Half-Life of Edith Hopkins 'one of my highlights so far this year'
This week there’s an impressive anthology of short stories, an amazing novel set in an Afghan community in Virginia (not the one in Cavan) about which I know we’ll hear more, a love story that I’m told is a STEMinist novel and a delightful book for the kids.
The Half-Life of Edith Hopkins, Conor Bowman Colmcille Press, €20
In my review of a previous Bowman book some years ago, I wondered why there isn’t more pot-banging about this author. He easily matches many of our big literary talents and paddles in the same thematic streams but seems to be somehow overlooked. I have no idea why, but I admired Horace Winter Says Goodbye a lot, and this new anthology of short stories is even better.
The title story is a novella and traces the life of Edith Hopkins, retired piano teacher, now scraping through her final days, riven with dementia in a nursing home. The fog of her half-memories leads to a clearing as we are taken through her life; a promising tennis career ruined by a spell in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, the trafficking of her son to America, never to be seen again and the half-life she lived afterwards.
It’s harrowing but elegantly told and not the only story containing the suffering of memory. An old man travels from his New England home to a disused railway station in County Galway to re-live a memory of his grandfather. He never returns.
In a stylish flight of fancy, an author is summoned to a sumptuous supper in an exclusive Stephen’s Green club, only to be met by characters from his many works of fiction, ‘brought to life’ as it were, from the page.
I could pot-bang on and on, but alas a short review can’t do justice to this gem of an anthology. It is one of my highlights so far this year.
Good People, Patmeena Sabit, Virago €16.99
In an extremely clever exploration of the facts around a car accident in which a young Afghan American girl dies, debut novelist Sabit has produced one of the moment’s most talked-about books in the US, now gaining over here. The story is not told by one, or even several, narrators, but from lots of voices, Greek Chorus style, including other members of this refugee community in Virginia, most of whom fled Afghanistan after the Russian invasion and have since settled in America.
There are also newspaper clippings, TV reports and later there are legal defences and accusations, because it seems that 16-year-old Zorah Sharaf was not killed by accident.
But in fact, Zorah plays a relatively minor role in this wonder of a novel. Her father is larger than life and larger than any other character, a refugee who has embraced the American Dream with such vigour that in just a few years he’s a very wealthy man, and not all of his Afghan compatriots are happy for him.
Drawing from her own experience as a refugee and conscious of the restrictions Islam places on women, it’s both an exploration and an education. It’s difficult to put down, one of the reasons being it’s told in short snippets from multiple sources, making that ‘one more page’ urge become 10 more pages.
Highly original, multi-layered, sometimes asking more questions than it answers, it’s the culmination of 10 years’ work and worth every minute of its toil.
Love and Other Brian Experiments, Hannah Brohm, Head of Zeus, €14.50
So many romcoms are so saccharin and devoid of comedy they hurt your teeth and make you resent the time you spent on them. But this one is surprisingly clever and well written, with plenty of commentary on women in the world of science. Turns out scientists (male ones) can be just as misogynistic as men in most other fields, especially in the cut-throat world of medical research. And it’s probably more effective to deliver that message with a smile rather than a revolt, although you won’t find many men, scientists or otherwise, reading fiction that’s marketed as ‘commercial’.But I digress. Neuroscientist Dr Frances Silberstein is floundering in her post-doctoral days and needs to find a way to further her career. A high-stake conference she’s planning to attend will hopefully change her luck, although she’s got some stiff competition in another attendee, Dr Lewis North. When people mistakenly think she and Lewis are dating, she doesn’t deny it, but that will have catastrophic results. Like they say, never mix business – in academia or anywhere else – with pleasure.
The Night I Borrowed Time, Iqbal Hussein, Puffin, €11.25
Zubair, 11 years old, is a seventh son. Apart from that meaning he’s got a lot of older brothers, it also means something else; he has been given the ability to time travel. His granny has arrived in Lancashire, all the way from Pakistan, to help his mother out after his taxi-driver father is injured in a road accident and is slowly recuperating.
Poor Zubair is constantly made fun of by The Six, his sextuplet brothers all now studying for their GCSEs. They never refer to him as anything but ‘Zoo Bear’. But his grandmother insists that, as the seventh son, he is ‘special’. And so she gives him an amulet that belonged to an ancestor and now it’s chocks away for Zubair.
He’s going to use the amulet to travel back in time and fix the strained relationship between his parents. At least that’s the plan.
A funny and exciting adventure for the 10+ age group, stitched together with themes of familial love, identity and living in the here and now.
Footnotes
The St Patrick’s Day festivals stretch out over the coming weekend, even though it’s not until Tuesday, and the ones with the biggest pizazz will be held in Kilkenny, Dublin, Cork and Killarney. But why go foreign? Practically every crossroads, ditch and cul-de-sac in the country will have something on and the small towns often have the most entertaining and original parades. Check out your local social media pages to see what’s on, because there’s plenty, no matter where you live.