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Who: Libby Page wrote The Lido while working in marketing and moonlighting as a writer. She graduated from the London College of Fashion with a BA in Fashion Journalism before going on to work as a journalist at The Guardian. The Lido is her debut novel.
What: The Lido’s story isn’t unfamiliar: the Brockwell Lido, an outdoor swimming area in Brixton, a district of South London, is under threat of redevelopment. Luxury property developer Paradise Living intends to buy over the lido from the district council, fill the pool with cement, and transform the lido into a private gym for their property owners. Octogenarian Rosemary Peterson who has been swimming in the lido since she was a child will have nothing doing with the plan and marshals the swimmers of Brockwell Lido to oppose the sale.
The citizen’s action group catches the interest of local rag the Brixton Chronicle, which sends junior reporter Kate to cover the story. Kate, as we are introduced to her, is a mousy 20-something, leading a lonely existence occasionally blighted by anxiety attacks. Because of her social dysfunction, her day-to-day is a long, repetitive walk in a corridor of darkness and silence, avoiding people and with her head stuck firmly looking at the ground. Her evenings are spent watching documentaries with titles such as The Boy who Wants to Cut off His Arm and she “drinks one glass [of wine] too many, because it makes her head feel foggy which is better than being conscious of fear sitting on her shoulder and the cloud above her head”.
Everything changes when Rosemary takes Kate under her wing, and insists that Kate take a swim before consenting to an interview for the newspaper. The pool has a transformative effect on Kate who feels her anxiety float away in the pool, and steadily, a friendship and bond develops between her and the older woman. Rosemary would introduce Kate to her small, large life in the neighbourhood. Rosemary is not only a staple at the lido but also in the surrounding neighbourhood. Kate begins to find her place in the neighbourhood, develops a greater sense of self and starts to engage with the people around her, and, like Rosemary, becomes personally invested in saving the community pool. Opposition to the lido sale begins with community action — pamphlets and petitions — which further emboldens Kate who eventually takes the mantle of leadership over from Rosemary. Her newfound confidence also positively affects her work, love life, and in coming to terms with ghosts from her past.
Why: The Lido is an unabashed feel-good book. Extolling the virtues of community, friendship and a smaller life, The Lido feels a bit iconoclastic in the current YOLO climate. But extol those virtues it does, and in such a charming way that one forgives the sometimes clumsy tugs on the heartstrings; arguably, the story could not have been written any other way. On the plus side, the book does not rail against gentrification: change is inexorable, but can be delayed.
The Lido joins other recent books in the so-called sub-genre of Up Lit, which, loosely defined, are stories that celebrate kindness, compassion and friendship. These titles do not sugarcoat or trivialise the realities of life, nor do they employ magical or spiritual vehicles a la Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist to create a world where wishful thinking becomes reality. Authors of these books argue that we live in harsh, uncaring times but if there is room for kindness and compassion in real life, so there is in stories. “It’s about facing devastation, cruelty, hardship and loneliness and then saying: ‘But there is still this.’ Kindness isn’t just giving somebody something when you have everything. Kindness is having nothing and then holding out your hand,” Rachel Joyce, the author of international bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, says.
While it’s a bit reductivist to suggest, as the book does, that anxiety and mental illness is inexorably linked to isolation and disengagement, but recent studies such as this one lend some credence, not uncontroversially, to what we all suspect: Social isolation increases risk of depression, and the proliferation of technology contributes to increased social isolation. The lido, from this perspective, becomes more than just a day out in the swimming pool but an exhortation for the latent need to belong and for recognition.
Sad bits are unavoidable in these stories. In one scene, we see Rosemary walking down a quiet street one evening on her own, and struggles her way through the crowd in a chic, up-market cocktail bar. She climbs up to the bar amidst the reveling London crowd and orders an Old Fashioned. “Around her crowds of young people laugh and drink from jugs filled with ice, brightly coloured cocktails and retro paper umbrellas. She is flanked by two couples in deep conversation, their backs to her. If they looked up they would see a faded green sign above the cocktail bar that says ‘Fresh Fruit and Vegetables: Peterson & Son’.” Killer.
Verdict: A life- and kindness-affirming story that makes one wistful for a past that perhaps never was. (7.5/10)
In-store Availability: Trade paperback, RM79.90
Thanks to Pansing Distribution for an advance reading copy of this book.
