LITERARY FICTION
WEST by Carys Davies
(Granta £12.99) SET in 1815 in Frontier America, this economical first novel by acclaimed short story writer Davies can be read in a sitting, but has the scope and resonance of an epic.
Not a word is wasted as we follow widowed settler Cy Bellman on his journey west across the continent in search of the ‘monsters’ whose existence appears to him to be confirmed by recent skeletal discoveries in Kentucky.
However, back at home in Pennsylvania, his young daughter Bess has attracted the attention of predatory ranch-hand Elmer Jackson, and without her father to defend her, her situation looks increasingly dire.
The result is a page-turner that can stop you in your tracks to linger over a sentence. (A lesser novel might, in fact, be capsized by their impact.) It’s a bravura performance — seasons come and go in a handful of words and there are masterful shifts of perspective and tense — but Davies’s artistry is matched by her storytelling powers, and her denouement is cheer-raisingly satisfying.
LET ME BE LIKE WATER by S.K. Perry
(Melville House £14.99) PERRY’S plot sounds familiar: grief-stricken heroine finds comfort in friendship and food. Yet partly thanks to the nervy authenticity of its narrator’s voice, this novel never feels formulaic.
The setting is Brighton, where twentysomething songwriter Holly has moved in the wake of her boyfriend Sam’s tragic death. Following a chance encounter with retired magician, parttime baker and book-club host Frank — who, fortunately, doesn’t loom as large as you might fear — she is soon adopted by a new circle of friends, attractive Danny among them.
There’s little in the way of action, but the brevity of the numbered fragments of narrative, together with regular flashbacks to Holly and Sam’s developing romance, keep things moving along.
Raw, visceral and confident enough to resist the neat ending that beckons, this is an affecting debut.
THE VALLEY AT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD by Malachy Tallack
(Canongate £14.99) THE focal point of this thoughtful first novel is not a lush equatorial vale, but a secluded spot on the west coast of Shetland, a place of refuge to some and of last resort to others.
For widowed novelist Alice, the valley provides both sanctuary and a sense of purpose: having devoted herself to exhaustively chronicling its history, she is now nearing the end of her task.
Retired crofter David is also contemplating the end of an era following his daughter’s departure for the mainland and the death of the valley’s eldest inhabitant, while newcomer Sandy finds himself on precarious ground as he struggles with his feelings for a married stranger.
Tallack’s concern here is with the push and pull of larger forces — love, grief, guilt, need, the idea of home itself. They’re potent themes that could, but rarely do, overshadow characters about which he writes with palpable tenderness. A native of Shetland himself, he’s a sharp-eyed and evocative painter of place, and my only quibble was with the phonetically spelled dialogue which, while intended to give an authentic tang, is sadly something of a distraction.