‘The story of this Ethiopian classic almost threatens to overshadow the novel itself’.
THE EDGES by Angelo Tijssens Translated by Michele Hutchison (Daunt Books £9.99, 104pp)
THIS piercing shard of a novel nods to Shuggie Bain in its story of a gay son and an alcoholic mother, although its harder, darker and far less pretty.
Our narrator has returned to his mother’s flat to clear out the contents following her unmourned death and seeks out his first teenage lover. The meeting, which is not without comfort, sparks a host of memories concerning our narrator’s coming out and the ugly violence he experienced at the hands of his mother, whose own circumstances we learn little about.
Flemish author Tijssens is skilled enough to leave an awful lot of silence at the edges of this compressed, quietly unforgettable novel in which the consolations of love sit in perilous proximity with the legacy of bodily and psychological damage.
OROMAY by Baalu Girma Translated by David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu (MacLehose £20, 400pp)
THE story of this Ethiopian classic almost threatens to overshadow the novel itself – but thankfully not quite.
First published in 1983, it was almost immediately banned (although it lived on through clandestine reprintings) and six months later Girma disappeared, almost certainly a victim of the authoritarian government his novel energetically skewers. Set in 1982, at the end of the Ethiopian attempt to quash the Eritrean uprising, it’s narrated by Tsegaye, a TV journalist and head of propaganda who becomes distracted from his job of winning over the Eritreans by the complications of his love life – and the horrors of the conflict.
Girma balances a vivacious tone with the odd tendentious note in a sprightly pointed novel that has an awful lot to say about the mendacious theatre of strong man regimes.
HOPE by Andrew Ridker (Duckworth Books £10.99, 432pp)
RIDKER’S new novel begins with the dinner party from hell. Deb, the host has divided her guests into three income brackets and served them meals accordingly (roast chicken, buttered pasta, plain rice) in order to illustrate a point about ‘the lottery of birth’.
From then on, this economically successful family starts to flounder: Scott, the patriarch, who has hidden a big financial loss from Deb, loses his medical licence through malpractice; his octogenarian mother has blown her savings and can’t afford her retirement; Deb runs off with a woman. The family, which includes a daughter who works in publishing and a son at medical school, is forced to reckon with the way the ‘lottery’ of life affects them, too.
Ridker has a deft way with a zinging one-liner but readers might feel his novel retreads ground Jonathan Franzen and Taffy Brodesser Akner have carved before.