Emma Neale. Photo / Caroline Davies
I've nearly finished Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart, which despite its gruelling emotional territory, has an engagingly delicate touch. Visual descriptions with a sparkle of wit help to keep the reader's chin above the terrifying quicksand of addiction, poverty and sexual trauma. ("The beaded sleeves on Agnes' pink angora jumper
danced in the wind, and she twinkled like a rabbit dipped in rhinestones.")
In a strange way, I found the briefer scenes of bullying at Shuggie's schools more crushing than his mother Agnes' decline into disease: perhaps because it's clear that Shuggie sees beauty, character, spit and spirit in his beloved parent; yet beyond home, he is a triple exile, sneered at for his poverty, his sexuality, and Agnes' addiction. Or perhaps these scenes take more toll because I want one part of Shuggie's life to have grace and compassion, and seeing him degraded again at school is too much.
Only fools and children criticise or celebrate things half-done, of course: and I still have pages to turn on the novel. Yet I'm more compelled by the story than I expected, knowing the territory was likely to be as depressing as the tenements on the book's fog-grey cover.
When Shuggie's situation is too grim and not even the bauble of a shiny metaphor entices me, I'm reading The Secret Lives of Colour, by Kassia St Clair — test pot-sized essays on the origins of dyes, paints and the symbolic values multiple cultures find in colours. A beautifully produced book, its rich page design makes it uplifting just to hold (paper edged in a shifting rainbow spectrum!) and it's full of fascinating scientific and social details. Under St Clair's eye, colours almost have personalities and biographies of their own.
Stashed in my handbag (for when I have to wait on the sidelines of my youngest son's activities) I have issue 237 of The Paris Review. I subscribed at some low point in lockdown last year, thinking that perhaps I could find a sense of expanse and surprise by reading the interviews, essays, poetry and fiction gathered here. I'm about to plunge into the interview with Arundhati Roy, and poetry by Ada Limon and Kaveh Akbar. Previously I've found these writers either eye-opening, searingly informed, remarkable (Roy), thoughtful, moving (Limon) or tensile, puzzling (Akbar), in a way that often has a more transformative effect than books that I digest instantly, but which barely trace a shiver along the skin.
