The second instalment of May’s new fiction begins with a novel by one of my favourite writers. Sarah Moss’s Ripeness sees a woman in her seventies 
remembering the months she spent in Italy as a seventeen-year-old in the 1960s. Edith is the child of a Derbyshire hill farmer and a refugee whose family disappeared in the Holocaust. She barely knew her elder sister yet it’s Edith who her mother insists must attend Lydia at the Italian villa where she’s holed up, heavily pregnant and angry at this interruption in her ballet career. The months that follow will be formative for Edith who grows from a naïve young woman into one who will make her way confidently across Europe, taking up her place at Oxford. This is a deeply reflective novel exploring themes of belonging, identity, autonomy, family, motherhood and community through Edith’s story, her background and the backgrounds of those around her. Review to follow…
In Eric Puchner’s Dream State, Cece has travelled to the Montana summer house she’s come to love since being embraced by Charlie’s family to plan their wedding while he remains in L A. His old college roommate is to officiate at their wedding, not Cece’s choice, nor Garrett’s but Charlie is his best friend. Over the next few weeks, Cece tries to quash doubts about her future while Garrett attempts to stamp out his feelings for her. Puchner charts a path for these three that takes them through marriage, parenthood, tragedy and ageing over a half-century, always with the friendship between Charlie and Garrett at its foundation. Puchner’s novel’s a bit of a doorstopper but absorbing enough to keep me reading it. Review shortly…
David Park’s Spies in Canaan was one of my 2022 books of the year. He writes quietly understated yet powerful novels that don’t seem to get the attention they deserve. In Ghost Wedding, a First World War veteran is sent by his employers to construct a lake for the Rimington family, finding escape from traumatic memories with one of the family’s servants. A century later, Alex and Ellie are planning to marry in the grounds of the Rimingtons’ house, Alex haunted by a secret and whether he should share it with Ellie. ‘In this masterful portrait of love and betrayal, David Park reveals the many ways the past seeps into the present: destructive, formidable, but also hopeful, in the many moments of fragile beauty that remain’ says the blurb promisingly.
I’ve read and enjoyed several of Daniel Kehlmann’s novels each of them different from the others, ranging from You Should Have Left, a brief slice of horror, to Tyll, a chunkster set in the seventeenth-century. In The Director, G. W. Pabst flees Austria when the Nazis annexe it heading to Hollywood where no one knows who he is despite his towering reputation in his own country. Returning home, he and his family are horrified by what they find but Goebbels is determined to harness Pabst’s talent for his propaganda machine, refusing all resistance. ‘Daniel Kehlmann’s novel about art and power, beauty and barbarism is a triumph. The Director shows what literature is capable of’ says the blurb. Very much like the sound of that.
That cover looks a bit like a saga, not a genre I read, but Nicola Kraus’s The Best We Could Hope For comes from the excellent Verve Books so it seems worth a look. It sees Bunny taking off, abandoning her three children to her older sister, convinced that Jayne will be a better mother to them. Jayne and her husband provide a stable home for the three together with their own child but after almost ten years, Bunny turns up and all the cards are thrown in the air. ‘As adults, their children try to reassemble the pieces and solve the mystery that has always haunted them: who were their parents? What really happened between them? And who is ultimately to blame for the destruction’ asks the blurb.
That’s it for May’s new fiction. As ever, a click on a title will take you to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. Paperbacks soon…
