Financial Times Weekend 22-23Feb2020

10 ★ FT Weekend 22 February/23 February 2020

flat. As it turns out, the personal is polit-

ical,but the personalis also exasperat-

ingly petty. Duringthe 2017 Women’s

March, Cate“is extremely unhappy

with the new president andfired up to

be marching”, but spends most ofthe

protest assessinghowbest todistance

herselffrom the“pussy hats”and

graphic posters shefinds distasteful.

RightAftertheWeatheralso conjures

thefutility ofsocial media warriors, and

duringitsfiner moments exudes the

narcissistichumourfoundin Kafka’s

diary entry. Cate’s ex-husband Graham

spends most ofthe book infront ofthree

large screens, absorbingthe news cycle.

Ye tdespitehis obsession withthe mach-

inations ofthe USgovernment and sur-

veillance capitalism,he remains comi-

cally egotistical.“I should havegone and

talked with each ofthem,”he says of

Trump voters, as though healone could

havemade themrealise “thevalue of

immigrants,how muchbetter it is to

Books

I

n 1997, Rami Elhanan’s 14-year-old

daughter Smadar was killed by two

Palestinian suicide bombers in

Jerusalem. Tenyears later in Anata,

aPalestiniantownunderIsraeli

occupation in the West Bank, Bassam

Aramin’s 10-year-old daughter Abir was

killed, shot with a rubber bullet fired by

an Israeli soldier.

These are terrible stories; true stories;

twofatherswhohavebothlost beloved

childrentoviolence.But theintractable

nature ofthat violence — the conflict

over the territories of Israel and Pales-

tine — would seem to mean that these

men couldneverbe unitedin theirloss,

only divided.

And yet, in the course ofColum

McCann’s new novelApeirogon,the

reader comes to inhabit their lives,to

see how fracture can be repaired at least

in part. This remarkable, complex

noveldemonstrates whathasbecomea

tenet of its author’s work: “One story

becoming another,”as he writes.

McCann is adept at transforming his-

tory into fiction in a way thatbringsthe

reader to view thathistory anew;heisa

writer whoforges connections that

would otherwise go unseen.Let the

GreatWorldSpinpivots around Philippe

Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the

Twin Towers of the World Trade Center,

but itsfocus is the many lives lived

underneaththe wire.TransAtlantic

begins with the story of John Alcock and

Arthur Brown, who made thefirst

transatlanticflight in 1919, but that

novelalso takesintheabolitionistFred-

erick Douglass’s visit to Ireland in 1845,

as well as US senator George Mitchell’s

work brokering the 1998 Good Friday

peace accords in Northern Ireland. Both

Petit andMitchellreappear inApeiro-

gon,a further interweaving of lives

within lives.

WithApeirogon,thisboldnovelist

enters fraught political territory with

courage and imagination. There is no

simple way to approach this kind of

material, and so McCann takes the

novelform and cracks it open: the book

is composed of1,000 chapters, some

only a single line long. They are num-

beredupto500before heading back

down to one again — recognition that

stories suchas those of Elhananand

Aramin can have no linear trajectory.

Yet McCann ensures that as the novel

expands and folds back in on itself, the

reader neverfeels lost: one ofthe

book’sfeats is the way that clarity of

exposition is combined with formal

experimentation.

Itbegins in 2016, withRami —his yel-

low licence plate indicating that he is an

Israeli — riding towards the separation

barrier that divides EastJerusalemfrom

theWestBank.Itwillbe awhilebefore

thereaderlearnswhereheisheading,

butMcCann’sconfidentnarrativedraws

us in, revealingthelandscape as Rami

swerves throughit onhis motorbike:

“Twoanswersforoneswerve: Giloon

one side, Bethlehem on theother. Geog-

raphy here is everything.”

Apeirogon: A Novel

by Colum McCann

Bloomsbury £18.99/

Random House $28,

480 pages

Everything — and yet not enough.