We’re happy to welcome another guest contributor, Mabel Ho, to the Lit Review fold! Her first review is a novel from debut YA author Anna Day.
Who: Anna Day is a clinical psychologist and author from Northeast England. The Fandom is her debut novel.
What: Best friends Violet and Alice are fangirls of The Gallows Dance, a made-up story with similar post-apocalyptic shades of YA dystopian fiction movie franchises. Armed with the power of teenage enthusiasm, Violet and Alice set off to Comic-Con with their friend, Katie (who’s impervious to The Gallows Dance story entirely; think of your friend who’s never read Harry Potter), and Violet’s younger brother, Nate.
The cosplay-ready foursome, brimming with excitement to meet the actors who portray their fictional idols in the movie adaptation of the novel, get far more than they bargained for when they find themselves transported right into The Gallows Dance. Faced with the conflicting choice of running parallel with the canon storyline or writing her own narrative, Violet and the rest have to find a way out of the world they fantasised being a part of or risk being trapped in the story’s endless loop.
Why: Set on the age-old cautionary tale of “be careful what you wish for”, this story was an intersection of dystopian young adult fiction and a subsequent social commentary of the fandoms born out of these worlds. The stakes don’t feel high, as such narrative attempts of a world built within a world can result in flimsy storytelling. But what makes up for it are the noticeable tropes of this fantasy genre and the insertion of Violet and her friends’ fictional reality teeters on an almost satire.
Violet as the main character is portrayed with authenticity and given a nuanced middle ground — she’s not your usual YA dystopian badass (read: Katniss Everdeen, ruthless and unforgiving), or your YA sad but hopeful heroine (read: Hazel Grace Lancaster, dying and willful). She takes us through her juvenile comprehension of having to adult while clinging onto youthful ignorance as she navigates her internal conflict of sticking to the script of the story or ad-libbing her own narrative. Underscoring the entire story are themes of jealousy, confusion, heartbreak, love and friendship, superficially explored through her relationships with the other characters. The story does drag a little before reaching its climax but it was still a compelling page turner in search for the ending.
Best/Worst Line: “And some stories simply need to unfold,” she says. “They need to reach their beautiful climax, existing almost like a life cycle, an entity in their own right.”
Verdict: Much like fan fiction brought to life, it’s a fun meta read, interspersed with all the touchpoints of a post-apocalyptic story, with a splash of overactive teenage hormones. (7/10)
Availability: Trade paperback, RM44.90
Special thanks to Pansing Distribution for an ARC of the book.
By guest contributor Poon Jin Feng
Who: Mary Watson moved to Ireland from South Africa over a decade ago and found herself captivated by the magical landscape she now calls home. She has written a collection of short stories, Moss, which bagged the Caine Prize in 2006, and has written a full-length novel, The Cutting Room. The Wren Hunt, inspired by an Irish tradition, is her debut YA novel and the first of a series.
What: Every St Stephen’s Day, as per tradition, a group of boys in the Irish village of Kilshamble organise a Wren Hunt. Only this version a little warped, involving the chase of the unfortunately named Wren Silke through the woods surrounding the isolated village.
The hunt takes on heavier meaning this year as Wren comes into her powers, the fairly useless – or so she thinks – gift of obscure visions. Two factions reside within this community: the powerful Judges who control the nemeta, a source of power, and the Augurs, who have been driven into hiding in plain sight. The boys who torment Wren belong to the former and Wren’s people are part of the latter. In a desperate bid to save them from their dwindling magic, she takes on a dangerous undercover assignment right in the heart of the Judge’s lair. Caught in a web of deceit and conflicting loyalties, she holds the fate of the Augurs in her young hands.
Why: Reviews of The Wren Hunt consistently remark on the difficulty in categorising the book for fear of pigeon-holing it into a restrictive genre, and for good reason. Part fantasy, part thriller, and (small) part romance, it stands in a league of its own and seems poised to have a cult following.
It takes off on a rather dark and disturbing note, opening immediately to the tense hunt, and the first couple of chapters are somewhat hard to follow. I’m glad I persevered though. The mystical Irish setting and consequent lyrical language are highly atmospheric and set the tone for a haunting tale. The action picks up pace steadily and by the middle of the book, it keeps you in painful suspense as Wren tries to ingratiate herself with a high-ranking Judge while surrounded by her tormentors.
