Fiction Reviews
The Night Alphabet
(2024) Joelle Taylor, Riverrun, £14.99, trdpbk, 405pp, ISBN 978-1-529-43094-3
Some books grab me with their first sentence and most have got me interested within their first chapter. Sometimes it can take a little longer if the story is a slow burner (as is this one), but ultimately proving worth the effort. Sometimes, though, I have persevered to the very end, hoping it would be worthwhile, and remained disappointed. Sadly, this book never succeeded in getting me sufficiently interested and after fifty pages or so I gave up, there being many other books in my ‘to be read’ pile.
It was back in 1951 that Ray Bradbury’s book of short stories The Illustrated Man first appeared. The collection is bracketed by a tale of a man was covered in tattoos, each of which was alive and told a story – the stories in the collection. I thought it a good way to bring short stories together and this book has a similar idea in that the main character, a woman known only as Jones, has a series of tattoos, each telling a story, though hers are very different.
Jones, like her mother, grandmother, etc., before her, has an interesting ability - her mind can sort of detach itself and enter that of others, allowing her to see and experience parts of their lives. She calls these experiences ‘rememberings’ and their subjects can be located anywhere and can be in the past or in the future; thus she can meet someone for the first time and already know some of what awaits them. As a way of telling short stories, this is interesting and I found it appealed to me.
However, although it seems to me to be technically well written, nevertheless the style did nothing for me. Most books set the scene in a fairly straightforward way but some drop you right into the story with no introductory explanation, leaving you to figure out as you read exactly what the situation, the cultures, etc., are - and this is very much one of those. For the first many pages the text consists of short sentences and occasional questions, combining over time to create an overall impression. I enjoyed sentences such as ‘The grass beneath my feet is well behaved’, ‘Wolves of wind chase my silhouette up the street’, ‘My breath runs ahead of me and checks the route’, and ‘You know things are bad when even the skin is gentrified’, but (being literally minded) I found some sentences confusing such as ‘It is rare anyone sees physical currency any more, we wear our bank accounts on our sleeves, literally, chips embedded in our forearms’ (in the arm or on the sleeve - which?… and please do not use ‘literally’ when it should be ‘figuratively’).
The writing is very poetic and this is hardly surprising as this is the first novel from somebody best known for her poetry. Therein lies my problem - I have never really enjoyed poetry. Even after fifty pages the poetic feel to the writing was still coming between me and the story, and there had not been much in the way of story yet. It was looking like this would get in the way of my enjoyment throughout and so I put this book to one side, unfinished.
Perhaps I am not doing the book justice? If you like such poetic style then you might very well enjoy this offering. All I can say is that it did nothing for me but, in fairness, it might do a lot for you.
Peter Tyers
See also Arthur's take on The Night Alphabet.
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