When boundaries blur: Alone, The North Shore & A Burning

20/4/2023

When I blog about boundaries, I’m usually berating chaotic fictional therapists. Not today. These three intriguing novels are about the liminal space between plant and human; reality and fantasy; and sanity and scapegoating within the political sphere. My short reviews should help you decide whether to cross the threshold.

The North Shore by Ben Tufnell

A boy discovers a body on a Norfolk beach in the aftermath of a storm that has taken down trees, power lines and all sense of security. At first the man seems dead but, when the boy turns him over, a string of murky seaweed pours from his belly.

This could be the start of a mystery thriller, but the man never speaks and we don’t discover where he came from. You could call it a mysticalery as, before we’re told how things get worse, there’s a section of fragments that read as part myth, part memoir, about the merging of land and sea, and of plant and animal life.

It’s an easy read, with some lovely sentences, and the concept lingers in the mind, but don’t come to The North Shore for the plot. The publishers – Fleet who provided my advance proof copy – describe it as perfect for fans of Daisy Johnson, Max Porter and Fiona Mozley, none of whom I’ve read.

Alone by Carlotta Gurt translated by Adrian Nathan West

Mei is already at crisis point when she leaves her husband in Barcelona to stay in her childhood home in the forests of Catalunya. At forty-two, she is despairing of ever having children and, what’s more, she’s been made redundant from her editing job. So there’s no better time for her to write that novel that’s been nagging at her mind for years. But things are about to get much worse.

Solitude is great within reason, but don’t hermits go slightly mad? As I know only too well, absorption in the fictional world is a double-edged sword, blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy. Add in a pinch of grief and paranoia and we have a vivid novel about the human dilemma of balancing inside and outside, privacy and connection, civilisation and the wild. Thanks to publishers Europa editions for my first translation from Catalan.

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

Jivan lives with her parents in a Kolkata slum. Like many young people, she loves her smartphone and the sly cigarette. She’s also caring and socially conscious, supporting her illiterate parents through her job in a fashionable clothing store and giving English lessons to a marginalised neighbour, Lovely, an aspiring actress.

But Jivan is also a Muslim, a community scapegoated in contemporary India. When she’s spotted in the vicinity of a terrorist attack on a train, she’s arrested and charged with murder. Lovely is willing to testify in her defence, but who would believe a hijra[1] when a schoolteacher attests to Jivan’s dodgy character?

This powerful and page turning novel about injustice and political corruption is the best book I’ve read so far this year. The scenes in which the poor and uneducated are bribed to attend political rallies reminded me of my first contact with Hindu nationalism in rural Maharashtra one Christmas in the 1980s – although there wasn’t the violence at the event I witnessed – but it could equally apply to populist politics anywhere, especially the USA.

A Burning is published by Scribner in the UK and I borrowed my copy from the local library.

[1] See these posts for reviews of other novels about India's third gender:

https://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecdotal/two-novels-about-contemporary-inequalities

https://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecdotal/two-novels-and-a-short-story-about-marginalised-females

This week’s flash fiction challenge is for 99-word stories about something black eyed. I didn’t find that easy until, inspired by The North Shore and a short story and working on about poison plants (the latter less relevant), I went silly.

Black-eyed Susan

Helping her grandmother with the altar flowers, Susie saw a vision of her future. From that day onwards, she wore the colours of rudbeckia hirta: custard yellow and dark brown. Her mother envisaged her as a florist in the shopping mall. Her dad hoped she’d be a horticulturist in the glasshouse at Kew. Or perhaps she’d be an apiarist, the bees loved her scent.

In her teens, Susie turned weirder. Sleeping and eating in the garden, however foul the weather. Indoors, she kept her feet in a basin of water. Her destiny to morph into her namesake: a flower.

2 Comments

Norah Colvin

1/5/2023 12:21:42 pm

I found some appeal in your review of the North Shore, and then even more in A Burning, since its your favourite read of the year so far. That's a good recommendation.
I enjoyed your flash and its humorous conclusion. I see the connection with the North Shore. The link is made easier with the flower's name too. I'd contemplated writing about a flower in my parents' garden when I was growing up. They called it the black-eyed Susan but it was different from the one you describe and the ones that came up when I searched the internet. It was a pretty purple flower. It wonder what it was really called. Maybe it morphed too.
PS I enjoyed what you wrote about Lyrics for the Loved Ones in the newsletter I received today. Very intriguing.

Anne Goodwin

5/5/2023 04:58:30 pm

Interesting, as in my head black eyed Susan was different to what I found when I looked it up – not sure was purple, however.
Glad you liked the newsletter.