What, thereader may ask,cananovel

such as this bring to our understanding

ofRami and Bassa’s lives, their situa-

tions andthoseoftheirfamilies? Much

has been written about the friendship of

the two men, who met through the Par-

ents Circle, a joint Israeli-Palestinian

organisation founded in 1995 that now

consists ofmore than 600families, all of

whom have lost an immediatefamily

member to the conflict in the region.

The answer is that the bestfiction per-

mits a level ofempathy thatfew other

forms of writing allow. Rami calls him-

self“a graduate ofthe Holocaust”,his

father having escapedfrom the camps.

As a young man, Bassam served a seven-

year sentence in an Israeli prisonfor

throwing ahandgrenadeatamilitary

jeep; while in prison, he watched a docu-

mentary about the Holocaust and

rejoiced at the deaths ofthose he

regarded as his enemy.

McCann reveals, with plain-spoken

delicacy, the hearts ofthese men, and

how they will find their way to forgive-

ness and understanding.

But thisis a bookthat containsmulti-

tudes: the stories ofits real-life prota-

gonists and theirfamilies are threaded

throughwithmeditations onbird

migration, the work ofcomposers John

Cage and Philip Glass, the story ofthe

19th-century Irish priest Christopher

Costigan, whofirst explored the Dead

Sea. McCann traces the technology of

violence: the manufacture ofrubber

bullets; the last walk ofa suicide

bomber; the production of Zyklon B,

the gas used in the death chambers at

Auschwitz.

What remains most imprinted in the

mind, though, is beauty. The descrip-

tion ofthe white dove that settled on

Philippe Petit’s balancing pole when he

walked on a wire between East and West

Jerusalem in 1987; the love ofthese two

fathersfortheir lost children.

Apeirogon:a shape with a countably

infinite number ofsides.“Countably

infinite” — the counting of the elements

in the set will takefor ever but you will

get to any particular element in afinite

amount of time. An apeirogon may look

like a circle, curling back upon itself,the

number ofits sides so vast that the eye

perceives the figure as round, softened

and perfected.

It’s a clumsy titlefor a novel, one

might argue, a title requiring explan-

ation. Still, this remarkable book rises to

embody thegeometric form, foldingan

uncountablenumberof storieswithin

itself, the lives ofPalestinians and Israe-

lis, stretchingback into the past and off

into thefuture. It is a daring, humane

achievement.

Acrossthedivide

EricaWagneron a real-life Israeli-Palestinian friendship forged in grief —

now transformed into a novel of remarkable complexity and humanity

Becky Strange

Me,myselfandwhy

Impotentliberalangstclashes

withtheself-centredimpulse

oftheindividualinTrump’s

America.ByJoHamya

T

hegreat upheavals rarely

sustain a satisfactory sense

ofdrama. Real life happens

in thegapbetween thegrav-

ity ofsuch events and the

mundanity in whichthey occur — take

Kafka in 1914:“Germany has declared

war on Russia. Went swimming.”

Carol Anshaw’s latest novel,Right

After the Weather,has its protagonist

register two incidents ofterrible signifi-

cance:the result ofthe 2016 US presi-

dentialelection, anda violenthome

invasion. In the aftermath ofeach,

Anshawdepicts a charactercalculating

the enormity ofthese experiences

alongside thefact that her day-to-day

life remains largely unaltered.

Cate is a stagedesignerlivingin Chi-

cago. An acutely 21st-centurytugofwar

between“wokeness” andmoreselfish

impulses suffuses most ofher thoughts:

in light ofclimate change, she tries not

to be“viscerally thrilled”by an unsea-

sonably warmday; when sheworkson

an LGBT play that shehates, sheleaves

it offher CV butfinishes thejob in order

to pay“respect togay history”. For Cate,

the value ofthe quotidian is elevated

always throughagrander sociopolitical

lens, though seldom to any useful end.

