Fans of 'Grief is the thing with feathers' will love this even more
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The Blurb:
Not far from London, there is a village.
This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England's mysterious past and its confounding present. Everyday lives conjure a tapestry of fabulism and domesticity.
But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.
He is watching Mad Pete, the grizzled artist. He is listening to ancient Peggy, gossiping at her gate. To families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here.
Dead Papa Toothwort hears them all as he searches, intently, for his favourite.
Looking for the boy.
Lanny.
Chimerical, audacious, strange and wonderful - a song to difference and imagination, to friendship, youth and love, Lanny is the globally anticipated new novel from Max Porter.
The Review
Max Porter will be in conversation on Wednesday 27th March as part of the UEA Spring Literary Festival and you can get tickets here
How to even begin a review for this book...? Porter writes like no-one I've ever read before, that's for sure. This will be a much easier review if you have already read his debut novel, the acclaimed 'Grief is the thing with feathers' - for stylistically, at least, Lanny is quite similar. Lanny is part poetry, part prose; it's lyrical, beautiful but confounding. The imagery is so powerful and the style so unique. This is not traditional storytelling, at least not in the way that you might expect the words to appear on the page in a traditional sense. Porter isn't one for any kind of conventions and when you're dealing with plots as magical as this, that makes perfect sense.
There's not much I can say about this plot without giving spoilers, but the story is about an 'idyllic' English village. This is where Lanny lives, along with his parents and the various village personalities you would expect. Lanny (the character) is precocious, quirky, imaginative and curious. He's certainly a curiosity to his parents, who don't quite know what to make of him.
And then there's Dead Papa Toothwort, a folkloric character brought to life in technicolor detail. What does he want and why is he listening to everyone and everything? Where has he come from and what is his hold over this landscape? What does he want from Lanny?
There is (quite a large) bit of me that feels perhaps I'm not actually clever enough to understand the imagery in this book. I enjoyed it - and yet, I wanted someone literary to sit me down and explain it to me. It's a slim book, but don't mistake it for a quick read, because it's going to test and challenge you. It's a book that's going to benefit from reading and then re-reading. And you'll notice something different every time.
Much like with 'Grief...' I revelled in Porter's ability to bring characters to life, sometimes with just a few words. In one portion of the book you aren't told who each narrator is, as, while the tension increases, it rapidly skips between characters. Yet you always know whose voice it is. Plus he manages to encapsulate all the multiple voices that you would hear in a community - the sarcasm, wit, empathy, cruelty, kindness, bigotry, prejudice and understanding that make up the many facets of one village.
This is a book for those who like their magic mixed with gritty realism. It is disquieting and confusing, whilst also uplifting and mesmerising. I can't wait to hear the author talk about this as part of the literary festival - it's going to be fascinating.
Thanks to the Publisher and The UEA Literary festival organisers for this preview copy in return for an honest review.
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