c4 eZ re the washington post.wednesday, march 11 , 2020
book worlD
Friday | 7 p.M. tom fitzgerald and
lorenzo Marquez will discuss “legendary
children: the first Decade of ruPaul’s
Drag race and the last century of Queer
life” at Politics and Prose, 5015
connecticut ave. nW. 202-364-1919. for
more literary events, go to wapo.st/litcal.BY ELLEN AKINS“milkman,” Anna Burns’s extraordi-
nary third novel, won the man Booker
Prize in 2018, clearing the flight path for
this first American
publication of her sec-
ond novel, “Little
Constructions,”
which was published
in the United King-
dom in 2007. If you
think that’s a bit
twisty, just wait till
you get caught up in
the novel’s plot. It be-
gins with a bang, or
the prospect of a
bang, when Jetty Doe
bursts into a gun
shop, grabbing a Ka-
lashnikov and what-
ever bullets she can
get her hands on. “Did
you see that, To m?”
the gun shop owner,
also named To m, says.
“She didn’t want to know if it was an
AK47 or an AK74. She called it a gun.”
After all, “men want to know what sort
of gun it is. Women just want the gun” —
and that, according to our narrator, is the
one difference between men and women.
This narrator, one of the book’s more
delightful peculiarities, is a (mostly) dis-
embodied know-it-all voice that can
sound like a mash-up of Beckett, Dr.
Seuss and the Kinsey report. Though
claiming a certain aloofness as a “by-
stander,” t he voice has plenty to say about
mental ailments, marital relations,
abuse, shock, recovery and the state of
things in general. Also, mercifully, it tells
us where we are in time as we rocket f rom
Jetty Doe “heading east in a temper in a
taxi” back to the knifing that haunts Gun
Shop To m, ahead to the crimes, big and
small, that Jetty interrupts, back to the
childhood damage done to another Doe,
Jotty, and forward 20 years to the fallout,
including, not incidentally, the gun
shop’s transformation into “Tiptoe floor-
board’s only feminine bra shop.”
Ah, yes, Tiptoe floorboard: That’s the
unlikely name of this presumably North-
ern Ireland town convulsed by violence
largely done within and in the name of
the family Doe. Even the Doe family is
difficult to keep track of here. But, again,
let the narrator help: “Jetty Doe was
really a Doe, but often others only social-
ly connected with the Doe family also
went under that umbrella.” Thus, next
into the gun shop, was “Jennifer Doe,
who wasn’t r eally a Doe, but best friend of
Janet Doe, one of the two people Jetty in
the taxi was looking for at the moment.”
The other is “John Doe, husband of
Janet, father to Julie, and brother to both
Janine and Jotty. He was also leader of
the town’s Community Centre Action
Te am.”
That’s the criminal gang that terroriz-
es Tiptoe — whose criminal activity
seems to be a natural outgrowth of the
violence at the core of the Doe family,
which is rife with child abuse, incest,
rape, casual cruelty and the sort of
domestic brutality that prompts the Doe
women to conjure imaginary loving hus-
bands to get through their dreary days.
That a ll sounds so awful, and it is — but
in the narrator’s knowing, alternately
wry and waggish commentary, there is
more than denial, repression and tough-
ing-it-out, though plenty of that, too.
There is a glimmer of hope, a suspicion of
redemption, and enough playful wit to
suggest that what’s building in “Little
Constructions” may w ell be a comic novel
after all.
[email protected]
ellen akins is the author of four novels and a
collection of stories, “World like a knife.”
little
construc-
tions
anna Burns
graywolf. 296
pp. $16
Who calls
the shots if
everyone
has a gun?
Washington Post illustration; istockThe n ovel doggedly
tackles middle age
attention to the ordinary absurdities of
middle-class life. She has a great humor-
ist’s eye for the comedy we’ve seen but
overlooked — such as the strained pre-
ciousness of montessori schools or the
self-satisfaction of people who subscribe
to meal kits. She’s particularly witty
about the vapidity of our self-help cul-
ture. To m ake ends meet, Judy churns out
click-bait for a healthyish website called
Well/er, e.g. When accepting failure is a
Good Thing; Does working at home make
you less attractive? (If you’re
one of the “lucky” people still
working as a journalist, this too-
real line of contemporary satire
will make you laugh... and cry.)
And one of the novel’s funniest
sections involves an Instagram
guru “in leggings and a white
cashmere poncho-cape” whose
perfectly curated life is the ob-
ject of Judy’s jealousy and deri-
sion. (Gwyneth Paltrow: Call
your agent — or your lawyer.)
Perhaps the most admirable
aspect of “Separation Anxiety”
is the way Zigman subtly cho-
reographs the novel’s apparent-
ly random goofiness. The life-size puppet
performers who move into Judy’s house
even as her marriage collapses would
seem to stretch the antics too far. “my
moms were founding members of this
puppet theater at Bennington College,”
one of them explains. “They just did a
puppet adaptation of The Vagina Mono-
logues.” But those “Puppet People” e nd up
making perfect sense and a salutary
contribution to Judy’s h ome. Same with a
dark, scatological subplot at her son’s
school. for better or worse, poop hap-
pens. Judy can learn to deal with it or let it
overwhelm her.
Stalked by the loneliness of middle
age, you may think the last thing you
need is a novel about a woman driven to
wearing her dog. You’d be wrong.
[email protected]ron charles writes about books for the
Washington Post and hosts
totallyhipVideoBookreview.com.age opacity.”
What’s worse, Judy is trapped in a
zombie marriage. It’s over between her
and her husband, but he can’t afford to
live anywhere else, so he’s sleeping in the
guest room, and they’re lumbering along,
pretending everything is fine.
Everything is not fine.
“Life eventually takes away everyone
and everything we love and leaves us
bereft,” Judy says at her lowest
point. Clutching a copy of marie
Kondo’s best-selling declutter-
ing book, she goes down to the
basement in a last-ditch effort to
find sparks of joy. “So little gives
me joy now that I’m afraid I’ll
get rid of every single thing I’ve
ever owned and end up with
nothing,” she admits. “feeling
empty only makes me want to be
emptier.”
In these opening pages, Zig-
man digs into the self-confirming
nature of depression with the
authenticity of someone who’s
been hounded by that black dog.
But the sorrow here is always twined with
comedy. Amid all the basement junk,
Judy finds an eco-friendly baby sling that
she never used. Impelled by longing, she
puts it on. “I feel like Björk at the oscars
wearing that swan,” she says, but some-
thing’s missing. She tries filling the sling
with bath towels. Then a cabbage. finally,
it strikes her: The family dog, Charlotte,
is just right. “A t first, I only wear the dog
inside the house,” she says. “It seems
harmless enough. An improvised self-
care remedy that instantly works better
than any psychopharmaceutical or baked
good ever has.”
That deliciously absurd tone runs
straight through this novel. Soon Judy is
wearing her 20-pound dog-baby to the
grocery store and even to her son’s s chool.
“Shouldn’t e veryone be wearing a dog for
improved mental health?” she wonders.
But what keeps “Separation Anxiety”
from spinning off into some surreal par-
allel universe of silliness is Zigman’sBooK world from C1separation
anxiety
By laura Zigman
ecco. 276 pp.
$26.99Perhaps the most admirable aspect of “Separation Anxiety” is
the way Zigman subtly choreographs the novel’s apparently
random goofiness.
eleni stefanouMan Booker Prize winner Anna
Burns’s second novel has now been
released in the United States.
‘Untamed Shore’
Silvia moreno-Garcia, best known for
writing fantasy novels, has come up
with a first-rate thriller, a tale of
monstrous perfidy
set in 1979 in Baja
California, mexico.
Here lives 18-year-old
Viridiana, whose
chief recreations are
reading and
contemplating dead
sharks decaying on
the seashore. She
cannot wait to escape
— to university, she
hopes. She has already shed the
boyfriend her mother wants her to
marry and takes a job as secretary to an
ill-tempered would-be writer.
Accompanying him are Daisy, his latest
wife, a brittle, glamorous woman, and
Gregory, her charming, too-handsome
brother. There is something off about
this trio, but the money is good, mexico
City beckons, and Viridiana comes
under the spell of the seductive Gregory.
maria Liatis narrates the book,
capturing, in the youthful spring of her
voice, Viridiana’s inexperience, first
sexual passion and, most admirably, the
young woman’s sharp intelligence as her
naivete gradually dissolves. There is a
suspicious death; people are not who
they seem; and Viridiana, a gratifyingly
strong central character, must
repeatedly recalibrate her loyalties.
(recorded Books, Unabridged, 8 hours)‘The Missing American’
Ghana’s notorious Internet scams are
at the center of Kwei Quartey’s first
novel starring 26-year-old Emma Djan,
formerly of the Accra police and now a
private
investigator. Upon
joining an online
bereavement
forum, American
widower Gordon
Tilson makes the
acquaintance of
“Helena,” a
beautiful
Ghanaian woman,
as shown by her
photo and strangely malfunctioning
Skype videos. She promises to come to
the United States but is repeatedly
delayed, she says, by her sister’s medical
problems and the need for money.
Gordon falls for it and decides to visit
her in Ghana and finds, no surprise to
us, that she doesn’t exist. Encouraged by
an old journalist friend, he stays on in
the country to track down the people
who have swindled him. Shortly
thereafter, Gordon disappears. This
brings his son, Derek, to the country to
find him, acquiring the assistance of
Emma, her boss and a valiant reporter.
robin miles, one of America’s most
skilled audiobook narrators, moves
adroitly from voice to voice, mood to
mood, Ghanaian to American, as she
delivers this suspenseful, atmospheric
novel of desperation, corruption and
murder. (recorded Books, Unabridged,
13¼ hours)‘The King at the
Edge of the World’Arthur Phillips’s sixth novel is an
ingenious excursion to turn-of-the-17 th-
century England and Scotland. There,
an exiled Turkish doctor named
mahmoud Ezzedine becomes the central
actor in the
transition from the
Tudor to the Stuart
monarchy.
Ezzedine is
presented as a
“gift” t o the queen
by the ottoman
ambassador after
saving a dying
man’s life as
Elizabeth I watches
with ghoulish
avidity. The doctor, who finds the
English climate abysmal and the people
repulsive, submits, even affecting to
forsake Islam for Christianity. Thus, he
becomes matthew Thatcher and
eventually ends up in the court of the
Scottish king, James VI, the most likely
heir to the childless Elizabeth. Thatcher,
repeatedly subjected to the whim of the
powerful, has been instructed by a
ruthless spymaster to detect the king’s
true religious beliefs: Protestant or
Catholic? Narrator Euan morton
delivers the novel in a wonderful range
of voices and accents — his Scottish burr
is especially engaging, and his wry
manner iswonderfully suited to the
novel’s sardonic wit and trapdoor plot.
(random House Audio, Unabridged, 9½
hours)[email protected]katherine a. powers reviews audiobooks
every month for the Washington Post.audiobookskatherine a. Powers