This is my review of The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota.

Randeep, Avtar and Tochi are all economic migrants from India, crammed with others into a small terraced house in Sheffield where they work illegally on a building site, paid far below the minimum wage by an unscrupulous gang-master. It took a while for the author to establish their backstories, but eventually I became engrossed in their individual lives, and the different chains of misfortune which led them to obtain falsely or infringe the terms of their visas.

This is a fascinating insight into Indian culture: the continued level of violent prejudice against untouchables like Tochi, even amongst British Indians; the lack of a social security system in India to support Randeep’s upper caste family when his father falls ill, aggravated by his mother’s view that it is socially beneath her to work; the complex network amongst British Indians in which illegal migrants are both exploited and assisted, not least the gurdwara or places of Sikh worship where desperate followers of the faith can often get temporary bed and food. Randeep’s British “visa bride” Narinder also makes us think about the role of women in segregated communities who are repressed by fathers and brothers, denied the chance to gain any qualifications or the right to work, for whom breaking free means bringing shame on parents they may love too much to hurt.

Despite being a powerful and gripping story, strengthened by what seems to be authentic knowledge, it is weakened by a clunky structure and often incongruous style. There are almost too many characters to grasp, although you could say this gives a Dickensian touch, too much mundane or minute detail which saps the narrative drive, although this may also help one to visualise the scene, except, of course, where there are too many distracting Hindi (?)/Sikh terms making the confused and irritated reader long for a glossary.

My main problem is with the frequent odd turns of phrase: “earplugs emerged from her neckline to noodle about her chest”, “the writing desk too narrow for the three large oval doilies it was dressed in”, the urban stretch of rivers with “just the odd fishermen thickly hidden”, “she repaired to the outside toilets” (archaic in context). I cannot decide whether the approach is a daring attempt at poetical language which sometimes works as in “the sunlight squandered itself across the world”, or the errors of someone for whom English is a second language. I agree with other reviewers who have called for sharper editing, excising the indulgent wordiness and digressions, but since I have often complained about the formulaic effect of creative writing classes, perhaps this apparently spontaneous torrent of page-turning, thought-provoking flawed talent comes as a breath of fresh air.

The final Chapter 14 ends abruptly, leaving questions unanswered as to exactly how the main characters arrive at the “almost happy ending " of the i-dotting epilogue, a bland anticlimax after the unrelenting blows of the main text, although bitter ironies still lie just below the surface.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Rough Music by Patrick Gale.

Why is forty-year-old, openly gay, successful bookshop owner Will considered by his “best friend” Harriet to need therapy sessions? We sense from the hook of the opening chapter that his glib talk of loving his parents and his “very, very happy” childhood masks some family trauma. This is gradually revealed to us in chapters which alternate between two time frames, the present and more than thirty years earlier, with most scenes set in blue house overlooking a Cornish beach which Will’s parents rented for a fateful holiday long ago when he was eight, and which his sister Poppy has hired again, inadvertently or perhaps not, as a fortieth birthday present, to which he agrees to take his now ageing parents for a break.

I enjoyed the wry humour of the innocent young Will, confusingly called Julian, being led astray, even to the extent of becoming an unwitting accomplice to serious crimes, by the misnamed “trusties”, old lags allowed to tend his prison governor father John’s gardens. Yet, despite some powerful dramatic moments – often coming with unexpected brutality out of the blue, the plot proves much less important than the characters.

In minutely-observed scenes Patrick Gale shows great insight as he takes us inside the heads of his three main characters: Julian/Will growing up as a sensitive little boy, trying to make sense of the adult world and his budding sense of being gay, seeking company in books; his musical, free-spirit of a mother Frances who has drifted into a restrictive marriage with a decent but uptight and hidebound man, and father John himself, who displays a more sympathetic personality beneath the surface, although unable to express the love he feels for his wife. His desire to “accumulate enough small, loving gestures to make something big enough for her to notice” is poignantly undermined by her development of early-onset Alzheimers – not a spoiler since this is clear from the beginning. Like mother, like son, Frances and Will share good intentions combined with a capacity to cause pain without meaning to.

The author has not extended his great skill in developing characters to the secondary roles played by, for instance, Harriet and Will’s gay lovers whom I did not find convincing. Also, the aftermath of the book’s dramatic climax seemed disjointed and underdeveloped, plus I found it hard to believe that such an observant and in some ways perceptive child as Will could apparently forget certain striking events from his childhood.

