Western Lane is a quiet novel about a family–namely, three sisters–in the wake of the loss of their mother. The issue here is that it is so quiet as to feel completely muted–and that’s really the beginning and the end of why I didn’t find this novel to be particularly memorable, or even moving. Theoretically, the elements of its story should work for me: I love stories about families, especially ones that focus on the dynamics between a small group of characters. But the way this novel is written made it so difficult for me to connect with its story. The general impression I get from Western Lane is that it was aiming for subtlety and nuance but instead overcorrected and tamped down its entire narrative: that is, rather than subtle, the writing just felt flat, one-note. I wanted more from this story, because there were glimmers here and there of genuinely interesting or compelling moments. But it was like the narrative kept refusing to give me even the faintest bit more: more feeling, more introspection, just…more. I understand that this tamping-down is a function of the characters’ grief–specifically the narrator, Gopi’s, grief–but I just don’t think the way it was done here served the story or its characters well.
There are quiet novels and then there are boring novels; Western Lane falls firmly in the latter camp for me. A mediocre, perfectly average story. Needless to say, I don’t really understand how this one made it to the Booker longlist.
Thank you to Picador for providing me with an eARC of this via NetGalley!
On paper, Mrs. S sounded like it was written to appeal to every single one of my literary interests: queer love story! boarding school setting! exploration of desire!–I was ready to call it a new favourite, and the cover hadn’t even been released yet.
Needless to say, it was a real reality check when I started this book and realized that it was not, in fact, going to be all the things I thought it would be. I’ll cut to the chase: I didn’t really enjoy Mrs. S, and it’s because its writing was…not to my taste.
Mrs. S is a novel that is, at every turn, held back by its choppy, fragmented, stilted writing. The writing simply does not flow, and it actively hinders the reading experience in almost every way. Here’s a passage from the novel as an example of the kind of writing I’m talking about:
“Inside it is cool. The man working behind the bar rings his bell and announces last orders. There is no one else here. He looks directly at me. You work at the school? Yes. Not a student? No. I ask for a lager and he pauses. A lager? Yes. Tap? If possible, yes. He is a big man, his cream shirt puckered across his chest. I want him to like me. For there to be a mutual respect. A woman comes in from outside. Sunburn shines across her chest. She shivers. One strap of a floral vest top slips down her arm. Another please. Hope you’re not driving. She winks. He puts down the pint glass he was yet to pour into. Turns his back to me and unscrews a bottle of white wine. He fills her glass comically high, all the way to the rim. One for the road. She looks at me now. Eyes soft with alcohol. Hi there you. I am taller than she is, in her flip-flops, a handbag in the crease of her arm, a pair of sunglasses balanced on her head. She reaches out and pulls on the waistband of my jeans. The man puts my beer down heavily. Thank you, thanks so much. At the sound of my voice she pulls back. Fucking hell I am drunk fuck. White wine spills onto my t-shirt. She flaps her hands. Sorry fuck. In the doorway she takes one last look at me and shakes her head. Fuck. More wine spills.”
I want you to imagine reading a whole novel–240 pages–of this. Every sentence. Like this. No literary flourishes. Of any kind. Just one thing happening. Then another. Then another.
I’ll say it again because it bears repeating: I did not like the writing in this novel. I have nothing against sparse writing; many of my favourite novels–Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, Hot Milk by Deborah Levy–are sparsely written. But Mrs. S is not so much sparse as it is threadbare in its writing–and unbearably so. Unbearable because not only is the writing not evocative or descriptive in any way–at times it reads like an instruction manual–but on a practical level it just seriously impedes narrative engagement. When every sentence. Is lopped off. Like this. It’s very hard to be immersed in the story. (Halfway through the novel I would’ve done anything for one singular complete sentence that was more than, like, 5 words.) And you’d think that stripped back writing would make for a faster or easier read, but in fact the writing here makes the novel such a slog to read. The reading experience is so stop-and-start, constantly interrupted by the novel’s short, staccato sentences; trying to get through it was like trying to swim and repeatedly having your head dunked in and out of the water. In and out. In and out. In and out.
