Review by John Goodby of "Friends of Friends" by Geoff Sawers

Friends of Friends is a series of connected, overlapping, parallel and divergent tales. These are narrative fragments - though without the bittiness that might imply. They range from single sentence flash-fictions to three or four page short stories. Each has its own coherence and narrative logic. Occasionally, two or three are related to each other in sequence. Usually, the linkages are more fugitive. A number of named characters re-appear – 'Sandra' and 'Nush' are in two tales, 'Nicky' in three, 'Mabel' in four, and so on. Recurring themes range from trivial to sublime: rain, buses (or forms of public transport), libraries, apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic landscapes. Scenarios repeat themselves, too; perhaps the most persistent is that of people who were separated in early adulthood, meeting up in middle-age, and trying to deal with the odd mixture of knowing and not-knowing, intimacy and distance, which colours and shapes such encounters ('The clutch bag' is one example). Ours is the age of Friends Reunited, Facebook, social media. This is now a common experience; we have become used to it, but it is relatively new and unprecedented, and no writer, as far as I know, has responded to it as variously or as imaginatively as Sawers. 

Friends of Friends is not set in the present; it is not 'set,' in any fixed sense, anywhere. In historical terms it jumps about, particularly at the outset, with tales in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century settings ('The Ticket' is explicitly set 'in 1859'), recounted in vaguely appropriate pastiche styles, as in 'Constance,' 'Green Eyes,' or 'Home from China'; socially, we could be dealing with countesses or beggars; territorially we might be in MittelEuropa, Spain, the USA, although it is predominantly England. The pastiche is a little contrived, deliberately it seems to me, because Sawers is concerned at all times to prevent us skimming, slipping into the complacency induced by naturalistic styles. In generic terms Friends of Friends is more wide-ranging; the first tale, 'The tree half in flames,' takes its title from the episode of a half-burning, half-verdant bush in The Mabinogion, there are Märchen elements in 'City Air,' and Irish legend in 'Yoss and Finn,' a brief, wittily-told encounter with the Salmon of Wisdom, while 'The Translators' reads like a parable by Zbigniew Herbert. 

Like the styles, the generic mix is often unstable; the nineteenth-century mode of 'City Air,' for example, has a counterfactual history in the form of an invasion of Britain by Russia and France, and 'The Ticket,' in a quasi-SciFi aside, tells of colliding galaxies. 

As all this may suggest, the liberties taken with fiction verge on poetry. Prose poetry in English, as many critics have observed, can tend towards pawky charm and rather voulu symbolism. Sawers's semi-disjunctive framework and disconnective practices mitigate against these dangers. The tales are often dreamlike, and hardly ever explicit - dénouments are partial or ambiguous, but always precise. The temptation is to use adjectives like 'Borghesian' or 'magic realist' at this point. But for one thing, so many stories are rooted in specific British realities: a student union building, a number 17 bus, Oxford Road. For another, the pieces often break into 'real' poetry; there are moments of genuine metaphorical power and originality, as in the close of 'In Blue': 'An electric river runs through her and it circles us now like a halo around the moon on a frosty night, and an odd delight begins to burn in my fingertips. I am caves of ice, I am the sun cracking ice in mid-afternoon, I am the jostling, lacerating glassy plates pressing up against the lock gates. Rivers never reach the sea. You haven’t heard me before.' 

Even the titles of the tales can be poems in themselves: 'After you die, you will never have loved me.' Sawers is a poet, too, in his ability to quickly conjure up mood and atmosphere, but lest this seem an over-Romantic definition, he is alert to the weight of words in a contemporary, experimental way. It's no coincidence that the opening sentence has mayflies 'sawing in the air,’ in a play on his own name, or that we find Sandra waking up to find herself 'a pear. Maybe a bear. She felt comfy in her new pelt ... she didn't miss having a waistline.' The humour of the waistline line is evident throughout; Sawers is a gifted comic writer when he wants to be. It is a sign that Sawers is a genuine writer, not a re-treader of old ground. This doesn't apply simply to mainstream fiction, but to modernism; a woman who wakes up and finds herself a pear is clearly a descendant of Gregor Samsa, but her metamorphosis does not lead to the angst and anguish in Kafka.

Angst and anguish there is, however, as in any genuine art, but it's of what we used to call the postmodern variety. This is a term that was overused for a long time. But it's wholly applicable to Friends of Friends, which ticks all the boxes; along with stylistic pastiche, generic hybridity, ontological uncertainty and linguistic self-consciousness, we get explicit finger-pointing, as when a 'panning camera comes to rest' on a discussion at a nineteenth-century dinner-table. The criticism of such writing was often that it was heartlessly playful. But that isn't the case here. Despite its fragmentariness, Friends of Friends has real heft: the whole is more than the sum of its brilliant parts. Large issues are raised, subtly yet powerfully, occasionally outcropping as questions - 'How can we resist the marketisation of ourselves?' – but usually by implication. At its heart is that old universal, namely a keen awareness of the brevity of life, and hence the urgency to connect, create,  be aware of others and other life-forms. Mayflies, traditional emblems of the brevity of life, 'swarm in the morning' in the opening story and return to 'swarm in the evening' in the penultimate story. The very final tale, a coda (we have passed through the wood to a mythic sea-shore), is another reverberating miniature which punches many times above its weight, an enigma I won't ruin, except to say it finds the words that 'don't mean anything' but are nevertheless, 'a path, a boardwalk,' for its readers.