Character development occasionally falls a little short but this is offset by the skilful way the author handles the interactions between the characters and plays with subtle nuances in storytelling. The hostility between the Judges and Augurs is adeptly explored, and the world-building is fascinating. It can get a little confusing at times – oscillating between insufficient and too much in the way information is revealed – but soldier through and you will be rewarded with an utterly unexpected and well-crafted twist. Watson’s novice shows at times in her debut novel but her originality and rich imagination will keep you intrigued, if uneasy.
Reading Level: Ages 15 and up
Verdict: A bit of a difficult read, it is haunting, a touch dark and wrapped in a mesmerising branch of old magic. (7.5/10)
Availability: Paperback, RM49.90
Special thanks to Pansing Distribution for a review copy of the book.
We’re happy to welcome another guest reviewer on our Lit Review column, Poon Jin Feng. His first review is a children’s book, Begone the Raggedy Witches by Celine Kiernan.
Who: Award-winning author Celine Kiernan is best known for The Moorehawke Trilogy and her 2011 novel, Into the Grey, was the first book to receive both the CBI Book of the Year Award and the CBI Children’s Choice Award. Begone the Raggedy Witches is her latest children’s novel and is the first book in the The Wild Magic Trilogy.
What: On the day that Aunty Boo passes away, Mup’s world turns upside down and her seemingly ordinary life turns out to be anything but. Following their car home from the hospital are the Raggedy Witches who want to lure her mother home to the Witches Borough, where she had been born. Mup’s mother did not even know she was capable of magic; Aunty Boo had kept this secret from their little family and without her to protect them anymore, they have to fend for themselves in this entirely unknown world.
The witches kidnap Mup’s father and it is up to Mup, her mother, her baby brother Tipper, and their dog Badger to rescue her father from the fantastical land. Tipper is turned into a dog, they meet a conflicted boy called Crow, and encounter the vivid beauty and ugliness of magic depending on who wields it. Young Mup is forced to make hard choices when she finds that the instructions of the adults around her often are at odds with what she believes in her heart to be right and true.
Why: I have been an adult for enough years to confidently wield that title but even I will admit to being utterly captivated by this middle school gem. The action starts on page one and doesn’t let up throughout the book, the quick pace making this easy to devour in a single sitting. Kiernan’s gift with words is undeniable in the evocative way she conjures up her native Ireland in her literary works, effortlessly weaving magic into setting and story.
Character development is another strong point of hers, with each subject flaunting very real flaws and virtues. One sign of good writing is presenting a perspective of the antagonists that readers can identify or sympathise with. Crow’s character especially is one that is difficult to love but equally difficult to vilify, a duality Kiernan handles with appropriate sensitivity. Mup, meanwhile, is a spectacular main character, an oddball heroine well able to carry this entire adventure on her back.
Reading Level: Ages 10 and up
Verdict: An action-packed romp led by a suitably quirky main character and well upheld by a colourful supporting cast. (9/10)
Availability: Paperback, RM44.90
Special thanks to Pansing Distribution for a review copy of the book.
Who: Jeff VanderMeer is the author of the bestselling, award-winning Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), the first of which was adapted into a critically-acclaimed movie on Netflix. VanderMeer is a three-time World Fantasy Award winner and 15-time nominee, and widely regarded as a leading fantasist.
What: Borne takes place in an unnamed City, at an unknown time, in an unknowable dimension. The City is ruled by a malevolent ursine god-emperor, the giant flying bear Mord. Mord, of Godzilla-esque proportions, is the product of the morally ambiguous organisation known only as the Company, which pumps out biotech for purposes both pragmatic and nefarious. Biotech has effectively taken over the natural world in the City, with humans likely the only ones that have not been experimented on (at least not on a large scale). The story of the City and Mord is told in the first person by Rachel, a scavenger par excellence who ekes out the barest living with her lover and partner Wick formerly of the Company. Wick grows and manufactures biotech from the raw sluices of his bio-pool in their descriptive but unimaginatively named hideout Balcony Cliffs. There is no water in the City save in toxic sludge pools; food must be scavenged; and booze comes from the insides of bio-engineered fish. But all this changes when Rachel finds Borne, an innocuous-looking sea anemone, on one of her scavenging sorties.
