LITERARY FICTION
SING, UNBURIED, SING by Jesmyn Ward
(Bloomsbury £16.99) JESMYN WARD’S Salvage The Bones won America’s prestigious National Book Award in 2011. This new novel, which has earned comparisons with Toni Morrison’s Beloved, has had Margaret Atwood tweeting her approval.
At its heart is 13-year-old Jojo, his baby sister and his drug-abusing mother, Leonie. Leonie is black; Jojo’s father is white, and soon to be released from prison.
All that stands in the way of a reunion is a lengthy road trip.
But the narrative is complicated by the presence of two unquiet ghosts: one is Leonie’s murdered brother; the other, a former inmate of the State Penitentiary who is barely older than Jojo.
Ward is a lyrical, visceral storyteller, one who is as adept at conveying the tenderness of sibling love as the terror and brutality of racist violence.
Perhaps most impressive, however, is her compassion not just for Jojo, but for his far less lovable mother.
Leonie’s failings would usually see her damned — here, permitted sufficient selfawareness to recognise her flaws, as well as a voice to tell her own story, it is sorrow and sympathy that we feel.
LOVE & FAME by Susie Boyt
(Virago £14.99) FORGET the title: grief and anxiety are Boyt’s primary concerns. Newlywed Eve is married to an expert who writes about stress, an easy-going type whose thesis is that fear is not to be feared.
Eve, whose stellar stage career was ended by stage fright, isn’t convinced. Moreover, she is aware of the disappointment she has caused her esteemed actor father, John.
Then comes the kicker: John dies suddenly, throwing Eve into the orbit of Beatrice and Rebecca, sisters whose lives have also been shaped by loss.
Boyt’s trick is to turn all of this into something surprisingly breezy, as witty as it is raw. She is a ruthless skewerer of banalities and platitudes, and an exchange concerning a beyond-satire TV producer determined to help John’s fans ‘move on’ is worth the cover price alone.
Certain plot strands fail to entirely deliver, but Boyt tackles life’s knottier questions — is it better to fight, or to respect, one’s feelings? Can suffering be improving? — with feeling and verve.
THE RULES OF MAGIC by Alice Hoffman
(Scribner £16.99) THIS slightly oblique prequel to Practical Magic is as efficient a slice of escapism as you would expect from Hoffman. Rather than focusing on the heroines of the original novel, here she serves up the story of their aunts and uncle, siblings Franny, Jet and Vincent Owens.
The rules of magic are set down for the siblings from day one — no cats, no crows, no candles. But it’s the family curse that is the source of the teenage trio’s biggest headache: no falling in love.
Naturally, this all goes by the board and romantic entanglements soon ensue.
Hoffman’s skill is to ground her light-asa-feather tale in a very specific time and place: Manhattan in the Sixties. Wisely, she doesn’t rely on the momentous times to do too much work, but the heady atmospherics are expertly interwoven.