All the above is made even worse by the fact that the dialogue in this novel a) has no quotation marks, b) has almost no speech tags (“he said” “she said”), and c) has no line breaks. So not only could I not tell who was saying what, I also just couldn’t figure out what was being said. Here’s another passage as an example:
“Already she has on the chain she loaned me last night. A black vest, loose across her chest. Tattoos cover her shoulders. Don’t tell anyone about these yeh. She winks and touches what I think is the head of a thick snake. No, I say, unable to commit to a sentence. No? No. You’re hilarious this morning. She has on boxers. Plaid, baggy. A pair of socks. No. Is that all you can say? No. Using all my energy I open my throat to finish the beer. Don’t throw up. I don’t throw up. That’s it! Fucking hell, O.K. In solidarity she finishes hers too. Tequila next? Fuck off. Ah, she lives! Not quite. I close my eyes and turn onto my back. Better? Maybe. Maybe works for me, O.K., phase two. Two? Yes, dress, let’s go get a bacon sarnie. Where? I know a place. She taps the side of her nose. She wears her clichés so well. The beer is helping.”
Why! is! the! dialogue! written! like! that! What purpose does this serve for the novel, aside from making the dialogue hard to read? It was so deeply frustrating. I don’t care about the lack of quotation marks, I don’t even care about the lack of speech tags, but no line breaks?? That’s like the bare minimum requirement to distinguish which character is saying what.
When I say a novel is well-written, I don’t just mean that the writing is, on a technical level, good (though that is part of it). What I also mean is that its writing helps it accomplish what it is trying to accomplish: to craft complex characters, evoke an atmospheric setting, construct a compelling plot. I didn’t think Mrs. S was well-written, so it’s no surprise that I also thought its story was ineffective. At the heart of this novel is a romance between the main character and Mrs. S, the wife of the boarding school’s headmaster. But here’s the thing: I didn’t buy it. The dynamic between them is written in such an oblique, impressionistic way that it doesn’t really give you a sense of anything of substance. (And the writing’s choppiness makes it so that the novel feels like it’s not really able to sustain anything that feels substantial or fleshed out in the first place.) More than that, the story is poorly paced and often feels aimless. The romance takes a while to get going, and in the meantime we have these boring scenes where the narrator doesn’t really do much of anything. There’s one chapter where she goes to the bar and has some drinks and…that’s it? I struggled to latch on to anything in this novel, and the more I read, the less I found to latch on to.
There is such a huge gap between theory and execution, and though Mrs. S didn’t really give me much to enjoy, it at least gave me an acute awareness of that. In theory, an amazing novel that sounded like it was written for me; in execution, a novel that underwhelmed and frustrated me by turns.
Thank you to Europa Editions for providing me with an eARC of this!
I liked parts of this collection, but I feel like it never really went as far as I wanted it to go.
Uranians consists of 4 short stories and a novella, all of which in some way or another incorporate a speculative or science fiction element in them. “Six Hangings in the Land of Unlikable Women,” I think, is the most effective of the stories in exploring the possibilities of this element. It’s set in an early 1900s America where all women have, inexplicably, become impossible to kill–a fact that has evidently not stopped the men in their lives from attempting to kill them. I thought this premise and the way that McCombs executed it was just fascinating (if, perhaps, a little underdeveloped). Another story I loved was “Lacuna Heights,” which follows a lawyer as he slowly begins to realize that his brain implant is interfering with his memories (it reminded me a lot of the Black Mirror episode, “The Entire History of You”). Theodore McCombs works in environmental law, so it’s no surprise that this story was a compelling look at how law can intersect with memory, and the lengths to which we’re willing to go to efface–or try to efface–the things that feel too overwhelming for us to process.
Beyond these two stories, though, I felt largely indifferent to this collection. The first story, “Toward a Theory of Alternative Lifestyles,” was interesting, but I didn’t like “Talk to Your Children About Two-Tongued Jeremy”–its premise felt flimsy and overblown–and the titular novella, “Uranians,” I thought was convoluted and meandering. Here’s the thing: on a sentence-by-sentence basis, McCombs is an excellent writer, but structurally, a lot of his stories just try to do too much. The stories will make reference to obscure physics or musical theory and, sure, sometimes I like it when authors incorporate these kinds of elements into their stories, but here it just took up too much narrative space and was far too complicated for the average reader to understand (at least this average reader). I found this to be a major issue in “Uranians,” where there are pages and pages of the narrator talking about this opera and its music–all sections that I just completely glazed over because they felt so beyond me.
Overall, not bad, but not especially impressive. I’ll keep an eye out for more works from this author though.
Thank you to Astra House for providing me with an eARC of this via NetGalley!
The Book Place 