It’s become something of a tradition for Barack Obama to issue his summer reading list. It seems to have been extended to an end of year favourites now, too. I bet publishers’ hearts sing with joy if one of their titles appears on either, the next best thing to an Oprah recommendation. I won’t lie, his inclusion of Tiffany Clarke Harrison’s Blue Hour influenced my decision to read it when I spotted it on NetGalley. I’m not one for trigger warnings but readers who’ve had the misfortune to experience miscarriage or are close to someone who has might want to avoid this one.
The truth is, the moment I first saw you dance wild with arms darting, hair flopping in your laughing face, I knew I wanted a clone of that uninhibited joy to grow inside me.
Our unnamed narrator is a photographer of mixed race. She met her husband on a commission to photograph his menswear boutique, its shelves full of books. Asher and she slept together that day and have not spent a night apart since. Hers is a troubled past: her parents and younger sister died in a car crash for which she blames herself. Asher passionately wants a child while she is ambivalent, her own desires overshadowed by guilt and the dangers a child of theirs would face on streets patrolled by trigger-happy police, and when she does conceive it ends in sadness and loss. When a student on the community photography course she runs is shot, she decides to make a documentary, interviewing the mothers of young victims murdered because of the colour of their skin.
Voices raise. A scuffle. A shout rings out, shattered glass and a bang. The herd of bodies thickens and shifts in an agitated wave as police storm the streets.
Harrison unfolds her brief novella in an episodic narrative, sometimes addressed to Asher, sometimes to our narrator’s therapist, flashing back and forth between past and present. Her writing is often poetically lovely, studded with vivid images that fit our narrator’s photographic eye. I found myself constantly scribbling striking quotes but hers is not a showy style, more subtly powerful underlining the narrator’s journey from intellectualising her pain to feeling and facing it. The miscarriage scenes are unflinchingly visceral hence that trigger warning. Racism and police brutality is the underpinning theme of this novel but it’s the love between our narrator and Asher, and their struggle to have a family that is to the fore. A beautiful, deeply moving piece of fiction which ends with hope.
Verve Books Harpenden 9780857308771 160 pages Paperback (read via NetGalley)
This sounds an engaing read, even if the subject matter is far from easy. And if both you and Barrack Obama recommend it, it can’t be bad. Do you suppose that in his retirement Trump will keep readers up to date with his favourite choices?
Ha! Ranked alongside Obama, even if only in literary taste… Can he read?
Not much, I shouldn’t think …
I don’t keep up with such reading lists, but what a great way to use fame to support others.
Isn’t it! Nicola Sturgeon is an avid reader, too.
Nice
Thanks
I have seen this book promoted on the American book newsletters. I do like good stylistic writing with an authentic storyline so this sounds interesting.
It’s a particularly gorgeous piece of writing. Highly recommended.
This sounds like a good choice for Novellas in November!
Definitely!
Sounds a very powerful read. I wouldn’t automatically be drawn to it, but your description of her style is very tempting, she sounds a wonderful writer.
She writes so beautifully and with such sensitivity.
I’m glad this one was as good as it sounded.
I’d like to see it on next year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction list.
Ooh, let’s hope it meets the word count requirements!
Western Lane’s only a wee bit longer so fingers crossed!
I usually seem to turn away from rather than towards books from celebrity (for want of better word) reading recommendations, but once in a while some of them do appeal and this seems one of those, heavy though it will be on the emotions.
Though it’ll be your review that convinced me rather than Obama 😀
Thank you, Mallika!
It is a tough read, hence that trigger warning, but it’s well worth steeling yourself.