A Sister Like You by Sarah Hagger-Holt

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As it is in the blurb on the back, and even the title, I don’t think it is a spoiler to say, this is tale of two adopted sisters discovering each other.

Thrown together unexpectedly by shifting circumstance they find a connection even before find out they are sisters. The navigation of teenage years and secondary school life is complex, and tiring, and those spaces when you have a chance to be yourself are treasured.

There are also questions of nature / nurture, Ella and Ari are different in ways that might appear to reflect the personalities of the their respective adoptive parents – but what is causation and who just coincidence is unanswerable.

Within this mix finding queer identities plays a significant part – something that is now open to, some, much younger than it was for my generation – and it is a delight to hear stories of such authenticity that tell of the positive change we have seen within society. Change that might feel fragile at times, but we need to celebrate the stories and celebrate the story tellers.

Well Done, You Didn’t Die by Max Wallis

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Two of these excellent poems

Anon

I don’t see him,

but I can tell he is handsome,

not just taut ribs beneath my hands,

pulse and pressure rising,

but in how he moves,

the slow peel and toss of my clothes,

his thumb stroking my cheek. I make him

from what is left unsaid.

His arm’s weight, draped, then gone,

the tension in his buttock holding still,

his swell -

his hand at the back of my head,

not demanding, not desperate,

encouraging me down to the base.

I know him by taste

salt, sweat, the ghost of citrus.

I know him in the way breath breaks,

his body shifting as he gives in,

the second he lingers

before leaving,

as if he might kiss me.

He doesn’t.

I don’t ask.

Serenity Prayer

god grant us the serenity / to accept the things we cannot change / the courage to change the / things we can / and the wisdom to know el differencio / such as / true Heinz ketchup / us Aldi home brand / the subtle grief of budget beans / the betrayal of margarine that tries to pass for butter / the smear of compromise / on morning toast / go grant us patience / when the oat milk seperates in coffee / and when someone says it’s the same thing / but you know / it’s not / and you don’t have the words to argue / over condiments / anymore / give us courage / to walk away from relationships / but never from good mayonnaise / help us forgive ourselves / for buying the cheap pesto / again / even when we knew / even when it smelled like despair / teach us to accept the own-brand biscuits / in hospital waiting rooms / and the whisper of realisation / that nothing / is ever quite the same / once you’ve tasted / the full-fat / the full-price / the full-truth / of what was / always yours.

Bede and the Theory of Everything by Michelle P. Brown

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Durham University claims Bede as a forebear of its academic tradition, which is stretching things, but I always stop at Bede’s tomb in the Cathedral a pause in respect.

Yet I am not sure how seriously I took Bede, some of his “history” was a little creative, and therefore it was great to hear the real scholarly standing that his wide ranging work holds.

It also shows that Bede never traveling far from his Monastery in North East England was very much plugged into the beating heart of intellectual society across Europe – our sense of the centre and the margins is challenged.

But I don’t think we ever get a “Theory of Everything” – a catchy title that is not followed through – Bede was interested in everything but we don’t quiet get his overarching organising thought.

There is also a lot of repetition, with each chapter feeling a little like an independent essay and therefore each time setting out key bibliographical and historical context that we were increasingly familiar with.

Queer Square Mile, Queer Short Stories from Wales Edited by K Bohata, M Morgan, & H Osborne

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Some how I expected a collection of short stories to be short and was surprised when these 600+ pages of writing thumped onto the doormat … turns out being Queer, Short, and from Wales is more common than I thought!

Without Steve, by David Llewelyn, is one of the most sorrowful

I had read all the boys by Thomas Morris back in 2020 in his own collection, and it was good to encounter it again.

It is hard to offer comments in summary of such an expansive collection - spanning almost 200 years it brings us work published from 1837 to 2021 it gives a longevity to Queer voices which is often denied or ignored, while rooting so many of the stories in rural and / or working class Wales counters narratives about Queer experience being the reserve of the metropolitan elites. (a foot note to this is currently re-watching This Life in which Warren’s story is all about that “escape” from Wales to the City)

 

Queer Life, Queer Love 2 Edited by M Bates, J Bell, S & K Beal

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This second anthology captures the same rich mix of writing as the first ...

Those that stuck in my mind included:

Can’t We Be Friends by Avi Ben-Zeev

The End of the Friend by Karen MacLeod

I Fell in Love with a Boy Who Then Blocked Me on Grindr by Stanley Iyanu

Studio by Amy Rider

A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba translated by Lisa Dillman

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Minor spoilers...

The setting of the City of San Cristóbal surrounded by the forest creates a divide between “civilization” and “wilderness” or nature which plays into our experience of the events the unnamed narrator recalls.

That this widower, civil servant, step-father remains unnamed places them at the edge of the narrative, but as the events unfold it is increasingly clear they are no bystander – so are they trying to separate themselves for events that they were an active participant in?

This slight hiding of their identity also draws us in, makes it easier for us to read ourselves into their role, feel ourselves, uncomfortably, part of the unfolding drama.

The angst that runs through this story feels particularly sharp with the English translation coming in 2020 – so much unspoken fear came with COVID.

The ways in which the rumours about the Children grow, and turn towards panic, also shines a light on how much social media now acts to spin events out of control, the telling and sharing of a partial account of an event leads on and on in ways which are almost impossible to reign back in.

Seeing the corruption of the city we might look at the Children in contrast, a seeming innocence to them, playful even when their actions are doing harm, maybe a temptation to make saints of them. But it is unclear that they deserve such a status any more than they deserved the demonisation.

And so we come to reflect on the role of social institutions and accountability – is our narrator just a pen pushing cog in a machine or does he have agency and therein responsibility?

The Children die as an (unintended / unforeseen) consequence of actions of the authorities, but actions taken to protect the city, taken without regard for the impact on the Children – how many of the scandals we live with feel like this – Post Office, Hillsborough, the sad list could go on and on – and it is in this that Barba truly unsettles the reader ...

You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr

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The long arc of history and the passage of grief, hurt, cruelty, and shame down the generations make this an ambitious work – the task Damian Barr sets in meeting that ambition is a hard one.

With some spoilers…

The opening account of the British ‘Scorched Earth’ attack on a Boer Farm is horrific because of its claim, orderly, bureaucratic cruelty – this is not the frenzy of battle. And this is followed by the concentration camp – one of the earliest examples of this systematic dehumanising of a population, a people. The treatment of the white Boers is terrible, the were separate black camps where conditions were even worse.

This is history now beyond the reach of living memory, but Damian Barr brings it vividly to us in the stories of individuals, stories of women.

Moving forward in time the focus shifts to lives of black women living under Apartheid, living proud despite the oppression of the State and neglect of men. Complex women, real in their imperfections.

And then on again to Willem, post-Apartheid child, not living up to a step-father’s ideal of masculinity. Sent to a military training camp Willem finds intimacy with Geldenhuys. After attempting to escape, they are put into punishment cell. Willem’s Grandmother comes to the rescue just in time for Willem but too late for Geldenhuys.

The reveal at the end is the camp stood on the land of the farm where we began, run but descendent of the women we followed to the camp. This twists any assumptions we might have been holding about any easy binary between oppressor / oppressed – what went before can not justify what came after – where does reconciliation come, will the cycle of violence ever end?

This is unsettling, appropriately unsettling – and in that I think Damian Barr managed to write something worthy of the memories of those that have suffered across South Africa’s many generations.