Maggie Hartford picks her favourite novels from Oxfordshire authors
There’s always an uncertain moment when you open a poet’s first novel (will it be exquisitely written but with no discernible plot?) but Kate Clanchy’s Meeting the English (Picador, £16.99) easily rose to the top of my bedside table. Written with wit and plenty of twists and turns, it is the best book I have read this year by a local author.
I’m not alone in admiring it, since it has been shortlisted for the Costa first novel prize, and garnered admiring reviews. It seems astonishing for a mother-of-three to write 70,000 words in the voice of an 18-year-old working-class lad from a small Scottish town, but she leads us to inhabit the character of Struan, gauche and gawky, arriving for a gap year in London. He has come to Hampstead in 1989 to care for Philip, a famous writer who has had a stroke. Shirin, Phillip’s Iranian third wife, is engaged in a battle with the helpless writer’s ex, the monstrous Myfanwy, for control of the house and wealth. Struan also becomes entangled with Phillip’s daughter Juliet and son Jake, who turn out to be deeply troubled. The denouement is more enjoyable than any reader has a right to expect.
Another book I enjoyed was Birdcage (£9.99), self-published by Oxford writer and musician Nia Williams and available from Amazon. She has created an unforgettable character in Victorian slum child Millie, known as Loppy after her vicious father threw her from a gallery at the age of six for releasing a precious wild bird from its cage. It reminded me of The Crimson and the Scarlet by Michel Faber, the story of a Victorian prostitute which was televised two years ago. Williams follows her guttersnipe characters across 25 years as they struggle to stay alive (often failing) in alleyways full of thieves, murderers and ghosts.
The language is difficult at first but feels absolutely authentic. A full immersion in Victorian Gothic.
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