Why: There are quite a few layers to Borne. On the one hand, it’s a story about a survivalist doing the best she can in a really trying situation; on the other, it’s about a mother and child relationship a la ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin‘. On a third (bio-engineered) hand, it’s about humanity’s self-destructive practice of strip mining natural resources and returning genetic modifications into nature; and on a fourth tentacle, it’s about royal rumble between a 20-storey giant flying bear and a giant sea anemone. Is there too much going on? Fortunately, thanks to the book’s slimy, malleable, bio-organic theme, the story unfolds fairly smoothly and manages to check some of VanderMeer’s wilder imaginings. Admittedly, it takes time to accept a giant flying god-emperor bear.
Nevertheless, VanderMeer’s universe with its writhing, sinewy, biological perversions can be difficult to stomach, particularly for someone with acute trypophobia. The bio-engineered creations in the City occupy that fine border demarcating magical fantastical reality and pure fantastic perversions — a fact happily acknowledged by Rachel: “In the City, the line between nightmare and reality was fluid” as evidenced by modified children who are armed with “an explosion of colours and textures and a variety of limbs”. There is something uncanny valley-ish about VanderMeer’s city in that everything within it is recognisable as both real and unreal at the same time. Red salamanders rain from the sky only to dissolve into liquid when hit by sunlight, predator cockroaches and crab spiders function as biotech defences, and a giant leviathan of a fish masked with a human woman’s face is used as an assault weapon — this is some trippy stuff.
For the lucky reader, all these unrealities recede into the background after a while: Of course they are going to mine no-man’s land with bio-engineered bugs and tentacles. What else were they going to use? Mines? And there is also the side-story of Rachel’s exodus from a much more normal and bucolic childhood to this Lovecraftian nightmare of the City. Central to the story is the notion of secrets — kept both by Wick and Rachel, and embodied in both Borne and Mord. As with all stories containing a secret, some of the narrative borders dangerously close to melodrama leaving some readers including this one to wonder how people as childish and immature as Wick and Rachel could ever hope to survive in the City’s nightmarish wasteland. (This is also a problem I had with Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One).
Giant flying bears, alcoholic minnows, battle beetles and demonic children aside, it is perhaps unfortunate that the most difficult creation to stomach is the eponymous Borne with whom Rachel develops a maternal bond. It’s not so much the physiology of Borne or his mind-bending physical capabilities, but its personality and extent of its mental development that feels like a bridge too far. It’s clear that VanderMeer hoped for Borne to be a multi-textured being that struggles with existential and ethical angst, but nevertheless retains its child-like innocence. This theme of an innocent killing machine is a pet peeve of mine and has rarely been pulled off well. I do not think Borne is an exception.
Verdict: Imaginative and more fun in retrospect than in the actual reading. It certainly makes me want to read some of VanderMeer’s earlier novels and perhaps catch Annihilation on Netflix. (7.5/10)
Cultural Touchpoints: Think Mad Max meets Heavy Metal.
Availability: Paperback, RM59.90
We are pleased to introduce the first of what we hope to be many Lit ‘Guest’ Reviews. In this segment, we invite our discerning friends and guests to contribute a review of a book they’ve recently read — advance reading copies (ARC) or otherwise.
For our first column, we have a review by Jack Smith, a friend we’ve recently made at the shop and a self-professed crime/thriller aficionado. It is, therefore, quite interesting that the first book he has chosen to review for us is AJ Pearce’s debut novel Dear Mrs Bird, set in 1940s London. From the outset, Dear Mrs Bird looks a bit of a comic drama, not dissimilar to Mary Ann Shaffer’s highly readable The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The following is Jack’s review of the ARC provided by Pansing Distribution.
The well-researched narrative, and a cast of fully relatable characters, puts a smile on your face almost immediately; and you imagine that it will stay there. However, given that it is set in London in the early years of WWII, there are heart wrenching episodes breaking up the general heart-warming tale.
AJ Pearce employs a clever writing style which, by using typical 1940s phrases/slang and evocative descriptions of the Blitz, manages to convey a real sense of daily life in wartime London.The story approach is original and melds historical fiction with human elements of fun, comedy, tragedy and poignancy. As well as being a “romp”, it is also thought-provoking as it pulls you in with the vivid descriptions of how people coped with the uncertainties and devastation of German bomb drops.
