Immersive reads to get lost in – part one
Hankering for some escapism of the literature variety? Same. In our office, we turn to Jake Elliot for our book recommendations as, with an MA in English Literature and bylines in The Times Literary Supplement, The Poetry Review and The Quietus, he’s never short of an opinion, and has a masterful ability to match us with exactly what we were looking for. Here, Jake shares his selection of the best immersive reads to get lost in during these strange and uncertain times. Check back next week for part two.
Verses After Dusk by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
This book was published alongside Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition of the same name at the Serpentine Gallery in 2015. As well as being one of the greatest living figurative painters, she is also an avid writer of short stories, which are published here alongside her ‘imaginary portraits’ in a beautiful volume by Koenig Books.
I probably return to this book more than any other on my shelves. The stories seem to suggest strange, different meanings for the undefined space her figures occupy. But this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what she’s really up to. The masterful critic Hilton Als has a little essay at the back, he gets what it’s about. If you’re still not sure, read Zadie Smith on Yiadom-Boakye here.
Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector (translated by Katrina Dodson)
I appreciate that life in these strange circumstances doesn’t always mean long uninterrupted periods of ‘down time’. Many of us will be working harder than ever. With that in mind, I’d like to recommend this collection of short stories by the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector. There are 85 stories here, digestible in short sittings and encompassing a body of work which made her into a literary legend (in 1943, her debut novel was called “the greatest novel a woman has ever written in the Portuguese language”). Featuring teenage sexual awakening, the shattering epiphanies of housewives, and elderly people who simply don’t know what to do with themselves, this is a provocative collection, filled with snatched glances and a deep, unsteady kind of knowing.
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
This novel is gleefully cruel. The New Yorker recently described Moshfegh’s fiction as “refined and depraved.” I’d agree with that. Given our current circumstances, perhaps her follow-up ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ would’ve been a more obvious choice, but Eileen is an addictive psychological thriller, a skilful blend of noir and detective fiction: it is thrilling. The eponymous hero is a depressed prison secretary living in mid-sixties Massachusetts. She is angry, messy, hilarious, vicious and ultimately criminal in her behaviour. I liked this book too much. Read more about Ottessa Moshfegh in this great New Yorker profile from 2018.
Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music by Michael Robbins
The poet Michael Robbins explores the ways that art can help us make sense of the world. Ranging from Prince, to Def Leppard, Lucille Clifton to Frederick Seidel, the movement of Robbins’s prose is vitalising. He turns on a point from Taylor Swift (whom he loves) to W.B. Yeats; he deftly grafts a meditation on poet Juliana Spahr with different subsets of Scandinavian Black Metal, and he does this because he considers them part of the same tradition; he does it because he thinks and feels in the language of pop and poetry. This book will remind you of a rant with your smartest friend, before you had any idea that ‘Houseparty’ existed.
Self-Portrait by Celia Paul
This wonderful memoir by the artist Celia Paul is designed as a corrective. It’s a historic diary, filled with paintings and photographs, intended to gently help with a misunderstanding: namely, the assumption that Paul is a supporting character in the life of Lucian Freud (with whom she had a long relationship and a child). Freud does loom over the book (his treatment of women was typically vile) but Paul’s writing – drawing on her diaries from their first meeting at the Slade – reframes a tragic trajectory in insightful and surprising ways. If you’re curious about this book, you can listen to Celia Paul in conversation with curator Catherine Lambert at the London Review Bookshop here.
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño (translated by Natasha Wimmer)
This is the literary equivalent of a rip-roaring, sun-soaked road movie. The backdrop is Mexico City in the 1970s and the characters are young, violent gangs of impossibly cool Mexican poets. Some of the set-scenes are indelibly printed in my memory. This is exactly the type of novel that will whisk you from your sagging couch in SE15, to a cliff top on a Mexican peninsula, salt-spray in your face, gazing down at two figures, striding towards each other on a deserted beach, each brandishing a gun. Bolaño died in 2003 at the age of 50, but he gained global recognition around 2008, when his novels began to appear more readily in English. In lieu of actual travel, I recommend this.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (translated by Sophie Hughes)
If you’re feeling fragile in the midst of Covid-19, this book is probably not for you. If, however, you fancy a brutal portrait of a small Mexican town and the violence wreaked by its inhabitants’ machismo, then this pummelling, exhilarating onslaught of anger, anguish and rage by Fernanda Melchor is for you. A recent review described the book as an investigation into the “complicity between fairy-tale and ‘femicide’” which I think is a perfect summary. The Witch is the centre of the story, but a rolling cast of characters gives us a view of La Matosa, a town in damnation. It is exceptional. It exceeds expectation. It has just come out. It may pair well with the Bolaño.
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