So.
I’ve been pondering over this review for a while now, partly because I excel at
procrastination and partly because never has a review ever felt so important. I
want to do this book justice, and I want to review it in a way that makes it
clear that what I love most about this book is the quality of the writing and
not the person that wrote it.
I
feel, kind of, like I’ve been waiting for this book forever, or if not forever,
then for a really really long time and nobody likes a humblebrag I know, but I
totally knew this day would come. I knew from the first time I read Jen’s
writing circa a million years ago that she’d get to this point and I am
unbelievably pleased that she has. I’m also unbelievably pleased, for my own
sake, that this book is stunningly good and I don’t have to do some kind of
awkward ‘yeah it’s ok let’s move swiftly on’ kind of post about it. It’s lush. Jen’s
writing is lush, a lot of it has this gorgeous stream of consciousness feel to it,
which totally ticks all my boxes and it’s so so whimsical. (Whimsy. I love that word.)
Years ago Jen wrote a story called Second Skin. I have a copy of it typed on A4
paper, in a box of special things. It starts 'there was a girl who ran marathons wearing nothing but sellotape...'
and it is incredible. I mean it. So good.
When
Jen first told me about The Beginning of
the World, that story is the first thing I thought of. I've read lots of
Jen's work in the years we've been pals but that piece has always been my
favourite.
And
then I got this book.
I
read the first story in the collection, 'Animals,'
and I had to message her and say 'yo Jen, remember Second Skin? You have
EXCELLED yourself' and also all of a sudden AS IF MY EXPECTATIONS WEREN'T HIGH
ENOUGH suddenly they were higher than the actual sky because this first story
in this gem of a collection, it blew me away.
It’s weird and clever and a
little bit creepy but also it's this really clever dissection of human nature;
of the nature of love and of relationships and of how fucked up relationships
can be under the guise of love that really isn't love at all and how you can
trap a person by calling something love when it's actually SO TOXIC. It’s
cleverly interwoven with fairytales and facts about swans and hearts and kings
and queens and it's kind of messed up and totally glorious and that's only the first story.
From that point on, I read this book so slowly, (which was hard let me tell you and proof that I am apparently the Queen of self control. Tell that to all the empty Frazzles packets in my bin, fuck's sake). I wanted to tear
through it but I was also so aware that I would never get to read these stories
for the first time ever again. I dragged it out.
Jacob
Quinn in the second story 'Jacob' gave
me an ache in my chest. I want to sit quietly by his bed, not under it with him
because I don't think he'd like it, but next to it, just so he knew I was
there. The tone of this story is entirely different to the tone of the first
which is excellent news actually because who wants to read a short story
collection of stories that are all the same? NOT ME. The stories in this
collection are not. Not the same, I mean and they all stand out. ‘Jacob’ was a lovely story, lovely and
thoughtful and somehow delicate.
Oh holy moly this could get SO LONG GUYS. Part
of me wants to do a little mini review for each story but I'm not going to
because let's leave something for you to do into without any preconceptions.
Some stories are short, just a couple of paragraphs and some, obviously, are
longer. I promise you though, that they’ll all get under your skin. You need to discover them for yourself,
carefully and patiently, like I did.
So,
just quickly then let's talk about a few more.
I was lucky enough to see the third story, ‘Plum pie. Zombie green. Yellow bee. Purple
monster.’ when it was still a WIP; I loved it then and I loved it now. It
might be my favourite. Either that or ‘Aunt
Libby’s Coffin Hotel’.
[I'd read a novel length of either of those Jen, of
you'd like to get on that kthnx.]
‘Plum
pie…’ draws on fairytales to tell its own story [you’ll find that
fairytales are a recurring theme in this book, in Jen’s writing generally and
she has an excellent series on her YouTube channel if you want to hear her talk
about that in more detail. S’really excellent] along with themes of connection
and disconnection, love and loss and growing up and it fascinated the hell out
of me. I bet the number of times I’ve read it is in double figures now. It felt like part of a bigger picture and I am so desperate for more of it.
The
title story made me cry. I realised pretty quickly what this was going to be,
where this particular story was going and then I got a funny chest
feeling.I read it at the end of a bad
week, feeling emotionally fragile and I cried. That's some feat for a short
story let me tell you; to get to me like that in so few words is pretty
impressive. Also I loved how it was written as a script, so it's all dialogue
and some minor direction and yet still hits you right in the feels. Loved
it.
‘Aunt Libby’s Coffin Hotel.’
AUNT LIBBY’S COFFIN HOTEL.
Aunt. Libby's. Coffin. Hotel. Which I could
totally talk about for ages and I’m having to hold back from calling Jen and
demanding ALL THE ANSWERS AND MORE OF THE WORDS because I have fallen so so
hard for this and it kind of ends on a cliff-hanger which is mean. Mean but so so excellent. It’s
about a teenage girl who runs a coffin hotel with her Aunt. People can rent coffins by the night and
experience death and it’s so damn clever. She has a dog called Cerberus and
they dress him in a three-headed suit which made me laugh. There’s Ankaa and
Aunt Libby and two of the guests at the hotel and you (or I, I’m projecting)
wind up fascinated by them all, by their backgrounds and their reasonings and
how they came to be, you want their backstories and you want their ‘what’s
nexts’ and this whole world that Jen’s created in just a few pages, and it
draws you in somehow.
The
final story in the collection, ‘Bright
White Hearts’ is….it’s really something. Raw and honest and
thought-provoking. It felt somehow like Jen was baring a part of her soul – or
maybe that’ just how I read it but it felt like part of her is in these words -
and out of all of the stories it felt most like the one with a real and
tangible message, a message that’s part fuck you to the people that are quick
to judge and part exercise in acceptance. Jen talks a lot about what it’s like,
both as a Queer woman and also to have EEC syndrome, and this story feels to me
like the closest she gets in her work to really exploring that, and what life
can be when you don’t fit in the boxes society lays out for you.
I was born with my fingers joined
together, but now they’re separated. Scars scatter my hands like nets, caught
by science.
It’s
gorgeous and it’s revealing and it makes me feel so many many things. I can’t
quite find the adjective I want for this somehow poetic story (which
makes sense because if asked I’d say Jen is a poet, first.) it’s not sad, but
it made me kind of...melancholy perhaps? It made me feel the things. Nothing terrible happens but it still made me ache. Read between the lines when you read this
story please, read between the lines and then spend a little bit of time
thinking. Also, the closing line, the line that ends this story and in turn the
whole book? It gave me goosebumps.
I
wouldn't write this review if I didn't genuinely love the book, by the way. I
wouldn't. I'd probably have text Jen and said something along the lines of cool
stories dude and then avoided the issue to the point that everybody forgot I'd
read it. I'm posting this review because this book is going to blow you away.
It's going to be something mega and I want to be able to say you heard it here
first.
What
would I compare it to? Nothing, really: it's like nothing else I've ever read
and like nothing else I will ever read and it will excel purely on it's own merit. I suppose if absolutely pushed I could tell you
that it made me feel much the same as I did when I read St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves except amplified by about
seventeen billion and that is A Very Good Thing. I don’t think I’ll read
anything else as good this year.
