Joshua Spassky - Gwendoline Riley

I had never heard of Joshua Spassky by Gwendoline Riley before. In fact, if I am quite honest, I’d never heard of Gwendoline Riley before at all, despite the fact that according to the inside blurb she has written two books previous to this one. However, it made up a Buy One Get One Half Price promotion in Borders, and it sounded alright going by the back of the book and anyway, the shop was closing in ten minutes, and the table was near the till. I took a punt. I bought the book. And boy, I’m glad I did.

This is a short book that follows Natalie as she leaves a meandering existence in Manchester to meet Joshua in North Carolina. She is a novelist (though her success to this point seems to be questionable), he’s a playwright who is doing well enough to have had plays put on in both his native USA and in England, which is how he knows Natalie. They have history, largely involving whisky and unfulfilling random sex.

The novel opens with Natalie packing her bags, and in the process unearthing old family documents and momentos that cast her mind back into her past: her violent father, his death, her mother’s death some years later, the realisation that we all are bodies and that bodies can fail and break and are messy things. She has been, ever since, obsessed with the physical.

He said, ‘There’s no use being squeamish, Natalie,’ and asked me to pass his toilet bag up. I found it in the dresser cupboard, a shabby brown cord case with a snap fastener. He opened it on his lap and pulled things out to show me, to rattle at me. I wasn’t feeling squeamish, exactly. I thought it was interesting. Steradent and Anusol. ‘That’s what bodies are,’ Dad said.

And this obsession with the physical permeates her life from that moment on. The emotion is too difficult for her to verbalise, coming out only through the existential novels that she writes, based “in her head” rather than any actual location. The physical characterizes her relationship with Joshua, and this latest trip to the States begins in just the same way. Joshua drinking neat whisky from a sticky bottle, cheap hotel rooms where they have sweaty sex, sheets sticking to them in the hot room. They talk about the intervening months since they last saw each other. Joshua talks about other girls he’s dated. Natalie tries to figure out what she’s doing there, what they’re both doing there, and why they have this pull to each other.

Finally, they decide just what they’re doing, and as the novel begins with endings – the deaths in Natalie’s family – the novel ends with a new beginning for both Joshua and Natalie.

Gwendoline Riley has a strong, vibrant narrative voice, and has a real knack for dialogue and characters. As a reader, I could feel the laden silences, the growing tension, the things not said, and that is a real skill for a writer to have. Someone once said to me that what makes a novel good is for there to be something to find in between the lines, for the author not to say everything and leave you to work out nothing. Riley manages that with panache, and I’ll be seeking out her first two novels post haste.

Comments

[chartroose]

And another one for the list! We seem to have such similar reading tastes that I think I'm mainly going to go with your recommendations. Now, PLEASE start reading slower!