The main character is Emmeline (Emmy) Lake who lives with her best friend Bunty. This allows for the display of joys and frictions of relationships in trying times. The dialogue really does feel as if it is taken directly form Emmy’s diaries. Emmy volunteers part time for the Fire Service whilst doing her day time job, but dreaming of becoming a war correspondent. Upon seeing an advert for a Junior at a leading newspaper she thinks that this is her chance. However, in her eagerness, she fails to realise that the position is just for a typist at a failing women’s magazine. She decides to stick with it as it may lead to Better Things.
Her main duty is to type answers to the letters received by the “Agony Aunt”, Mrs Bird. Unfortunately, the cantankerous Henrietta Bird will not countenance any Unpleasantness (note the capital letter), which means that the advice that the readers most need is never offered and the letters are thrown in the bin. This upsets Emmy, who secretly decides to respond, in the best way she can, to some of the desperate. The story arc then unfolds, joining together the consequences from this decision and the perhaps unsurprising result on her personal life.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a sequel (you do wonder what happens next); and it would make a good television drama.
Availability: Trade paperback, RM77.90
The great starship Ingenue has completed its overhaul at the spacedock on Moonbase Luna. Having finished a routine survey of Jupiter, which doubled as a test run of its new ion drives, the Ingenue is now being outfitted with the necessary equipment and personnel to commence Phase I of the colonisation of Europa. The crew, sent up via the space elevator just the previous week, is being transported by way of automated drone shuttles to Ingenue. They will spend the vast majority of the journey preparing their colonisation capsule to land on and begin the human exploration of Europa.
The capsule will separate from Ingenue as the starship enters the orbit of Jupiter, but the great starship itself will allow itself to be drawn into the gas giant’s gravitational field. Crewless, the AI on board will make the necessary calculations to slingshot the starship to a carefully identified location designated only as Delta Sigma.
When it arrives at Delta Sigma, powerful particle accelerators fueled by a substantial pocket of hydrogen at the site will crash electrons together, generating a massive negative energy bubble. The energy will then be concentrated on a small black area in space, not much bigger than the size of a ping-pong ball. But that’s when the magic will happen — slowly, almost imperceptibly, the small black ping-pong ball will start to widen, crackling with energy at its edges when finally it will grow to a size big enough allowing Ingenue to pass through.
And when it does, it will make history as the first object to ever travel faster than the speed of light by crossing into folded space via a wormhole.
Sounds remarkable? Reads like the premise of the next big science fiction offering from Andy Weir? Uncannily enough, the scenario described above may just be the future of humanity as outlined by futurist and physicist Michio Kaku.
A regular presenter for the Discovery Channel and a member of the new cohort of celebrity thinkers (which counts among its ranks the likes of Brian Cox and Neil DeGrasse Tyson), Kaku has the uncanny ability of presenting difficult, ground-breaking material in simple terms without committing the cardinal crime of being overly patronising.
Despite his being a rather prolific writer, this is only the second or third of his books that I have read. To be perfectly honest, there’s only so much about space-time theory, quantum physics, black holes and string theory that one can take before it all becomes a bit samey. These topics do not lend themselves to a natural narrative arc the same way that, say, a history of science might. I was therefore a bit trepidatious in accepting a review copy from Times Distribution for Kaku’s Future of Humanity.
I was pleasantly surprised that the book was focused on one central thesis: Humanity will perish painfully and inevitably unless it becomes an interplanetary species — so how can it go about becoming one? From our history of rudimentary rocketry to sci-fi-only intergalactic spacecraft, to how we might go about settling other planets — the prime candidate being Mars — through a programme of terraforming and colonisation, and the possibility of faster-than-light travel, Kaku explores the science in sufficient detail to convince one that humanity is but several key Eureka! moments away from the breakthrough.
These are admittedly very giant Eureka! moments, but Kaku’s book helps shift the focus slightly from one of possibility to one of plausibility. Drawing from his pool of knowledge and experience as a physicist and active participant in the development of science, as well as a rather robust consumer of science fiction books and movies (there are a lot of references to those throughout the book), Kaku outlines intimately and in some detail how we might finally become an advanced space borne species (i.e. a Type I or Type II civilisation on the scale proposed by astronomer Nikolai Kardashev).
