The book:
Our Shelf Improvement books reflect the diverse literature that surrounds us, the Guardian and Observer reviews and, of course, our readers. This ranges from the cerebral to the fantastic, but sometimes the need to read an honest, heart-rending story of love (and, usually, death) needs to be filled.
Navigating the reviews’ hyperbole, we found James Hannah’s The A to Z of You and Me, which has sated our desires for a witty, quirky and quintessentially-British reflection on life. From his hospital bed, our protagonist muses on his loves, losses and mistakes, taking us with him.
Hannah’s poignant writing and the charming narrative - the A to Z of metaphorical and literal body parts he goes through - make this literary debut a worthy addition to our shelves. We hope you enjoy it.
What the Guardian thought:
To say too much about this book would be to risk giving the game away entirely: the plot is all. Ivo, the narrator, is 40, he’s very sick, he’s in a hospice, and he’s recalling the various gripes of his sad and wasted life. His nurse Sheila – “bright and sparky … a bit brusque, not fluffy” – keeps him sane by encouraging him to play an A to Z game, associating parts of his body with a memory. The book thus begins with Ivo’s musings on his Adam’s apple, recalling a story told to him by a vicar when he was a child (“it’s put there as a reminder of the moment Adam was discovered eating the apple that Eve had given him”). We get Ivo’s thoughts on the anus, on blood, ears, gut, hair etc, all the way through to X for “X-ray. Xylophone. Ribs as a cartoon xylophone. Xs for eyes. X-chromosone.” Z is implied rather than stated: the ultimate zzz from which no one will wake.
During the course of his reminiscences Ivo returns repeatedly to his relationships with his sister Laura, his friend Mal, his girlfriend – addressed simply as “you” – and his long history of “seasoning” his blood with “a few choice herbs and spices”.
Aside from the obvious and depressing fact that he’s dying, and for all his attempts to jolly himself along – the C in his alphabet of body parts refers to “chesticles”, for example, the U for “urethra flankrin”, and the Q, inevitably, to “quim” – Ivo is clearly a deeply troubled individual, and his troubles have come to haunt him, though to say any more would get one into plot-spoiling. Suffice it to say that it’s the bitter combination of Laura, Mal, the girlfriend, and the herbal “seasonings” that have produced Ivo’s current and terminal state of woe.
It is perhaps impossible to underestimate the potential appeal of a book which is so clearly about those hoary old perennials love and death, in the same mode as, say, David Nicholls’ One Day. Hannah’s debut is an excellent example of that genre of sophisticated and sentimental fiction in which the terrible perplexities of life are teased into pleasing fictional shape, a genre we might call the “heavylight”.
The history of the heavylight can be traced back through Nicholls and Nick Hornby to Thomas Hardy and beyond, but it finds its perfect expression in the work of the undisputed heavylight champion of the world, Philip Larkin. Larkin wrote a poetry of disavowal, but with a perpetual catch in its throat, a poetry of desperate reckoning and consolation: “We should be careful/ Of each other, we should be kind/ While there is still time” (“The Mower”). The heavylight requires a certain very skilful withholding. It is the sound of a sob the moment before sobbing begins.
Ian Sansom - Read the full review
If you liked this, then try:
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Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume
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How to be Both by Ali Smith
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A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
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