Mslexia

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Books

This Summer we recommend…

Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
(Picador, £16.99)

In Red Dust Road, pregnancy, curiosity and an inner ‘ghostly something’ sets Kay on the path of tracing her birth parents, a Highland mother and Nigerian father who met in Aberdeen in 1961. Adopted by Scottish communists and raised in Glasgow, Kay has never thought of anyone else as her ‘real’ parents. The narrative flips back and forth in time, from her happy, humanitarian upbringing – albeit afflicted with the racism she experiences outside her home – to Milton Keynes, on visits to her birth mother, and to her trips to Lagos and beyond.

In the opening, Kay waits in a hotel lobby in Abuja, wondering if every black man she sees is her 73-year-old father. Upon arrival, he prays and preaches non-stop for two hours, viewing her as his sins made flesh. Her existence must be kept a secret or people ‘would lose their faith in God,’ he insists. ‘Heavens,’ is Kay’s reply. ‘I hadn’t realised I was that powerful.’

It’s easy to be swept along on this journey, so warmly are the characters depicted in Kay’s distinctively optimistic humour. This is a revelatory, redemptive narrative, tenderly told. Upon finding the red dust road of her imagination, the author realises that her feelings of belonging are not dependent on place. ‘You think adoption is a story which has an end,’ Kay writes, ‘but the point about it is that it has no end. It keeps changing its ending.’ Reaching a bittersweet climax, Red Dust Road is an emotionally compelling story with unexpected turns along the way.

reviewed by ELIZABETH WHYMAN

This is a selected highlight from the current issue of Mslexia. To read the book reviews in full subscribe now. Other titles also featured include: Chosen by Lesley Glaister, The Woman Who Thought Too Much by Joanne Limburg, Mud by Michelle Roberts, Boy v's Girl by Na'ima B Robert, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

Mslexia Book Club: the verdict

Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas
(Canongate, £14.99)

Meg is a struggling writer who has had many false starts trying to get her novel underway. To earn money she reviews science books and gives lectures to wannabe genre writers. Locked in a dead end relationship with Christopher, she fantasises about starting an affair with the older Rowan. When she reviews a book by an American psychoanalyst Kelly Newman, his theories on the world and our place in it begin to seep into Meg’s consciousness.

This book got us theorising about life and what it all means. It divided opinion and inspired some good philosophical debates between us all, but we agreed that it’s lack of story was a disappointment and we would have preferred there to be more substance to the plot and less philosophical debating.

Andra: The narration jumped about, a bit like the female mind tends to. I really enjoyed it, because much of Meg’s character resonated with me. I empathised with her because she did not fit into society’s ‘normal’ role for women. She was a bit of a misfit, an eccentric. I learnt a lot from it; I liked that the physics and scientific information were absorbed into a pleasant prose.

Natasha: I was frustrated by the holes in the narration where situations were left unresolved.

Susan: I found it depicted real life accurately – the disappointment that comes with life when it doesn’t turn out the way you had planned.

Andra: I enjoyed the ending immensely, it was almost farcical and I relished it in that sense.

Lesley: I liked the philosophical aspects to it and enjoyed some of the theories. But overall I found the style of the narrator distracting.

Susan: The book made me pause for thought on occasion, and I enjoyed the Orwellian aspect to it that made me ponder the future. I liked the small community in which it was set, I thought it sounded like Northern Ireland the way all the people were interconnected, everyone here always can make a connection with somebody else.

Kathryn: I found the book hard to get into. It kept going off on tangents that irritated me and distracted me from the story. It is the kind of book that draws you in eventually, but you have to persevere with it.

Susan: Energy can never be created or destroyed, it just changes; like in Buddhism, spirits and energy live on. It did pose interesting theories about that. It made me think a lot about all that, but as a story I found it lacking.

Andra & Lesley: Yes, we agree. The idea of the Omega Point is an interesting theory. It does make you think about what happens next.

reviewed by THE ULSTER WORDSMITHS

The Ulster Wordsmiths is three years old and meets monthly in Waterstone’s cafe in Belfast. Sometimes it can be tough to keep us focused on the book in hand as we easily get distracted with other relevant and irrelevant topics – our meetings are lively, fun and vocal! 

This article is taken from the current issue of Mslexia. If you'd be interested in your reading group test-driving a book for the Mslexia Book Group feature please Contact Us.

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Kimberley Walker is currently completing her final year of a Journalism degree. Her love for all things imaginative has led her to explore her creative writing skills. After university she hopes to spend some time writing her first film script and working out what her next steps in life will be.