About the reviewer
John Goodby is a poet and critic, and Professor of Art and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University. His new biography of Dylan Thomas, co-authored with Chris Wigginton, has just been published by Reaktion Books. 

Review by Rachael Clyne of “Identified Flying Objects” by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

The poet draws on the prophet Ezekiel to help him make sense of his situation, having been immobilised by a broken leg. He searches both himself and society for understanding. Ezekiel is best known for his wild visions, like the valley of "Dem Bones" resurrecting themselves and a possible Alien landing (as in the title poem). Written during the period of the Israelites’ captivity in Babylon, Ezekiel blamed their plight on corruption and lack of faith in God. Not one to mince words, he railed against the people and their leaders. 

Bartholomew-Biggs uses quotations from Ezekiel to create contemporary narratives. He too comments on corruption and politics, with echoes of Eliot in his scenes set in London. "Maiden Speech" draws on Ezekiel’s admonishment of the ruling factions of his era. "Internal Exile," "Migrant" and "Bitter Almonds" suggest both refugee experiences and also illness as a form of exile. Images of scorpions and almonds evoke biblical and Middle Eastern origins. "Bitter Almonds" is set in English lanes and churchyards and opens with: "He didn’t know they grew in England." The almonds, while found by a church, are seen as malign, foreign and not to be touched.

The poet explores many routes for answers: flat earth theory, social injustice, refugees and  climate collapse. "Forthcoming Events" describes how pessimistic prophecies are repeatedly ignored and influencers opt for self-preservation, rather than taking unpopular measures that could avoid catastrophe: "We arrive where we have never been / and find ourselves still there."

I find his collection skilfully written in a spirit of human enquiry, which never strays into didactics. I enjoyed its range and wit. I know Michael as the editor of London Grip, an online journal that is generous in its support for poets and am glad to be introduced to him as a poet.

About the Reviewer
Rachael Clyne is a retired psychotherapist who also published self-help books. In her youth, she was a professional stage and television actor. In later life she began developing her poetry and has since been widely published in journals and anthologies. Her prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams 2014), concerns our broken connection with nature. Her pamphlet, Girl Golem (4word.org) explores her Jewish migrant heritage, and, in her latest collection, You’ll Never Be Anyone Else (Seren Books 2023), she expands on themes of identity to include childhood heritage, relationships and LGBTQ+.

You can read more about Identified Flying Objects by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Jane Ramsden of "Untangling the Webs" by Joy Pearson

There could not be a more perfect title for Joy Pearson's debut novel than Untangling the Webs, as a sign of what the reader can look forward to.

The spider's spinning ability has long been linked with our weaving, knotwork and net-making history and so, by extension, with creation myths and story-telling, because they all weave their own artistic world. Joy Pearson exemplifies this analogy through the skilfully woven, multi-stranded tale of her characters' inter-connected relationships and dilemmas, with a mystery at its heart. 

Symbolically, spiders and their webs exhibit many traits, including resourcefulness, cunning, intrigue and deceit; but also fortune, feminine patience and wisdom. It's all in here. This is a novel that extols the value of strongly-wrought (particularly feminine and feline) friendships, and pair-bonding in all its partnered and familial forms, but there are also less pleasant "trickster" characters too. As in African folkloric "spider tales," their inclusion can teach a moral lesson.

The romantic entanglements range from blossoming, flourishing, kind, caring and sexual love to splits, misunderstandings, naivety, downright deception (including "bits on the side"!), a smattering of fetishism, callousness and even brutality, and the sadness of absence, loneliness and loss. Pearson has mastered the art of reader engagement by creating not just a convoluted plot and sub-plots, but characters you care about and can identify with. You want to know what will happen to them next and ultimately (I couldn't guess!). This is the author as the spinner and weaver of destiny. The novel is a literary dreamcatcher, the symbol styled on a spider's web. 

Did I mention there are mysteries in this book? I especially like how seemingly small details are incorporated into the book - seamlessly woven almost in passing - but born of the author's observation of environment and nature, and her experience of life. There are some lovely incidental descriptions - she is clearly a gardener - but watch out for the occasional pithy one-liner summation of a situation, such as: "Emotionally, disappearance was a powerful weapon." "The one who leaves is not the one enduring the silence."

As the novel closes, some things seem to be working out ... or do they? No spoilers here! The reader is left suspended like a spider, hanging by a curious thread. But it is a thread connecting this debut novel to its eagerly awaited follow-up.

About the reviewer

Jane Ramsden obtained a BA French/German Combined Hons from London University, with a strong vocation to put something back into her own city. She retired as an LGO after 30+ years at Bradford Council. She assisted her partner, David Tipton, in the running of his small poetry press (Redbeck). He was a published poet and novelist. Her claim to fame was editing Cat Kist, the Redbeck Anthology of Contemporary Cats. She and David also produced Spirit of Bradford,  Poems for the City's Centenary and an anthology of British South Asian Poetry, as well as publishing many individual poets. She is a lifetime cat rescuer, qualified reflexologist and folk singer.