In a nutshell, the Kardashev scale measures the advancement of a civilisation based on its level of energy consumption. A Type I civilisation is one that utilises all the energy of the sunlight that falls on the planet, a Type II utilises all the energy its sun produces and a Type III utilises all the energy produced in a galaxy. We are presently a Type 0.7 at the moment, and struggling to make it as a full Type I civilisation. Ironically, even as we struggle to advance and survive, the biggest challenge to us is we ourselves:
“Of all the transitions, perhaps the most difficult is the transition from Type 0 to Type I, which is what we are undergoing at present. This is because a Type 0 civilisation is the most uncivilised, both technologically and socially… It still has all the scars from its brutal past, which was full of inquisitions, persecutions, pogroms and wars.”
The Future of Humanity is, by its final reckoning, a hopeful book. Kaku is an enthusiastic commentator and takes a long view of the possibilities that are in store. The only catch is that those interested in the subject matter may already be familiar with the themes contained within this book and then some; in some respects this book may be better suited to the lapsed popular science or science fiction reader.
Who: Michio Kaku is the silver-maned professor of physics at the City University of New York, co-founder of string field theory, and the author of several widely acclaimed science books. Makes a lot of appearances on Discovery Channel.
Verdict: If nothing else, readers will discover a litany of classic science fiction books and movies that have inspired Kaku and others presently working in the field. It is also perhaps the first attempt at a comprehensive groundwork outlining what it might take to transform humanity to a space borne species. (7.5/10)
In-store Availability: Should be coming in soon!
Thanks to Times Distribution for the advance reading copy.
On an almost daily basis, someone will come into the shop to ask us one of these questions or a permutation thereof.
‘How are you different from other bookshops?’
‘What’s your concept?’
‘Are you a library?’
We run through the usual answers:
While we understand that bookshops such as ours aren’t ubiquitous these days, it bemuses me slightly that people think that our concept is original. Bemusing not because I think that our customers are yokels, but because bookshops, at least for some segments of our society, have become a forgotten cultural artefact.
Don’t get me wrong — we appreciate and are grateful for all customers who walk through our doors, but the fact remains that Lit Books isn’t, and shouldn’t be, a cultural phenom. It might help, therefore, for us to describe what we are trying to do in the grand scheme of things by explaining some of what we do do in our shop.
Why do you have titles that we can’t find elsewhere in other bookstores?
For a very simple reason: because these are books that we (Elaine and I) like that we think other people might like as well. We believe that the character of bookstores, particularly an independent bookstore, is very much represented by the titles that they choose to stock (and by corollary, the titles that they choose not to stock). We don’t have a central buyer as chain bookshops do, and our selection of new books and authors is based on research and gut instinct. (This is why we stock both The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon and Heath Robinson’s How to be a Perfect Husband. No prizes for guessing who picked which title!)Do you get your books from local suppliers?
Yes! In fact, we get the vast majority of our books from local suppliers just like everyone else. So why do our titles differ? It has to do with the way the book business is conducted where distribution rights from publishers are assigned to local distributors. However, by ordering books from the publishers’ catalogues rather than the distributors’ catalogues, we can establish our own identity by choosing books from a larger pool.Why are you more expensive than XXX?
Lit Books adheres strictly to the recommended retail price (RRP). Every book comes with an RRP which becomes the official price of the book. Retail booksellers get a discount from wholesalers, and this discount then becomes the profit margin for the retailers. The discount that retailers get from wholesalers vary based on various factors. One of the major ones is the purchase volume. Simply put, if someone were to buy 1,000 copies of a book from you, you would be more likely to give them a greater discount than someone who only buys four or five copies. The retailer who purchases 1,000 copies can then pass the savings on to their customers. I’m one of those guys who buys four or five copies of a book.Why don’t you buy more copies to enjoy greater discounts?
Mainly because as an independent bookshop, we don’t have very deep pockets. While we could opt to blow our entire budget on the next bestseller, that’s not really what we’re about.So what are you about?
We want to create a bookshop that encourages people to browse and explore new authors and titles. Our target audience, to be perfectly frank, is the reader who knows they’d love a book to read but not entirely sure what it is that they want. I’d love for someone to come to my store looking for the latest Jodi Picoult only to walk away with Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Or for someone who’s looking for the new Jack Ma biography to walk out with Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Emperor of All Maladies. This is not to say that the books that they’re looking for aren’t great, but rather that we want to provide alternatives: we want to be the path less taken.Can we order a coffee, sit and read a book?
