LITERARY FICTION
NEVER ANYONE BUT YOU by Rupert Thomson
(Corsair £18.99) RUPERT THOMSON, whose novel The Insult was a favourite of David Bowie’s, is one of those rare authors it’s impossible to pigeonhole.
It’s little wonder, then, that for his evocative latest, he’s drawn to the true-life story of two French artists intent on defying convention. Coming of age in the early 1900s, shy Suzanne is attracted to Lucie, the volatile daughter of a Jewish newspaper magnate.
Embarking on a secret affair, they move to Paris to pursue their careers, reinventing themselves as ‘Marcel’ and ‘Claude’ and rubbing shoulders with the stars of Surrealism. But there’s no escaping the war and the book’s second act takes place in Jersey, where the two undertake increasingly perilous acts of resistance.
It’s sensational stuff, undoubtedly, but Thomson’s skill shows in his restraint — there’s an authenticity to the dramatic ebb and flow and a slight detachment to Suzanne’s retrospective narrative gaze that becomes increasingly poignant with the passing years.
Sensitively realised, but hugely powerful, it’s a reminder of how, paradoxically, we need others to become ourselves.
THE PAPER LOVERS by Gerard Woodward
(Picador £16.99) THE marriage of a poet and a paper-maker is the focus here. It’s a metaphorrich pairing that offers the Booker-shortlisted Woodward plenty of opportunities to highlight the ways we misread one another as he pursues his themes of art, faith and obsession.
The poet, Arnold Proctor, is rather a sad sack, although his marriage to Polly is happy until the advent of goldenhaired Vera. (That it’s a sewing machine that brings Vera over the Proctors’ threshold, and which thus marks the start of the marital unravelling, is typical of this mordantly ironic novel.)
Vera and Arnold begin a passionate affair. There are just two impediments: Vera’s faith, which atheist Arnold finds hard to swallow, and a fragile young man whose poems Arnold dismissed, but who has inconveniently reappeared.
Paper, we’re reminded at one point, has an edge, and there are plenty of those to Woodward’s discomforting tale, although its punchline is perhaps a tiny bit too neat.
THE NINE-CHAMBERED HEART
(The Borough Press £9.99) THE woman at the heart of this brief novel- infragments is tantalisingly elusive, her story emerging only through the voices of those who have loved or been loved by her.
A school art teacher is the first, although his professional concern seems initially to inspire only loathing in his young charge. (Although we spend some 30-odd years in her company, Pariat’s protagonist is never named.)
We quickly gather that she has been scarred by often-absent parents and this damage persists into adolescence and adulthood as she drifts into a publishing career and a series of liaisons.
It’s the artful pleating of this subtle, psychologically astute novel that sets it apart, each shard-like vignette deepening our concern for its central character as we see into her lovers’ hearts and minds. Boldly, however, Pariat preserves the puzzle of the woman’s identity and you leave her to her fate with a genuine pang.