In this way, withits near-constant

mode ofthird-person present tense,

RightAftertheWeathertaps into thefrus-

trations oftoday’s liberalism. Though

Anshaw’s characters worry about cur-

rent affairs, their response oftenfalls

Right After

the Weather

by Carol Anshaw

Fig Tree £14.99/

Atria Books $27,

288 pages

There is no simple way to

approach this material, so

McCann takes the novel

form and cracks it open

An acutely 21st-century tug

of war between ‘wokeness’

and more selfish impulses

suffuses Cate’s thoughts

consider races andgenders equal”.No

matterhow socially aware Graham

becomes, his emphasis remains on“I”.

Such anticlimax pervades the novel’s

first halfvia snapshots ofthe ineffectual

moralrectitude its characters express.

When, duringaliveperformance,a

door sticksonastage set that shehas

designed, Cateframes the mishap in the

context of“everythinggoingwrongina

larger sense”with America. Hergirl-

friend sympathises — but theirjoint

solutionistoruna bath.

BathosisRight After the Weather’s

strongest suit, and the bookfalters once

thedeviceisshedinfavourof amorecli-

mactic approachfor its second half.

Anshawbuilds towards the homeinva-

sion in a series ofcutaway scenes involv-

ingChicago’s homeless community. The

overlapbetween these passages and

Cate’s cosseted life is made with a point-

edness that screamsformoraloverture.

Regrettably, thedenouement is con-

fused: once thehomeless characters

havefulfilled their plotfunction, their

snippets ofnarrative cease, without

having said much — Cate, meanwhile,

oscillates betweenherformernarcis-

sism anda PTSD-inducedcrisis, neither

ofwhich is developed convincingly

enough to come offas anythingother

than annoying.

“In the middle ofeverythingscary

and tricky, I’m tryingto live my one

life,”she pronounces near the end, and

onegets the sense that thereisaless

twee, earnest takeaway tobehadin

that — about Trump’s America, about

the trickiness ofthe accountability of

individual citizens.ButRightAfterthe

Weatherends up worsefor waveringin

its chief observation:thatasense of une-

ventfulness is the thingto watchfor in

any major event.

Ai AN l

R t b F A 2

Writing someone

else’s story is

a risky business

Nilanjana Roy

Reading the world

T

he review copy ofJeanine

Cummins’AmericanDirt

arrived brimmingwith

endorsements. Aglossy

postcard announced that

the novel was an Oprah’s Book Club

pick; Stephen Kingdefied anyone to

read thefirst seven pages and not

finish the book;Don Winslow called

it“aGrapesofWrathfor our time”.

Ofall the books published each year,

only a very few will receive this sort of

care, planningand marketing. From

the summer of 2019 ,AmericanDirtwas

signposted as a major work of fiction.

I’mglad I read the book before the

furious debate began over whethera

white American novelist with some

Puerto Rican ancestryhad done justice

to the stories ofmigrants struggling to

reachandcross the US-Mexicoborder.

AmericanDirtis easily summarised.

Lydia Quixano Pérez, a bookstore

owner, has toflee Acapulco with her

eight-year-old son Luca after her

husband is murdered by drug cartels.

Lydia andLuca join the migrants

boarding La Bestia, the trains to the

north, andface terrifying challenges.

Ithas thebreathless pace andtone

of a soap opera; Cummins is not John

Steinbeck, andAmericanDirtisasfar

from being this generation’sGrapesof

WrathasI am from being Gigi Hadid.

The plot moves with electrifying twists

andturns, thecharacters are separated

into heroes and villains, neatly

identifiable and rarely shaded in grey.

Ifyou know nothing about the long

history of migration in the region, the

bookisauseful explainer — it delivers

up the messiness ofmigrant struggles

andUSbordertensionsinaneat

package. But ifyou’re a migrant, ifyou

knowmore, you mightunderstandthe

fury of critics such as the Chicana

writer Myriam Gurba, who called

AmericanDirt“trauma porn that wears

asocial justice fig leaf”.

