Sweet Home
I read a book of short stories and I had an unusual feeling. I had the feeling you get when you hear a perfect pop song, a song that perhaps you've heard all your life: "Waterloo Sunset" for example. A song that's always been there, with an effortless vocal, the melody rising and falling and every part resolving itself inevitably, satisfyingly. A song that transcends its time and place, so we are all Terry and Julie, meeting in the blackness of city crowds, adventure burning in our young hearts.
And then you think: no. That song was not always here. There was a time when no one had heard "Waterloo Sunset" and, going back, dismantling the song phrase by phrase, note by note, there was a time when Ray Davies sat down with a guitar, whistled through his gappy little teeth, and thought "What's a good note to follow "D"? "A"? Is "A" a good note to follow D?"
You can't quite believe it. That song, as perfect as any in the canon of Western popular music, completely satisfying in terms of craft and manufacture, was knocked out by Ray Davies, probably in an afternoon, probably with a hangover, possibly in the back of a van on the way to the Cambridge Corn Exchange, with a bandaged knuckle and a split lip. I write songs. I have tried very hard to write good songs. But nothing I have ever written can approach the elegant perfection of that song. It is sublime. It is a song as fact. It is unarguable.*
The book I've been reading was Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine. Its a book of short stories about Belfast, specifically East Belfast. You could do a walking tour of this book and never be more than three miles from my house. All the slang is in there, all the sectarian business, memories of The Troubles, and the "black humour" of Belfast. All that stuff. I wasn't expecting to like it. I didn't really think it would be my sort of thing. I was wrong - its exactly my sort of thing, now.
Its an extraordinary first collection. It would be an extraordinary second or third collection too, but for Erskine to leap out of the traps with this clenched between her teeth is nothing short of astonishing. The writing is detailed, clever, muscular and funny. It never feels forced, but rather it lures you in with precisely rendered detail: the paper pants and "black coconut" candles of To All Their Dues, or Malcolm's second hand wine expertise in Inakeen. It all feels right. You know this place. Erskine is flinty and unsentimental: there are no lottery wins or X Factor victories here. These are busy, noisy, little lives, full of people dealing with heartache and tragedy and getting caught shagging in the toilets of a cafe on Belmont Road. But they are rich nonetheless, full of incident, empathy and peppered with detail. She has a rare sure-footedness and a way with words that saw me re-reading sentences that I had just read just to see how she had done it. Not because she's flashy or ornate but because the prose felt so deliciously right. The mood, the feeling, the world was conveyed exactly. Immovably correct. As though Ray Davies were humming it in the back of a Transit van.
She tinkers with form, she flits back and forth in time, she plays with memory and perspective, she is witty and concise. This is really rigorous and exciting stuff. I'm so pleased. Its so rare to read a new book that I enjoy, a fresh voice that I haven't heard before. But then again, it feels like I have always heard it. My favourite stories are perhaps the smallest, hiding towards the back of the book: Lady and Dog is a quietly brutal story of a thwarted and embittered woman suddenly smitten. The Soul has No Skin is about another life crushed by life, only dealt with by calm repetition and the avoidance of reflection. Both are exquisite meditations on bonsai lives, flecked with joy and misery in equal measure. Actually misery probably edges it, but there are enough dollops of wit and fizzly stylish writing to render the pages a blur as they whizz past.
*If you were brought up listening to UK Garage or Gamelan your mileage may vary, obvs.
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| This book needs no introduction...and it didn't get one either |
And then you think: no. That song was not always here. There was a time when no one had heard "Waterloo Sunset" and, going back, dismantling the song phrase by phrase, note by note, there was a time when Ray Davies sat down with a guitar, whistled through his gappy little teeth, and thought "What's a good note to follow "D"? "A"? Is "A" a good note to follow D?"
You can't quite believe it. That song, as perfect as any in the canon of Western popular music, completely satisfying in terms of craft and manufacture, was knocked out by Ray Davies, probably in an afternoon, probably with a hangover, possibly in the back of a van on the way to the Cambridge Corn Exchange, with a bandaged knuckle and a split lip. I write songs. I have tried very hard to write good songs. But nothing I have ever written can approach the elegant perfection of that song. It is sublime. It is a song as fact. It is unarguable.*
The book I've been reading was Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine. Its a book of short stories about Belfast, specifically East Belfast. You could do a walking tour of this book and never be more than three miles from my house. All the slang is in there, all the sectarian business, memories of The Troubles, and the "black humour" of Belfast. All that stuff. I wasn't expecting to like it. I didn't really think it would be my sort of thing. I was wrong - its exactly my sort of thing, now.
Its an extraordinary first collection. It would be an extraordinary second or third collection too, but for Erskine to leap out of the traps with this clenched between her teeth is nothing short of astonishing. The writing is detailed, clever, muscular and funny. It never feels forced, but rather it lures you in with precisely rendered detail: the paper pants and "black coconut" candles of To All Their Dues, or Malcolm's second hand wine expertise in Inakeen. It all feels right. You know this place. Erskine is flinty and unsentimental: there are no lottery wins or X Factor victories here. These are busy, noisy, little lives, full of people dealing with heartache and tragedy and getting caught shagging in the toilets of a cafe on Belmont Road. But they are rich nonetheless, full of incident, empathy and peppered with detail. She has a rare sure-footedness and a way with words that saw me re-reading sentences that I had just read just to see how she had done it. Not because she's flashy or ornate but because the prose felt so deliciously right. The mood, the feeling, the world was conveyed exactly. Immovably correct. As though Ray Davies were humming it in the back of a Transit van.
She tinkers with form, she flits back and forth in time, she plays with memory and perspective, she is witty and concise. This is really rigorous and exciting stuff. I'm so pleased. Its so rare to read a new book that I enjoy, a fresh voice that I haven't heard before. But then again, it feels like I have always heard it. My favourite stories are perhaps the smallest, hiding towards the back of the book: Lady and Dog is a quietly brutal story of a thwarted and embittered woman suddenly smitten. The Soul has No Skin is about another life crushed by life, only dealt with by calm repetition and the avoidance of reflection. Both are exquisite meditations on bonsai lives, flecked with joy and misery in equal measure. Actually misery probably edges it, but there are enough dollops of wit and fizzly stylish writing to render the pages a blur as they whizz past.
*If you were brought up listening to UK Garage or Gamelan your mileage may vary, obvs.
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