What do you do, though, when you read a book that you know
is very likely to be your book of the year and you want to shout from the
rooftops about how utterly fantastically brilliant it is and yet know that
nothing you could ever say would ever come close to making your point?
Well, you write your blog post anyway don’t you and accept
that if it’s just going to be a keysmashing capslocking mess then so be it –
it’s the thought that counts.
Basically if you are not ready to read Patrick Gale’s new
novel Take Nothing With You when it
is released next week, and also to love it, then I cannot help you: you are
doing life wrong.
I love Patrick Gale.
Not in an actual love way,
obviously, because I have never met him and that would be weird and terrifying,
but in an every word he writes is magic and speaks to my soul kind of a way. I
don’t like to name favourite writers because I like lots of books and decisions
are hard but if you forced me, with the threat of no coffee ever again, then I
would say that Patrick Gale is up there.
Don’t know much about him? HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING UNDER A
ROCK.
I’m sorry; that was judgey.
Read A Place Called
Winter and watch Man in the Orange
Shirt and then come back to me and we’ll chat.
He’s just…he’s a special kind of writer to me, a writer that
understands words and stories and the people that read them. I was so excited
when I found out he had a new book out this summer and made some kind of weird inhuman
noise when a copy of it landed on my doormat and I was SO PREPARED to love it.
Sometimes there’s a plot twist here, when I have been
prepared to love a book and then haven’t actually loved it at all.
Not this time.
I loved this book.
Lemme tell you the deal.
It’s about Eustace (and yes I did google how to pronounce that correctly you can go right
ahead and judge me) – partly Eustace’s story now, at the tentative beginning of
a relationship with a man he’s met online and about to undergo treatment for
cancer, but mostly Eustace’s story then, as a boy growing up in the care home
his parents have turned his home into, and his steps towards discovering who he
is, a lot of which comes about because of his cello lessons and it, it’s just
REALLY GOOD OK. It’s an incredible social commentary that perfectly walks the
tightrope between comedy and tragedy and it just feels…real. Like, nothing here
feels contrived or like it’s trying to force you to think or feel a certain
thing, which, I mean you do think and feel certain things, but there’s nothing
sanctimonious here you know? It’s open and it’s chest-tighteningly tender and
whilst not sad, it’s still kind of
heartbreaking at the same time as making me incredibly incredibly happy. It’s
kind of joyous this book, even as it makes you ache. Even, actually, as it makes you angry and wow sometimes it
made me SO ANGRY that I had to put it down and take a breath. I didn’t want it
to end and HOLY BOOK HNAGOVER, BATMAN I did not know what to read next once it
had.
There’s a lot of music – Eustace is a cellist – and I loved
that, loved it to the point that I wanted to dig out my clarinet which has been
untouched for around 18 years. The music is the thread that holds the whole
book together and it’s so gorgeously gorgeously done; you could hear the music,
you could feel the weight of the cello, you were there in that room where Carla showed Eustace how to fall in love
with his instrument, there at the summer school where he learned so much more
than just how to play.
Which brings me to my next point. There’s also a lot of
self-discovery here, which is a theme throughout a lot of Gale’s work, actually:
Eustace is discovering his sexuality and his love for music and his place in
the world but I think for me, more than anything this book is about….power? The
power of love and the power of self-belief and the power of music and the power
of growing up with people who believe in you and also the power of influences,
even those (especially those) influences that are the opposite of good.
I don’t even know how to tell you how much I loved it. It’s
exquisite.
