LITERARY FICTION
EVERYTHING UNDER by Daisy Johnson
(Cape €20.99) DAISY JOHNSON made her prize-winning debut last year with Fen, a collection of tales as uncanny as the East Anglian landscape in which they were rooted. Her first novel confirms not just her talent, but her ambition: heading the ‘thanks’ on the acknowledgements page are Sophocles and Ted Hughes.
At the centre of the action is lexicographer Gretel, raised on a houseboat and then abandoned by her wild and — at times — terrifying mother, Sarah.
Now, after 16 years, Sarah has reemerged, and Gretel is desperate to solve the riddle of their terror-stalked past before her mother succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease.
Gradually it becomes clear that this is a version of the Oedipus myth, although it’s a shame that the narrative, with its shape-shifting cast and focus-switching chapters, often ends up as murky as its doomed characters’ understanding.
Nevertheless, Johnson’s dense, begrimed retelling hums with an electricity pylon-charge of danger, and her sentences repeatedly flare with startling, visceral coinages.
CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN by Sayaka Murata
(Portobello €14.60) THERE are few taboos in contemporary fiction, yet novelists often steer clear of portraying the humdrum world of work. Not so Sayaka Murata who, as well as being a Japanese literary superstar, also happens to be a part-time convenience store employee. In this short, deadpan gem, we’re introduced to Keiko, a strange child who, in adulthood, is convinced she needs to be ‘cured’. Then she finds a job at the Hiromachi Station Smile Mart and everything falls into place: all she has to do is follow the manual and copy her co-workers. Eighteen years later, however, it’s her unwavering dedication that’s raising eyebrows: why can’t she just find a man and settle down?
Taking aim at the neatly pre-packaged narratives into which 30-something women are expected to fit, Murata slyly but determinedly defies her readers’ expectations. This is a true original.
THE GREAT LEVEL by Stella Tillyard
(Chatto €15.40) HISTORIAN Stella Tillyard’s first fictional outing, Tides Of War, earned her a 2012 Orange Prize nomination. Her second novel similarly showcases her skills as a chronicler of period and place — or rather places, since the action is split between an England scarred and reeling from the Civil War and the New World settlement on the brink of becoming New York.
It’s to the latter that Dutch engineer Jan Brunt has moved following the biggest commission of his career: draining England’s ague-plagued fens. His project there was complicated by mistrustful locals and the mysterious Eliza, with whom he was instantly smitten.
Fans of Rose Tremain will find much to admire in Tillyard’s richly detailed and atmospheric romance, but the lack of any sense of urgency is exacerbated by Jan’s increasingly pacific Pantheism.
It’s therefore a pleasant surprise when the narrative reins are briefly assumed, rather too late in the day, by Eliza, who transforms from a cypher into a heroine whose smart and fierce independence would have made her a considerably more interesting choice of lead.