It seemed to me,as an outsider to the

US andto Mexico, that Cumminshad

the best of intentions, but that she

wrote as a well-intentioned outsider

to the lives ofmany ofher characters,

whoarerendered one-dimensional.

The reader is never in doubt that the

novelwillendon a note ofepiphany,

as soap operas and telenovelas must.

That same week, I read Deepa

Anappara’sDjinnPatrolonthePurple

Line.I approached it first with caution,

wondering ifthis was another Indian

novel miningpoverty as its source

material,but then withdeepening

delight. This storyfeatures nine-year-

oldJai and hisfriends,slum-dwellersin

asmoggy, unnamedcity that resembles

Delhi, whoform their own“djinn

patrol”to investigate the unnerving

disappearances ofother slum children.

Jai is a wonderful narrator, fully

imagined — “I’m scared of JCBs, exams,

djinns that are probably real, and

Ma’s slaps”— and in Anappara’s hands,

hisworld takes shape with care yet

withoutsentiment,from the ghostof

the ragpickers’ boss to the fear that

bulldozers will raze their homes.

Anappara is in herforties, and made

herdebutlate as a novelist; asa

journalist she has worked on the

impact ofpoverty on children, and

bringsbothknowledge andrespect to

her fiction.Her characters are free to

make terrible mistakes, unshackledto

the necessity of a neat ending.

Part ofthe power ofliterature is that

anyone can write anyone else’s stories.

This generation’s debate over cultural

appropriation is a fresh version of an

older argument about postcolonial

literature —doyouhave a righttotell

those stories? And, as novelist and

essayist Alexander Chee asks,“Why do

you want to tell this story?”

To these questions, I would add one

more: can you be sure that youfully

inhabit and empathise with the lives of

people whose race, or class, or caste,

backgrounds and life experiences, are

vastly differentfrom yours? Ifso, go

ahead; if not, proceed with care.

Much ofthe anger aroundAmerican

Dirtandits reputedlylarge advance

has to do with unequal power in the

publishing marketplace. Some critics

have askedwhy a non-Mexican writer

should profit when major publishers in

the US have historically ignored Latino

authors who tackledthe same subjects.

BothCumminsandhercritics claimto

havefaced threats, as the argument

grows ever more heated on and offline.

Novelists should have the right to tell

other people’s stories — but they don’t

have a righttobe uncritically reviewed.

None of us want to say to another

author that as a non-Mexican,she can

never write about Mexicans; or that if

you are Hindu, you can’t write about the

Christian or Muslim experience; none of

us wants to shutdoors.

And yet the writer’s job is also to be

aware ofyour own limitations — can

youdo justice toexperiences sofar

outside your own? Cummins earnestly

explains the lives ofmigrants, in a

wildlymelodramaticbut ultimately

unconvincing novel; Anappara took me

effortlessly into the alien world ofa

slum in an Indian metropolis, and

helped me see it through a child’seyes.

Anyone can try to tell someone else’s

stories. Gettingit rightismuchharder

than it seems, and ifyou take sucha

risk, expect also to take theflak.

F

ebruarybeingthelovey-dovey,

hearts-and-flowersValentine

month, there’s a specialfocus

on romance in thelatest crop

ofyoungadult novels.

Justkidding— in YA, every month

brings its crop ofbook-length romantic

propaganda instructingpredominantly

teenagegirls, and afewgay boys, that if

youjust meshwiththeone,lifeisgoing

to turn outfine. But lurkingin the heap

areafewtitles seasonedwitha dashof

originality or reality, and every so often

there’sevenanofferingthat dares to

messwith therules and subvert the

genre altogether.

Of CursesandKissesby Sandhya

Menon(Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99)can

beforgivenfor takinga straightforward

lineonromance. Jaya Rao, princess ofa

fictional Indian kingdom, is a newgirl at

St Rosetta’s, an elite co-ed boarding

school in Colorado. It’sanunrecognisable

establishmentwhere the headteacher

humbly asks wealthy pupils ifshe can be

ofservice, and agirl’s valuable ruby pen-

dantisnotconfiscated on sight.

