Dark, deadpan humour imbues talented author’s latest work
Some say Irish writers exist to save the English language from the English. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the shape of prose, poetry and drama in English without the work of authors like James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yeats and Colm Toibin. Without the Irish, English-language writing would have far less lyricism, humour and propulsive energy.
Add to this honoured list the name of Anakana Schofield.
Born to an Irish mother in Britain, the Vancouver-based Schofield is impressively prolific, the author of three novels including her hilarious and stellar 2012 debut Malarky, 2015’s dark and disturbing Martin John and, released Friday, Bina: A Novel in Warnings.
Schofield’s talents have not gone unnoticed. Malarky won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the 2013 Debut-Litzer Prize for fiction in the U.S. Martin John was shortlisted for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2016 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and Goldsmiths Prize and the 2017 ReLit Award.
Imagine, if you can, Beckett reborn as a 21st-century woman and you will have an approximation of the literary pleasures on offer in a Schofield novel. Hers is a distinctive, deadpan prose, echoing with menace, laced with black humour.
The novel is a bit like a tough-minded, feminist Waiting for Godot rendered in suggestive, postmodern fragments that imply narratives of violence against women, assisted suicide, death, friendship and madness. This is
the odd voice that made Malarky such an impressive debut and it is, if anything, even funnier and more disturbing in Martin John and Bina: A Novel in Warnings.
Here is an example, as the eponymous narrator introduces herself to the reader:
“My name is Bina and I am a very busy woman. That’s Bye-na, not Beena. I don’t know who Beena is but I expect she is having a happy life. I don’t know who you are, or the state of your life. But if you’ve come this way to listen to me, your life will undoubtedly get worse. I’m here to warn you.”
Add to her warnings her “remarkings” and you have the bulk of what Bina has to tell the reader. She is a woman who has had enough and the book is a highly entertaining testament to all the absurd buffetings she has endured. Highly recommended.