'Brave attempt to trace history of world through money'
This week there are three novels set in the US, one work of nonfiction set in the world of money and one that’s set here in the oul’ sod, as perceived by an Englishwoman.
The Crying of the Wind: Ireland, Ithell Colquhoun, Pushkin Press €16.99
First published in 1954, this reissue is a gem of a book about Ireland, art, philosophy, travel, religion – Colquhoun touches on everything here and does so with considerable style. Primarily she was a British artist, with affiliations with the Surrealists but she also wrote poetry and prose and was eventually rejected by the Surrealists because of her interest and involvement in occultism.
In her travels in Ireland, she is candid about the ‘locals’ as she describes our inability to speak plainly; she found us to be a people who speak in riddles. She was fascinated too with our spiritual side. Remember this was Ireland in the 1950s and we would have worn our Catholicism overtly on our sleeves. We were steeped in church and worship and she found that curious. She visited Dublin, Newgrange and Galway among other spots and was fascinated by the gay subculture in Dublin’s theatrical circles, while being equally interested in the kind of ancient Celtic spiritualism she encountered in Newgrange. She’s largely been forgotten, though she shouldn’t be, so this book might help resurrect her popularity. As much as she was intrigued by Ireland, she is herself an intrigue.
The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong, Jonathan Cape, €16.99
Vuong’s second novel concerns Hai, who’s 19 years old and at the beginning of the story is busy planning to drown himself by jumping off a bridge. But he doesn’t jump, he crosses the bridge and meets 82-year-old Grazina, born in Lithuania but – like Hai – a resident of East Gladness, a Connecticut backwater with not much to recommend it. Grazina is suffering from dementia, and Kai will become a kind of nurse/carer for her, but the relationship will benefit the young man even more than the old woman.
He later takes a job in a fast-food joint and although the pay is miserable, he will make friends among the (very offbeat) crew who work here. As with his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong touches on the Vietnamese immigrant experience in America but has other observances too, like how to survive your parents when you’re 19, for instance, and how to subsist on the most meagre of incomes, and how – no matter our ages – we have goodness to offer in our collective wealth of experience.
Only in New York, Melissa Hill, HQ, €13.99
Hannah, who’s a successful PR based in Los Angeles but originally from Ireland, has a bit of a life crisis and decides to move back east to New York, where she first started out and where her friend has an apartment that needs minding for a few months. How lucky is that? Not so lucky, as a very troublesome neighbour wants Hannah evicted and Hannah must devise a way for them both to live in the same apartment block with some semblance of peace and harmony. Add to that a troublesome client on her books, an ice-hockey star who’s out of work these days because of an injury. Hannah’s been hired to attempt to make him a bit more touchy-feely, as he’s normally a grumpy and deeply unpleasant individual. With challenges on the home front and the work front, she’s got her hands full!
Money, David McWilliams, Simon and Schuster, €14.99
This is a brave attempt to trace the history of the world through the medium of money, from 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia right up to the present day. McWilliams makes the point that most of the ancient writings that survive were records of rough accounting practices. And although the New Testament was to warn us that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, it doesn’t seem like we digested that particular line. We do spend a lot of time thinking about the stuff; how to pay the bills, or maybe for the lucky ones, how to spend the surplus. McWilliams argues that most of our human history has revolved around spondoolix, either we’ve been suffering from the lack of it or have been obscene in our spending of it. The fall of the Roman Empire was due to money, according to McWilliams, and he makes a convincing argument. There are also some interesting facts about Charles Darwin’s bad luck with it, before he embarked on formulating his theory of evolution. It’s an engaging read from one of the few western economists who predicted the crash of 2008.
Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Hutchinson Heinemann, €17.99
A space mission in the mid-80s takes a disastrous turn in this story, which involves, among other things, a lesbian romance. Joan Goodwin and Vanessa Forde join Nasa as two of their earliest female astronaut recruits. In a dual timeline, the novel opens with the most climactic scene of the novel and then backtracks, to seven years previously when Joan entered Nasa as a fledgling. Being gay was possibly more problematic in the 1980s when so many people were dying of AIDS, and it had not yet been established if lesbians would make a significant part of the dying cohort (turns out they didn’t). But those were different times, and Jenkins Reid is conscious of that fact as she traces not only a romance through to the end but also the ‘worthiness’ of these female astronauts who, because of their gender, had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts. If gay romance and space invading is your bag, you’ll enjoy this caper.
Footnotes
Howth Roots and Blues Festival runs from August 7 to August 17 and there are more than 40 gigs taking place, 30 of them billed as free entry. See howthrootsandblues.com for details.
One for the foodies, Cork on a Fork Fest is on August 13-17 and promises something for everyone, including the kids. See corkcity.ie for full programme and details.