You may have seen that Waterstone's are promoting eleven first novels which are being published over the coming months, and this is a worthwhile initiative to help establish new writers of talent by giving them valuable exposure. I've read one of the eleven and I have another one waiting, so it will be interesting to see how they compare with one another and what the overall standard is likely to be.
Still to be read is Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman which was the subject of a 12-way bidding war among publishers. This tells the story of eleven-year-old Harrison Opuku who has arrived in Britain from Ghana with his mother and sister. Life on an inner-city housing estate takes a new turn for Harri when a boy is murdered and the police appeal for witnesses. Harri decides to start an investigation of his own and in doing so "he endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to try to keep them safe." Clare Morrall says it's "a powerful and impressive novel... utterly convincing and deeply moving."
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman is a book which some readers will love but which others will find goes wide of the mark. It follows a family, specifically young Elly and her brother Joe, over the course of thirty or so years, beginning in the late 1960s, and there's no doubt that it's a touching story with a lot of humour which reads well and quickly, but ... how best to describe the effect? Imagine a Christmas tree with as many baubles and bits of tinsel as you can cram onto it, every branch hung with gaudy this and kitschy that, the whole strung with multi-coloured lights - that's how the book came across to me. There are 'issues' and dramatic moments galore, from child abuse to domestic violence, kidnap to life-changing windfall. As the years go by so real-life events add their glow to that flashing fairylight narrative, until we reach a major one on which hangs the later plot.
For me it was all just too much, but more than that, I found I didn't care about the characters enough; too bound up in themselves and their problems, they lacked sympathy, and the quirky and the kooky will take you only so far. Maybe I am just the wrong reader for this book, but what I wanted to see was some restraint - rein in the plot, curb the characters' excesses, calm the whole thing down a bit. We're back to editing again, that necessary process of distillation which can turn a good idea into a great piece of writing; like the Christmas tree, the book's unbalanced, and while much of what it contains could look fine in a less busy setting, altogether it jars. I'm sounding uncharacteristically negative here (and probably a terrible old fogey), but I felt the good points - and Sarah Winman can certainly tell a story - were almost lost among all the 'stuff'.
Thanks for a good and critical review
Posted by: Willa | 02 February 2011 at 08:41 AM
In the novel you have read, does your desire to rein the characters and plot in a bit stem from a view that it isn't done well enough rather than it shouldn't be done that way? I was thinking of the extraordinary characters and the dramatic plot in The Master and Margarita as an example of a great book where it all works.
Posted by: Dark Puss | 02 February 2011 at 12:54 PM
That's a good question, Dark Puss, and I think the answer is a bit of both.
Posted by: Cornflower | 02 February 2011 at 01:19 PM
I did smile at the notion that Waterstone's was supporting some new writers this year. Isn't that part of the role of being a bookseller; to bring new writers to people's attention? It's what many independent booksellers spend large parts of their working lives doing...
There's a proof of When God Was A Rabbit on my shelf - I'll take a look soon and see if my thoughts chime with yours.
Posted by: Vanessa | 03 February 2011 at 04:26 PM