LITERARY FICTION
THE WALL by John Lanchester
(Faber €18.20 ) HAVING penned a Dickensian, post-financial crash, state-of-the-nation bestseller in 2012’s Capital, John Lanchester has turned his attentions to the migrant crisis, global warming and the dire generational rift created by Brexit. The results are cracking.
Set in the not-too-distant future, The Wall follows ‘Chewy’ Kavanagh, a young man obliged to patrol the massive coastal defence that has been erected to protect Britain from the ‘Others’ — migrants fleeing the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
Not that life on these shores is particularly appealing: there’s capital punishment, slavery and microchips.
Lanchester doesn’t waste words on any of this, keeping up the pace and turning up the heat as Chewy and his new girlfriend find themselves in ever-deeper trouble.
But, if his characters feel sketched in, the grim details — vanished beaches, fractured families — are all chillingly on target, as we race towards a conclusion that’s as satisfying as it is comfortless.
GOLDEN CHILD by Claire Adam
(Faber €17.99) SET in Eighties Trinidad, this is the story of twins Peter and Paul. The former is an academic prodigy and the apple of their father Clyde’s eye; the latter is a shy, sensitive boy whom Clyde believes is ‘retarded’.
We begin with 13-year-old Paul’s disappearance, but soon rewind back to the twins’ birth, moving fluidly between generations and perspectives as painful knots of love, blood, ambition and pride are exposed.
Throughout, the dialogue is superb and the prose lean, but immersive: you can all but touch the vine-entwined street lamps and even the family dogs have distinct personalities.
There’s high drama, too: car crashes, kidnappings, an agonising, edge-of-seat denouement — but it’s Adam’s striving, suffering, heartbreaking characters who make this so hard to put down.
Utterly unsentimental and luminously empathic, this is a seriously impressive first novel.
SLACK-TIDE by Elanor Dymott
(Cape €18.20) ECHOES of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy can be detected in this tale of a doomed whirlwind romance: there’s measured prose, a narrator who’s also an author, the cool parsing of experience and encounters.
Unfortunately, though, Slack-Tide lacks the substance of Cusk’s superb series.
Elizabeth, 40, is looking back on her brief affair with fiftysomething Robert. He is an architect with an improbable resemblance to Keanu Reeves who has separated from his wife. He’s also a keen sailor — and it’s how to navigate the choppy waters of mismatched desire that is Dymott’s main concern.
Initially, Elizabeth finds Robert’s extravagant, if not downright creepy, attentions overwhelming. But she’s longing for a child, having miscarried some years before. Robert, meanwhile, talks about his ex-wife in the firstperson plural and can’t decide about having a child with Elizabeth.
There are a few heart-wrenching moments, but little to leave a lasting impression — plus I never knew whether I was meant to feel that Elizabeth had a lucky escape.