LITERARY FICTION
NORMAL WOMEN by Ainslie Hogarth
(Atlantic €16.79, 320pp) NEW motherhood in all its mesh-implanting, incontinence-inducing horror and glory is both skewered and celebrated in this disorderly, ultimately disappointing caper from the acclaimed author Ainslie Hogarth.
Dani, the adoring mother of enchanting Lotte, stays at home going out of her mind with boredom while her property developer husband Clark does important things in the office.
Yet when she hears about The Temple, a mysterious institution run by charismatic, confident women who believe in sexual healing as a therapeutic cure for toxic masculinity, her interest is piqued.
But then its leader Renata goes missing. Could Clark, who lets slip that his company is interested in buying the building housing The Temple, possibly have something to do with it?
Alas the muddled whys and wherefores, not to mention a wonky argument, begin to feel as incidental as Hogarth’s increasingly limp take on the gender wars in a superficially sparkling novel that fails to live up to its promise.
RABBIT HOLE by Kate Brody
(Bloomsbury €21, 384pp)
ON THE tenth anniversary of her sister Angie’s disappearance, Teddy’s father drives his car off a bridge. Convinced she doesn’t need to take time from her teaching job to grieve, Teddy — a hot mess if ever there was one — throws herself into trying, once again, to discover what happened the night Angie vanished after a party.
Her investigations lead her into the desolate netherworld of Reddit conspiracy theorists, the bed of her father’s former drug supplier, and the platonic arms of Mickey, a young college student obsessed for years with the case, who eagerly offers to help Teddy explore every avenue.
Teddy’s own obsession distorts her perspective of what is rational and reasonable, and blinds her to something that is obvious to the reader early on.
Yet there is precious little tension in a novel that buys wholeheartedly into its own implausible plotting and which offers resolution ultimately of the most trite and unsatisfying kind. Hard work.
HARD BY A GREAT FOREST
by Leo Vardiashvili (Bloomsbury €21, 352pp) FOLLOWING the Russian invasion of Georgia in 1991, Saba escapes to England with his brother and father, leaving his mother Eka behind. Some two decades later, his father returns home, insisting his sons do not try to find him, prompting Saba’s elder brother Sandro to immediately attempt to track him down.
Soon, Saba has also returned to his homeland — much changed after years of war and regeneration — to discover that Sandro, who has also disappeared, has left a mysterious bread-crumb trail of clues that only Saba can decipher. Yet in a country traumatised by a history of invasion, occupation, civil war and political corruption, it’s hard to know who to trust. What’s more the police are watching Saba’s every move.
Hard By A Great Forest has the offbeat lucidity of a waking dream, as Saba hears the voices of the vanished on every street corner, and where the legacy of war manifests itself in surreal and horrific ways.
It’s tough going at times but, in a novel that indeed resembles a walk through a dark forest, Vardiashvili’s imaginative powers render his timely subject matter at once strange, disorientating and — occasionally — even magical.