30 | BIGISSUE.COM FROM 01 MARCH 2021
CULTURE |
BOOKS
M
y novel, All Girls, is a book about teenagers
written for an adult audience.
From the outset, this has been a source
of some confusion, and I o�ten fi nd myself
having to justify my book’s existence. I have grown used
to explaining that my novel is an e�fort to take girlhood
very seriously. I tell interviewers about the depth and
capacity of teenage girls. I say that they are rarely given
credit for their full personhood.
In fact, I said exactly this in an interview recently,
and the journalist speaking to me paused and pointed
out that earlier in our conversation I’d asserted that my
characters were just kids. � e implication was that I’d
contradicted myself. Except: By personhood I did not
mean adulthood. I meant very literally what I had said:REVIEWTeenage girls are underestimated, undervalued
and badly misunderstood, says Emily Layden.
It’s time we heard what they have to sayGirl wonders
AUTHOR FEATUREI
feel that writing fi ction is really one big confi dence trick.
You’re asking the reader to come into a new world and
engage deeply with the rules of your universe, and that’s
all about confi dence. If you create the world with
confi dence, the reader feels that in the pages. � is week we have
two terrifi c examples of fi ctional worlds that are out there in terms
of what a reader might expect, but written with such confi dence
as to be irresistible.
� e fi rst is the wonderful Mother for Dinner by Shalom
Auslander. I’ve long been a fan of the Jewish-American author, one
of the few who can really make me belly laugh. His previous books
were all brilliant, scathing parodies, o�ten of the author’s ultra-
orthodox upbringing, and if anything Mother for Dinner is even
more outrageous and funny.
� e book is narrated by middle-aged Seventh Seltzer, a
disillusioned New Yorker who is called to his mother’s deathbed
along with his 11 siblings. But this is no ordinary family, as the
mother implores her children to eat her body upon her death. It
turns out this is one of the last families of Cannibal-Americans
(Can-Ams for short) and this is a tradition going back generations
to ‘the old country’. Seventh has never been a practising Cannibal
and is, of course, disgusted, but he’ll only inherit his mother’s
money if he takes part.
And so the book takes the reader on a stomach-churning
ride, fi lling in the family’s backstory along the way, as the
siblings decide whether or not to fulfi l their mother’s dying
wish and maintain Can-Am tradition. As you might surmise
from the premise, this is o�ten pretty shocking stu�f but it is also
downright hilarious, and I started laughing from the fi rst page
and never stopped.
Like in all his writing, Auslander uses Mother for Dinner to make
serious points about everything from the blandness of modern
society to religious extremism, the vagaries of the publishing
industry (Seventh works as an editor) to sibling rivalry and
more. Most obviously here he gleefully examines the immigrant
experience and the con�lict between trying to assimilate into a
new culture and maintain old ways. But he does so with buckets
of laughs and some very visceral description. � e confi dence with
which Auslander drags the reader into this world is exemplary,
and you’re unlikely to read anything funnier this year.
Equally inventive and entertaining is � e Library of the Dead
by debut author TL Huchu. � e book is set in an alternative
dystopian version of Edinburgh and follows teenage girl Ropa
as she earns a living as a ghostalker, passing messages between
the living and the dead. In this universe, magic of various kinds
is an accepted reality and the line between the ordinary and
fantastical worlds is blurred. Ropa is hired by a dead woman to
fi nd her missing son, and it leads her on a path to discover the
city’s dark secrets.
Huchu imbues his strange world with wonderful and believable
details, and Ropa’s blend of African mysticism and Scottish
pragmatism is central to her appeal, a terrifi c central character for
a properly immersive story from start to fi nish. � is book is the
set-up for the start of a series, and it’s an expansive universe to
explore in the capable hands of this assured author. Terrifi c stu�f.Mother for Dinner by Shalom
Auslander is out now (Picador, £16.99)
� e Library of the Dead by TL Huchu is
out now (Tor, £14.99)
@doug_johnstoneTable for twelve
A Jewish mother’s grisly dying wish makes
for a hilarious read, says Doug Johnstone