Category Archives: books

Sunday Review – The Drowning of Arthur Braxton by Caroline Smailes

The-Drowning-of-Arthur-Braxton_cover

The latest novel from the ever lovely Caroline Smailes, with its powerful mix of gritty realism and Greek mythology (it retells the classic myths of Apollo and Daphne, Medea and Jason, Castor and Pollux), is a tragic love story of epic proportions that manages to be at once authentic in its portrayal of teenagers and dazzling in the imaginative leaps that power the story to its inevitable and heart breaking ending. And that’s not a spoiler by the way, or if it is then the title’s the biggest spoiler of all.

Arthur Braxton is a young man with problems. His mum’s run off with an old flame and his dad’s lost the plot. He’s bullied at school and a girl he fancies just tricked him into showing her his cock and now the picture is all over Facebook. Walking the streets near the derelict Victorian swimming baths, named The Oracle, he finds himself drawn inside by the irresistible sound of singing and finds himself transfixed by the sight of a naked girl floating in the water. From this point on his life will never be the same.

The story of Arthur, following his discovery of Delphina and her strange companions in the derelict pool, is told in variety of voices and styles. Arthur’s perspective is delivered in a vibrant first person that perfectly captures the tone and preoccupations of the adolescent male, while the tragic figure of Laurel, who narrates the opening of the novel as well as a key section later in the book, provides a powerful counterpoint to Arthur’s voice, full of aching similarities even as her own tragic story plunges into ever darker territory. Sections written in the style of a play script, fitting in light of the stories Greek inspirations, help to lighten the story at times, with the comic pair of Kester and Pollock coming across like Statler and Waldorf as they shout down from the spectator seats surrounding the Males 1st Class pool.

The setting of the Oracle itself is drawn so vividly as to almost become a character itself. We see it in use during Laurel’s sections and in various states of abandoned disrepair during Arthur’s, while the central dramatic script sections fill in what we cannot see through the eyes of these characters. In her afterword, Caroline Smailes talks about the inspiration for her setting, Victoria Baths on Harsage Road in Manchester. It is a testament to her descriptive skills that, on taking a look at the place via the internet after finishing the book, I was struck by how closely the photographs resembled the fictional Oracle I now have in my head.

Last night, with about a quarter of the book left to read, I found myself reading just one more chapter before going to bed. Then just one more. Until, desperate to find out just how Arthur meets the end promised by the book’s title, I flew right through to the final, gripping lines. If you’ve read any of Caroline Smailes other novels, you will know she is an author who does not pull her punches and the ending of The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is no exception. This is a compelling book, from a compelling author. Since finishing this latest work I have not quite been able to shake Arthur and Delphina from my thoughts, every time I think they have retreated to the depths, they burst the surface once again. Like all great tragic romances, it seems they live forever in their story.

This week…

…I have mostly been made happy by the following:

being runner-up in the Thresholds Feature Competition,

listening to this young lady and her popular beat combo,

reading the latest slice of brilliant from Caroline Smailes,

The-Drowning-of-Arthur-Braxton_cover

and listening to Lowercase Noises while writing a piece of flash fiction to submit for this year’s National Flash Fiction Day anthology.

What’s made you happy this week?

Sunday Review: Sweet Home by Carys Bray

Carys Bray’s Scott Prize winning debut short fiction collection is not for the faint hearted. These tales, most of them focused on mothers and fathers stumbling their way through parenthood, take in the broad emotional landscape of that most complex of relationships; the parent and the child. Some will have you smiling at the problems, recognising something of yourself in some aspect of the many and varied characters that people these stories, others will break your heart or have you squirming in your chair wanting to look away even as the steady turning of the story screws you into your seat.

Sweet Home

The collection focuses largely upon the domestic, the breadth of tone and subject matter here sprialing the stories out into the realms of both fantasy and hard reality, sometimes simultaneously. In ‘Just In Case’ we sit beside a grieving mother as she agrees to watch over a neighbours baby, unable to look away as events seem about to tip and plummet into further tragedy. ‘I Will Never Disappoint My Children’ will have any parent feeling sympathy with its narrator’s struggle to do the best by her child, even as circumstance and the sheer unrelenting nature of parenthood trips her up and shatters her best intentions. In ‘Wooden Mum’ the physical damage done to a toy mirrors the inner turmoil of a mother as she deals with the myriad stresses of raising a child with Aspergers, and has one of the most moving final sentences in short fiction. ‘The Ice Baby’, ‘Sweet Home,’ and ‘The Baby Aisle’ are contemporary fairytales that stay true to the darker origins of the form, their attractive imagery sugar coating each tales darker aspects, making the story sweet to taste even as it surprises and scares.

Sweet Home is a collection that produces an effect greater than the sum of its parts, even considering the quality of each individual story. The stories, while unrelated, seem to speak to each other, creating an imaginary world so like our own, but scratch the surface and a fragile, darker and often more beautiful world waits to be discovered in which emotion is made tangible, visible. It is our world seen at a slant, a perspective which allows the reader to see things all the more clearly. These are stories unafraid to admit that imagination is a vital part of how we understand the world, how we understand those closest to us, and, ultimately, ourselves.

Read Carys Bray’s Life in Short Fiction here.

Buy a copy of Sweet Home here or here.

World Book Day – Sweet Home

This World Book Day I have been reading Carys Bray‘s brilliant Sweet Home. You may remember Carys stopped by last November, when her Scott Prize winning debut collection of stories was published by Salt, and shared her life in short fiction.

Sweet Home

I’m only a little way in to the collection but have been blown away by the quality of the opening stories, the standout so far for me being Just In Case, in which a bereaved mother borrows her next door neighbor’s baby. The steady, screwing build up of tension over the handful of pages left me visibly shaken by the end. On the basis of what I have read so far Carys’ debut deserves every bit of the high praise it received on publication. Can’t wait to read the rest of the collection.

How about you? What have you been reading today?