In brief: The Girl With the Louding Voice; Lanny; Fifty Miles Wide – review
The Girl With the Louding Voice
Abi Daré
Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99, pp320
When Abi Daré was growing up in Lagos, she always wondered about the lives of the young housemaids whom her middle-class family employed. These thoughts stayed with her, and 18 years after leaving for the UK, here she is introducing us to Adunni, a 14-year-old girl sold into marriage and then domestic servitude. Despite the dangers, Adunni – who narrates her own story in a kind of invented English – won’t be cowed, and sets about finding success in the world through education. An impressive debut novel.
Lanny
Max Porter
Faber & Faber, £8.99, pp224
Deservedly longlisted for the Booker prize last year, Max Porter’s follow-up to Grief Is the Thing With Feathers is pithy but overflowing with intense emotion as a village deals with a missing child. Part fable, part mythic poem, Lanny is a wonderfully drawn little boy whom we see through the eyes of many characters and a spirit called Toothwort. Porter is simply fantastic when it comes to portraying the unceasing imagination of children and – in one shocking scene – our raw, pressurised love for them.
Fifty Miles Wide
Julian Sayarer
Arcadia, £9.99, pp311
Travel and cycling writer Julian Sayarer has a motto: he thinks bicycles bring out the best in people. In Fifty Miles Wide he sets off to ride across Israel and occupied Palestine in search of hope, truth and change. That might sound self-indulgent, but Sayarer’s thoughtful, meditative travelogue actually feels very important. This is less a personal adventure than an exploration of how people persevere in the darkest of circumstances.
