Guest review by Cindy Jefferies: LANNY by Max Porter

"A story that seems as if it has uncurled from some unknown place ..."

First published in 2001 for children, Cindy Jefferies found success with her Fame School series with Usborne Books, obtaining 22 foreign rights deals. Latterly writing fiction for adults as Cynthia Jefferies, her first title The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan was published in November 2018. Her second title The Honourable Life of Thomas Chayne, set during the English Civil Wars, was published last year and is now in paperback.

Lanny is a young boy, a newcomer in an ancient village that has been through many changes over the centuries. It is something of a dormitory for his father, who works in finance in London.. It has the usual cross hatching of residents, with all their habits, likings and suspicions. The village is also home to Dead Papa Toothwort, the ancient something or someone that has woken from a long sleep. He inhabits what he choses, from the gnarling of an old gate to a rusty ring pull and can make mischief, cause mayhem, if he chooses.

The story is of a short period during Lanny’s life in the village. His conversations with the elderly, once famous artist known as Mad Pete are masterfully drawn in words by Porter, small perfect sketches of their burgeoning friendship. Lanny is an unusual boy, with a deep connection to some things that others don’t see as important, or even sensible. I particularly liked his message put in a plastic bag and buried with the seed potatoes, to be revealed when they are harvested. How I would love to receive such a message!

Dead Papa Toothwort likes to listen to what is being said in the village. He lurks, and the phrases he hears are scattered in italics, bending and slithering around the page, as if drifting from letterboxes, chimneys or from the bus queue. He is not entirely, or even mostly, nice, but then he has seen a lot over the centuries.

What happens is shocking, but also seems inevitable, and Dead Papa Toothwort holds a mirror up to the three people who love Lanny the most. Is he restrained in his actions by perhaps the only adult who understands at least something of him?

This is a beautiful book. I hesitate to call it a novel, although of course it is, in both senses of the word. It is a crafted thing, and also a story that seems as if it has uncurled from some unknown place. It is a small gem of 210 pages which has won a place on my shelf to be talked about, lent, and read again. In my opinion, one can’t say fairer than that. And if you get a chance to hear Max Porter read from Lanny, don’t miss it. You won’t regret it for a moment.

Lanny is published by Faber.

See also Max Porter's Grief is the Thing with Feathers, reviewed by Miriam Moss

Guest review by Miriam Moss: GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS by Max Porter

Miriam is an award-winning writer of fiction - short stories, novels and picture books. She grew up in Africa, China and the Middle East before living in England. After graduating, she taught English until the arrival of her first child, when she began writing.

Her latest short story, Salvage, is published in the Fish Anthology 2017, and her novel, Girl on a Plane, a fictionalised account of a real life hijacking experienced while travelling alone in the Middle East aged 15, is published by Andersen/ Penguin Random House. Her next novel is set in Africa.

She has published many picture books, including Matty takes Off (Andersen), Bare Bear (Hodder), Wibble Wobble (Orchard), I Forgot to Say I Love You! (Macmillan) and Bad Hare Day (Bloomsbury). Her latest is Dr Molly’s Medicine Chest (Walker).

Miriam lives in Lewes, Sussex, has three grown up children and works in a converted triangular potting shed in the garden. See more on her website.

Behind the Emily Dickinson–derived title – her poem is called Hope is the Thing with Feathers - is a short, finely crafted prose poem. The wonderfully compact, moving narrative is a meditation on grief, but it’s also a surprisingly funny book, as well as a clever and highly original read.

A mother has died suddenly, leaving a grieving writer. the father of two young sons, bereft and in disarray. The father, who attempts to come to terms with his wife’s death, is writing a book about Ted Hughes (called Ted Hughes’ Crow on the Couch: A Wild Analysis) when, one night, a huge crow bursts through the door of their London flat.

Crow, the mythic creature from Ted Hughes’ poetry, is a trickster, a philosopher of death and rebirth, who intends to stay, and he joins Dad and Boys in a trio of alternating voices, full of energy and unpredictability.

Crow, who has elements of the shaman, describes himself as ‘ … friend, excuse, deus ex machina, joke, symptom, figment, spectre, crutch, toy, phantom, gag, analyst and babysitter.’ His relationship to the father is as chaotic and unpredictable as grief itself. He’s protective, predatory - and then suddenly sensuous: ‘I prised open his mouth and counted bones, snacked a little on his unbrushed teeth, flossed him, crowly tossed his tongue hither, thither, I lifted the duvet. I Eskimo kissed him. I butterfly kissed him.’

Though the book’s emotional landscape is desolate, there’s plenty of black humour that playfully derails the reader’s expectations. The writing shifts from tragic to uplifting, from Crow’s mocking hilarity to the awful sorrow of the father and the heart-wrenching sadness of the two boys.

The domestic landscape is never far off. Grief, we are told, needs time to heal, but from the father the boys have other more ordinary needs: ‘washing powder, nit shampoo, football stickers, batteries, bows, arrows, bows, arrows’.

The mother, whose life has been cut cruelly short, is evoked by the details of how she lived: ‘She won’t ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus)./She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm)./And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday.’ And it is only at Crow’s leave-taking that we hear how she died. ‘Accident in the home./She banged her head, dreamed a bit, was sick, slept, got up and fell,/Lay down and died. A trickle of blood from an ear.’

Together, Crow and Dad work through his grief, and, during the final session, they look back: ‘You’ll remember with some of my early work with you,’ Crow says, ‘that what appeared to be primal corvid vulgarity was in fact a highly articulated care programme, designed to respond to the nuances of your recovery.’

I particularly enjoyed the fact that the story also becomes a meditation on the difficulty of writing. Porter, at one point, advises that the only way to write, in this case about love and loss, is ... to begin.

Summary: Grief is as unique as you are.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is published by Faber.