The Spectator - February 08, 2018

The Saki of sex

Julie Burchill

Bad Romance

by Emily Hill

Unbound, £14.99, pp. 251

How I love short stories! Long before the

internet realised that we can’t sit still long

enough to commit to the three-volume

novels of yore, these little beauties were

hitting the sweet spot repeatedly. I especial-

ly love female short story writers — Shena

Mackay, Lorrie Moore, Grace Paley — as

they often read quite gossipy and friendly-

like, as opposed to men who have to go out

and shoot something to make some depress-

ing point, or at least try to prove they’re

the strong and silent type. Strong and silent

writers should be true to themselves and sim-

ply shut up.

The young journalist Emily Hill is, on

the strength of this gorgeous debut collec-

tion, the Saki of sex: she shares his grim good

humour and glinting malice, grounded not

in cheap scepticism but in a vast imagina-

tive grasp of how fantastic life can be and

how odd it is that we choose to make it so

narrow. (The final story ‘Super-Lies’, docu-

menting the operatic nightmare of a muse’s

meltdown, even sounds like one of his titles.)

‘Julia’s Baby’, the opener, is as perfectly con-

structed a short story as I have ever read.

The femme fatalities in these stories are

past-mistresses of painting on a smile and

putting the best red-soled foot forward;

Hill takes a scalpel straight to the scream-

ing skull beneath the expensively smoothed

skin, zooming in on the hallucinogenic hol-

lows of heartbreak. She is both compassion-

ate and merciless, full of scorn and sorrow.

And droll, too:

The 21st century is full of second chances. The

stakes aren’t very high for anything any more.

Not when it comes to love. Think of all the

romantic heroines of literature. There wouldn’t

be a story, today. Anna Karenina would have

divorced that dullard Karenin. Sued for

custody. Rejoined society. Cathy and Heath-

cliff — a clear-cut case of antibiotics and social

services. Romeo and Juliet - witness protection.

Mugged by children, tormented by rab-

bits and sexually harassed by leopards,

these girls could pick the sole sticky end of a

lollipop out of a bran-tub of Tiffany’s trin-

kets. Unnatural love and the natural world

conspire to bring down our plucky heroines,

thorns and cads in tandem tearing at their

clothing as they sashay blithely up the prim-

rose path to emotional mayhem. They are

sleepless, reckless, feckless and altogether

adorable in their hacked-off humanity, dis-

playing the strange dignity of total expo-

sure: adventuresses who make one move too

many on the wrong man, lose their footing

and end up as smashed Meissen figurines.

There’s such harrowing honesty in these

the top of her game. But who knew she
was such a knowledgeable, attentive and
original reader of art? There are really
penetrating and thoughtful pieces about
reacting to Sarah Sze’s installation ‘Centri-
fuge’ and Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’,
for instance.
There’s a brilliant essay — like all the
best essays, powered by close attention
and fierce enthusiasm — about the vari-
ous examples dancers have to offer writ-
ers (from Prince and Michael Jackson to
David Byrne and the Nicholas Brothers,
who we meet ‘progressing down a giant
staircase doing the splits as if the splits is the
commonsense way to get somewhere’). And
there is, likewise, a great one on hating Joni
Mitchell’s music for years and then sud-
denly loving it — which is at once utterly
particular to Smith’s own experience and
resonant with any reaction to art.
And in the section on literature, where
she does credit herself with a degree of con-
noisseurship (‘I have a deep interest in my
two inches of ivory’) she’s as good as you’d
expect — the highlight probably being a
joyous appreciation of Hanif Kureishi’s
The Buddha of Suburbia.
You can read the title three ways. As a set
phrase — as a cliché — ‘feel free’ is an off-
handed invitation; a gesture almost of indif-
ference. Do what you want. Here’s a literary

writer who, describing a street market in

her home turf of north-west London, writes

breezily: ‘Everybody’s just standing around,

talking, buying or not buying cheese, as the

mood takes them. It’s really pleasant.’ She

doesn’t force herself on the reader’s atten-

tion. She’s not bossy. The foreword — which

risks an almost mimsy note of self-depre-

cation about Smith’s far from mimsy intel-

ligence — describes her as having ‘no real

qualifications’, as just ‘thinking aloud’.

But you can also read the phrase ‘feel

free’ — and Smith seems to — as exhorta-

tory. Is the emphasis on the first term — on

feeling? Certainly, there’s support for that.

Essays on urban change, the Brexit vote

and on global warming are interested in

the emotional and personal aspects of the

debates. She’s alive to the brain as a feel-

ing organ.

But, above all, the emphasis is on the sec-

ond term: on freedom. On the literary free-

dom she discerns in the examples of Philip

Roth, D.H. Lawrence or Hanif Kureishi.

And here, I think, she’s always shadowing

Martin Amis’s remark that ‘fiction is free-

dom’. She uses that freedom exuberantly.

This is a mixed bag in the best way.

Smith is alive to the

brain as a feeling organ

Zadie Smith: attentive, thoughtful and original

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