Yes! In fact, we encourage our readers to grab a few books, sit down and try them out to see if they fit before they decide on making a purchase. But please bear in mind that we are a mom-and-pop, and a damaged book is not a saleable book. We can’t return the book to our distributors and any damaged book directly impacts our bottomline. I don’t want to be that guy who goes around telling people not to dog-ear our books, or crease the spine, or flip the pages with greasy fingers — we are all adults and should be aware of what passes as good book-reading etiquette. We will never shrink wrap our books (except for the super-premium ones) and if you do find some still bound in plastic, it’s probably because I was too lazy to take it off myself.Why don’t you shrink wrap your books?
Because books need to breathe. But seriously, it’s because we’d hate to sell a book to someone who hasn’t had a chance to try it out. Book buying is not that different from starting a relationship, and you wouldn’t want your potential spouse shrink wrapped and shipped to you in a box.Do you recommend books?
Boy, do we ever! Please harass, harangue and kacau us about helping you find the right book. If I’m outside having a smoke, tick me off and drag me back into the shop. We love talking about books and we learn as much as you do during the exchange.
So that’s it, really. I hope this gives you a rough idea of what we’re trying to do. This post didn’t start out with the intention of becoming an FAQ and I had some Serious Ideas about curation I wanted to share. That will have to wait till next time. If you have any questions — any questions at all — left unanswered, please post them in the comments below and I’ll try to address them as best I can.
Who: Luke Kennard is better known for his five collections of poetry, one of which won the Eric Gregory Award in 2005. In 2014, he was selected by the Poetry Book Society as one of the Next Generation Poets. The Transition is his first novel and was long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize.
What: Karl Temperley is the hapless, underachieving poster boy of generation rent. Sent out into the world armed with a graduate degree in Metaphysical Poetry worth £78,000, he quickly learns that intimate knowledge of John Donne and Henry Vaughan didn’t really amount to a whole hill of beans in modern day London. Disenfranchised, cynical (when he can muster the energy for it) and accompanied with too much wit, Karl finds himself employed as a sweatshop academic, churning out “study aids” for students. Unable to cover rent or basic necessities —due in part to his penchant for “flavoured coffees the size of poster tubes” — and the demands of his somewhat eclectic teacher wife Genevieve, he turns to benevolent credit card companies to make ends meet. There is, however, a limit to their benevolence.
Charged with credit card fraud and looking at 15 months in prison, Karl is offered the opportunity to participate in the Transition in lieu of jail time. The Transition is ostensibly a rehabilitation programme designed to instil teachables such as financial planning, dental hygiene and time management. The goal, one is led to believe, is to reintegrate programme participants into society as productive and beneficial members. With no options left, Karl enrols with Genevieve, and are placed as “proteges” under Transition mentors Stu and Janna. Living arrangements are top notch, and the programmes, eye-rolling though they might be, seem to be helping. At least for Genevieve if not for Karl.
But of course, it’s too good to be true. Karl discovers that the Transition is a cover for a sinister-ish programme threatening to separate him from Genevieve.
Why: I was drawn to the book because it promised to be funny, and it is, although much of it is owed to Karl’s wry and deadpan observations and repartees. The dialogue between the characters is something that Kevin Smith would put in a script, which can both be fantastic and abysmal simultaneously. Karl is a throwback to the mid-90s when grunge and alternate youth were in ascendance; when young people in their 20s fresh out of university were generally bitter and recriminatory. It’s funny in the way that Reality Bites was funny, which is to say that it won’t be funny for everyone.
But Kennard does litter genuinely funny lines throughout the novel:
The Transition tackles a few other themes aside from that of the modern impoverished. These include themes of mental illness, societal integration, George Orwell’s 1984 and perhaps love. The latter is a bit strange because clearly Karl loves Genevieve, but it’s never made very clear why. She’s not particularly lovable and Karl’s love can be better described as an obsession that has run on for too long; an unhealthy co-dependence would probably be a fitting description. Nevertheless, there is love.
Did I mention there was a secret, sinister plot?
Best/Worst Line: “A turn for the worse was taken.”
Verdict: A fun dysopia which is probably less dystopic than it intends to be. Both Karl and Genevieve deserve a smack every now and then. (7/10)
Availability: Paperback, RM49.90