Overall, this is an absorbing, often moving tale with some astute comments on life and moments of comedy to ease the tragedy.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Signals of Distress by Jim Crace.

Original, imaginative and quirky, well-written with sharp irony and some striking descriptions – the storm of silvery pilchards making “the sea drenched in fish….as if the water had lost its liquidness and was turning to solder” – Jim Crace transports us to a remote Cornish fishing town in the winter of 1836.

The routine of life in Wherrytown is upset when “The Belle of Wilmington” with its American crew and unfortunate slave Otto shackled to the orlop deck runs aground on a sand bar, with much of its cargo washed ashore, including a herd of cattle which offer the locals the prospect of some illicit beef. This dramatic event coincides with the arrival of Aymer Smith: full of good intentions but pedantic, unworldly, socially inept with a gift only for causing trouble without meaning to and irritating everyone he meets. Aymer’s mission is to apologise in person to those dependent for their livelihoods on the collection of kelp from the beaches, who will suffer from his brother’s decision to switch from the use of kelp ash to sodium carbonate in the soap-making progress. Aymer is determined to compensate them – with bars of soap, coins, perhaps even a rash proposal of marriage.

This is a confined, prejudiced, harsh, every-man-for-himself world, typified by the ruthless local agent, wheeler-dealer Walter Howells. Yet in a varied cast of characters, some show flashes of kindness against the odds, and even Aymer eventually becomes an object of sympathy – a foolish yet essentially decent man.

The story may seem to meander along, at times too absorbed in minor detail, yet the author is forging a chain of cause and effect, working towards an end which, even if you guess it, is quite powerful and haunting. There is a vein of unremitting honesty, even visceral cruelty, a sense of fate, in Jim Crace’s writing which also gives it authenticity, and embeds an unusual tale in one’s memory.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Borderlines by Michela Wrong.

In the effort to erase her shock and regret over an intense love affair which has ended in tragedy, Paula is persuaded by the charismatic Winston Peabody III to assist him in preparing the case to be heard at the Hague for the recently war-torn state of North Darrar in its boundary dispute with its larger, more influential neighbour Darrar. Is this work as ethical as it sounds, is North Darrar a cause worth defending, and how will Paula be affected by this assignment?

Michela Wrong’s experience as an award-winning journalist explains why this deeply serious and intelligent novel often reads more like scripts for Radio 4’s “From our own correspondent” than creative writing. She combines her understanding of damaging colonial legacies, the corrupting effect of power on new regimes, however idealistic they may have been at the outset, and the cynical manipulation by self-interested Western states, to create a “North Darrar” with a very convincing sense of place, brought to life with vivid descriptions of landscapes in the Eritrea on which this novel is based. There are many insights and powerful moments, such as her sense of being trapped when prevented by a soldier from taking her customary evening run out into the plains, or the rendezvous at the “Tank Graveyard”, “a chilling indictment of superpower policy” where a local man explains the “geology” of the place, “like a quarry…our warmongering history caught in the sedimentary layers” of different weaponry from the days of the old Darrar Empire, the Italian conquest and British occupation to the latest civil war, with even some downed Soviet MiGs buried in there.

I agree that this often reads like a tense legal thriller, and even when it slackens off into scenes of office and expatriate social life it rings true. A slight problem for me is that all the characters – mostly Africans – have the same very articulate but somewhat stilted “voice” which seems to be that of the author contriving opportunities to give us information. I realise that Paula is intended to be a driven, prickly individual but her motives, for the action which got her arrested, for instance, seem insufficiently developed. The weakest part for me is her relationship with the impossibly wealthy and well-connected American Jake Wentworth. Recalled in disjointed flashbacks, the descriptions of their physical love often appear quite corny and clichéd, even hollow since it is unclear whether there really was anything more than sexual attraction. Is one meant to feel that Jake was a selfish man, a symbol of casual Western dominance, who “couldn’t” leave his wife, was attracted to clever, high-achieving women but unable to cope with their success, wanting a mistress in a cosy hideaway where he could rely on seeking comfort on his terms? The last chapter may focus too much on “tying up loose ends” in Paula’s life, although its sense of anticlimax may again be part of the book’s realism.

Overall, this is worth reading, and very timely in this period of widespread civil war outside the “developed world” and massive refugee problems. It is well-structured, but one is constantly reminded that it is a novel by an analytical, facts-driven non-fiction writer, lacking that elusive spark of creative imagination.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars