabre, slightly comical air to the story, although I felt full-on nauseated when a fly crawls out of her nostril, and I could happily live my life without reading about the details of livor and rigor mortis ever again, thank you very much.

I enjoyed the tone of this book - it is wry, ironic and slightly mystical - and thought a lot was added by the Chinese elements that quietly illuminate parts of the story. The Sinology department described tallies closely with my memory of four years studying in an East Asian Studies department, so there was an extra smile for me there too. The set-up was also very original, decaying bodies and all, and the book moved along at a good rate, with some great twists and turns. The characterisation is also great: Hinrich is utterly pathetic next to Doro's vengeful, circling anger, and both are very well-drawn.

I wasn't so sure about the motif of the lake that one must cross when one dies though, based on Arnold Böcklin's painting Isle of the Dead and presented as Doro's feared vision of the afterlife and also one of her main motivations for companionship: I found it hard to believe that she'd marry a man like Hinrich Schepp just for the peace of mind that they'd wait for each other in death, so neither one would have to cross the lake, where one experiences a second death, alone. I thought as an academic she'd been more inquiring about her fears, rather than coming to one slightly out-there conclusion. Also, I wasn't keen on the big twist at the end; I found it undermined the main elements of the story in an unnecessary and, frankly, slightly bewildering way, which also felt a bit dated.

So, this is a good read with an unusual and well-thought-out set-up and tone, but for me the novella was let down by several of the plot points. Never will I allow flower stems to go fusty in a vase again though, that's for sure!

Previous Peirene post readathon links:

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine) ¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (Sam's)

Title: Next World Novella
Author: Matthias Politycki, translated from the German by Anthea Bell 
Date: Original version 2009, translation 2011
Format: Paperback, 138 pages and I was sent it by Peirene Press as part of this readathon series.








Peirene Press Readathon, No.4: 'Female Voices' Discussion Post

Today's post is of a different kind: Sam and I are continuing our epic Peirene readathon but rather than reviewing the next in the series, we are going to discuss the three books that have just been, which comprise the 'Female Voice' series; these are Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi, Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal and Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (see the bottom of the page for our review links).  

For those who don't know, Peirene Press is a small London publishing house which specialises in publishing the most celebrated and innovative European novellas which have not been translated into English prior to now. Peirene novellas are organised into groups of three because of thematic and other similarities, the idea being that they inform and comment on each other. 
  
L: Hi Sam, how are you? Let's start by reiterating our favourites and why that is...

S: So,  although I enjoyed all three, my favourite was Beyond the Sea. I think books touch us the most when there is something we can relate to and I've met many mothers a bit like the mother from the story, who are well meaning but finding it hard to cope with life. I often deal as a teacher with the children of parents like this - children who never have the correct school uniform, turn up late for school, don't read with their parents etc. so I found it really powerful to read from the mother's point of view. I think I can guess your favourite, Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman? And I'm guessing your reasons are similar to mine?

L: Yep, you're right, and yes, my reasons are very similar - empathy and personal experience! I won't go into it again as I talked at length about it in my actual review post, but, like the protagonist, I have been somewhat abandoned in a foreign country, knowing very few people and not speaking the language, whilst my husband has been off at war, and so every word of Margarethe's story rang a small, sad, nostalgic bell within my mind, and I understand the way in which she is fooling herself, and why. I also really enjoyed all three, and although I preferred Beside the Sea to Stone in a Landslide upon immediate reading, it's actually Stone in a Landslide that's stayed with me and that I remember most fondly, so I suppose that would be my second favourite!

It's interesting though, although perhaps not wholly surprising, to note that that our favourites were the ones that tallied most with our own personal experience; do you think that would be so much the case if these were male voices/characters, rather than female?

S: I'm hoping I will have the same connection with the male characters in the next series of books. Many of the female voices focused on motherhood, which I have no experience of, but I could still relate to the characters. I don't know if I will find the male voices as powerful as the female ones, but I'm hoping to see something of the universal human experience in them.

L: Mmm, I agree. Looking at it objectively, if the writing is of the highest quality, the universal human experience element you talk of should allow us to bond as closely with the male voices as the female, but I think we'd both acknowledge that this is not always the case when reading cross-gender, and also that the actual content and narrative of the novellas will also play a big part in that. Good writing and characterisation that central to making a reader bond to a character though, and I don't doubt we'll have that!

Looking at these three books as a group, how representative do you think these stories are of women (!) and of stories written by and about women as a whole?

S: I don't think any series of three books could represent women! Also, the three women were all in extreme circumstances (mental health difficulties and war), which makes them not representative of women in thankfully more ordinary situations. But there were a lot of themes that will resonate with women and humanity as a whole - love, loss, tragedy etc. I think it would have been nice to have one female voice that wasn't about being a mother (Conxa's story was the closest to this), as often women are reduced to mothers and there is so much more to us than that. Would you agree?

L: Definitely. Women get put into so many simplified roles, be it the shopaholic airhead, the put-upon mothers, the icy, career-driven, ball-breaking older woman who will eventually admit that they regret 'not giving love a chance!' or, finally, grandmothers who are either bitter and reproachful, or rosy-cheeked cake-making martyrs who are slightly forgotten at the hub of the home and ask nothing for themselves. Men don't get characterised like this, I don't think. But, saying that, these are not simple, stereotypical women - far from it - and their presentation in these novellas is both impeccable and sympathetic,and I suppose that's better criteria for selecting a novella for publication than thinking 'I must have a female voice in her twenties, I must have one in her forties, and I must have one that's single.' 

However, it is family that defines all three of these women, and it is largely the absence of husbands and fathers that cause them their troubles...but then the majority of women do marry and have children and I suppose for many their most vivid experience comes from instants or upsets in romantic or familial love...maybe we could request that an upcoming trio be an addendum to this, following independent, non-maternal female characters? I personally am a bit disheartened, on reflection, that all three stories talk about women in relation to their husbands and children; I bet that the next three protagonists are not presented as strongly in relation to their children and wives.

Anyway, to happier topics: did you have a favourite, or a least favourite, scene or passage from the three?

S: A scene that really affected me was the scene in Beyond the Sea where the mother arrives at the seaside resort with high expectations only to be greeted with a rainy, dark, grotty town and a grimy hotel. We've all experienced that let down feeling when something isn't what you expected. What was your favourite scene?

L: Although I found it deeply upsetting, I would have to pick the closing scenes of Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, as I was quite overwhelmed by the power of the Bach music crescendo juxtaposed so skilfully against the emotional climax of the book. Sad times! I also adored all the descriptions of Conxa in the fields, and also the scene in which she first dances with Jaume. I found these scenes so very vivid.

Considering that these novellas are linked as a thematic trio, did you see any marked similarities between them, or any issues on which they all had something to say? Any differences, also? Why do think that is?

S: One theme I identified was women under pressure, and the resilience we can show under difficult circumstances. The narrators of all three books also had a distinct, clear voice, something that you don't see in all novels. I'm hoping the male voices in the next series will be just as developed and powerful. Did you spot any common issues?

L: The main one for me was the overwhelming impact that men, or the absence of them, had on these women's lives, and how often they felt and were powerless to change their circumstances, bound by relationships or to a particular place in a way that the men didn't seem to be. The father runs off so the mother can't in Beside the Sea, Jaume travels, learns and fights whilst Conxa must live at home with one family member or another, and Margarethe must wait for the inevitable event of her baby's birth, and she must cope with that, no matter the truths that on some level she already knows. Resilience too, I absolutely agree, in such awful situations. Not to get too lit studies for a second, but the trio really put me in mind of Virginia Woolf's famous quote 

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an unimportant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room

because another common theme is that these women are often circling wildly within their own heads, drowning often in feeling, but their perils are reactive, not active. Two of the three are literally in the midst of war, but theirs is the social history, not an account of the battlefield. Not that these books have not been marvellously well-reviewed of course, lol.

As a final thought, which of these three would you recommend to your mother/a parent? Your sister (congrats on your nephew!)? A colleague? Someone you're not close to? And why?

S: As my sister has only been a mother for a week, I wouldn't want to scare her with Beyond the Sea! I think my Mum would enjoy Stone in a Landslide as it's more of a retrospective on a whole life and that would appeal to her. To be honest, all three are well written so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to others.

L: Good call about your sister! I think Stone in a Landslide for my mother too, as it's the most classical structure and narrative; Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman to a colleague or a close friend as I'll look so clever, considering the radical one-sentence structure,  and also many of my friends have similar experiences as me to draw on, and I think Beside the Sea for someone I'm not close to as it's such a strong story, with such a horrifying resolution, that it might give us something to talk about.

 Come back next Thursday for our thoughts on the first of the next trio, 'Male Dilemma', which is Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki.

Review links:

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (mine) ¦(Sam's)
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius (mine) ¦ (Sam's)
  





'The End of Everything' by Megan Abbott

I bought The End of Everything by Megan Abbott upon seeing it in the window of my local charity shop, having read about her newest novel, Dare Me, on The Million's Most Anticipated List back in July this year. Megan Abbott is an enormously well-regarded crime writer in many circles and I was excited to see what all the fuss was about.

The End of Everything, Abbott's sixth novel, is the fractured, complex story of Evie and Lizzie, two incredibly close teenage friends who do everything together until Evie suddenly disappears from their quiet suburban street. This horrific, life-changing occurrence leads Lizzie to question everything about the people around her, and also her relationship with Evie, given the unsavoury and confusing truths that steadily emerge.

I thought this book was beautifully, if  breathlessly, written, and captures the manic, deceptive confusion of Lizzie, the main character, who narrates the story to the reader in moment-to-moment retrospect both before and after Evie's disappearance. That same breathlessness has been a common feature of a few books I've read lately - namely, Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman and Beside the Sea - so to my mind, considering the content of the other titles also, this type of heavily comma-ed, freely associating narration is becoming the mark of a female narrator drowning in their circumstance:

Voices pitchy, giddy, raving, we are all chanting that deathly chant that twists, knifelike, in the ear of the appointed victim. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, five o'clock...And it's Evie, she's it, lost at choosies, and now it will be her doom. But she's a good hider, the best I've ever seen, and I predict wild surprises, expect to find her rolled under a saggy front porch or buried under three inches of dirt in Mom's own frilly flower bed.

The characterisation in this book is great - the few primary characters are vivid and well-drawn - and the incessant darkness and slightly unreliable narration gave me a nightmare or two and drove the my morbid curiosity right through to the end. A great twist comes about two-thirds of the way through which sends the book off in an unexpected direction, and the revelations and final conclusion are all expertly handled. Abbott has a multitude of haunting and perceptive things to say about the burgeoning sexuality of teenage girls, sibling rivalry, the secrets of those closest to you, and also about the varying relationships that girls can have with their fathers.

This was a dark, immersive read which is beautifully written and fulfils its potential, but I was surprised to find that it left my psyche much sooner than anticipated. I'm keen to read other Megan Abbott books, having enjoyed this, but I may well donate this book to the charity shop where I found it as I feel no keen need to keep it near or to plan a re-read. I think it's probably fair to say that I respected it for its objective literary excellence, rather than took it to heart for its emotional impact, but it's a good book all the same.

Title: The End of Everything
Author: Megan Abbott
Publisher: Picador
Date: 2011
Format: 246 pages, paperback, and I bought it.