Jaya has one aim: to break the heart of

Grey Emerson,fiendish scion ofa Brit-

ish aristocraticfamily that has been the

sworn enemy ofher own since the days

ofthe Raj.Greyisgigantic, described as

both lupine and bearlike(on the same

page), with hands likened to paws. It’sa

strangewaytodescribethelove inter-

est, untilyou twigthat this is a revamp

ofBeautyandtheBeast.

Grey has been brought up in terror of

thefamily curse, laid by Jaya’svengeful

ancestor, so he’shighly resistant to her

regal wiles. It’s pure,fantastical escap-

ism witha tiny critique embeddedin the

privilege that it sojoyfully describes.

“Every happy teenagegirl is the same,

while every unhappy teenagegirlis

miserable in her own special way.”

Jenny Lee’sAnnaK(Penguin, £7.99)is

another textualrevamp, this time

mashingup Tolstoy’s classic ofdoomed

lovewithCrazyRichAsians—the stra-

pline“Young. Rich. Crazy in Love”is

entirelydeliberate.

Lee transposesAnnaKareninatoNew

Yorkin adensely texturedtale witha

highcharacter count andendless prod-

uct placement.“He pretty much ruined

Hermèsfor me. Likeforevs,”says one

lovelorn younglady. F illedwithnear-

impenetrable teenage slangand refer-

ences, it risks collapsefrom thefirst,

bathetic line:“The whole thingwas a

f***ingdisaster.”

However, it soonbecomes clear that

Lee can spin a narrative atbreakneck

pace andfill it with irresistibly witty dia-

logue. Half-Korean Anna K is a wise 17-

year-oldwhoadvisesher peers andeld-

ers on affairs ofthe heart until a dashing

boy nicknamedCount Vronskymakes

offwithherown heart. What about the

train? Ihear you ask.Nospoilers!

MeanwhileKatinDiaryofa Confused

Feministby Kate Weston(Hodder,

£7.99)manages to tumble to theground

right infront ofHot Josh,flippingher

skirt overherhead,thusbaringher

knickers anduntrimmedpubichair.

What’s worse, her Mooncup rolls out of

her bagtowards hisfeet. Kat refuses to

be period-shamedorbody-shamed,but

beingan ardentfeminist in today’s

mixed-up worldentails many problems

andcontradictions.

Kathas that oldstandby, agaybest

friend, and twofemalefriends whose

emotionalinconsistencies continually

knock Kat’s confidence. Weston,a

former stand-up comedian, chucksgags

around likefireworks until the story

takes adarker turn, tacklingsocialanxi-

ety, depression and low self-esteem.

However, thejacket photo ofthe

author’s cat playingwith a Mooncup is

enoughto cheer up anyone.

Jamie is anotherhopelessklutz, man-

agingto knock over a shop display of

tangelos and later, a tablefull offood ata

Ramadanfast-breakingdinner. These

incidents tendtohappen wheneverheis

in the vicinity offormerfriend Maya.

Their interactions, eager onhis side,

surlyonhers, aredescribedin alternat-

ingchapters ofYesNoMaybe Soby

BeckyAlbertalliand Aisha Saeed

(Simon & Schuster, £7.99).

JewishJamie andMuslim Maya are

brought together by the timely device of

a post-Trump politicalcampaigntogeta

Democrat electedto a traditionally

Republican seat in the US House of

Representatives. The pairbuilda touch-

ingfriendship by canvassing, initially

reluctantlybut withgrowingurgency as

the Republican candidatebegins to

show a cloven hoofofreligious and anti-

gay bigotry. Since happy ever after is

rarelythe outcome when it comes to

politics, thank Godfor romance.

Escapismwithatwist

GENREROUND-UP

YOUNGADULT

By Suzi Feay