The Compound ~ by Aisling Rawle

In a world where truth is being undermined daily—where facts and “alternative facts” are presented side by side - this text explores the limitations of truth.

In the compound, ten men and ten women play a game of survival under the watchful gaze of cameras, which broadcast their every move 24 hours a day. In such a situation, the audience can only guess what is real and what is contrived. Certain behaviours are rewarded; others are not. The competitors themselves face a similar dilemma: can anyone be trusted? The age-old adage “All’s fair in love and war” applies here - can we decry unkind, immoral acts when the rewards are so great?

This is one of the questions that author Aisling Rawle's book The Compound poses. It asks us what is truth and what is a lie, and can we ever know the difference?

The text goes further, as the parallels between this fictional world and our own become increasingly clear. There is little difference between the brinkmanship of a boardroom or a playground and the cutthroat acts of the compound residents. Who sides with whom at a union meeting or family court, or who sits next to whom in a staffroom or cafeteria openly declares a kind of fealty or loyalty. A simple act of where you sit in a meeting is always political. Just watch your colleagues at the next gathering. Decisions are made, calculations drawn. This is how humans build relationships and form communities. There are always those who are excluded - and those who choose not to play these games, preferring solitude and their own company. And this choice is equally political.  If everything is transactional, can we ever truly trust another person's motives? And if we recognise their motives, is there a sort of truth in that? In The Compound we are privy to Lily's thoughts as she narrates the story. Yet, her personality gradually changes, and at times we are shocked by her actions. The enjoyment she felt killing the ducks, the cruel destruction of Tom's record player, and her easy parting with Sam and Jacintha surpries us. Her greed for status, acceptance and wealth is unrelenting, despite the fire, and the mounting rubbish heaps; her obsession almost kills her. She continues to surprise us until the very end, leaving us questioning who Lily really is. 

In the world of this text, the residents of the compound must consider and reconsider every action before they act. The effect is exhausting, and some choose to leave the house rather than remain. It is a brutal world when any act of intimacy, kindness, or generosity must be viewed with suspicion. Even the attachment between lovers is questioned as potentially transactional. But isn’t that the same in the real world? You need only read Jane Austen to see that. Even the great Elizabeth Bennet must admit to falling for Darcy when first seeing his sizeable grounds at Pemberly!

In fact, this book lays bare the selfish root of human behaviour. Why else would we do the things we do?

You might argue that no, people do act out of love in the book, but The Compound seems to suggest that love cannot be trusted - even maternal love. Lily's relationship with her mother is evidence of that. Lily's feelings for Clarice, Jacintha, Ryan, and Sam, also come into doubt, suggesting that love only lasts as long as it is of benefit. This is quite a refreshing idea in a novel, where love is usually seen as a cure-all. Popular culture has long been sold on the “happily ever after” ending. This idea fits with the dystopian nature of the text. Here, truth itself is doubtful - just as trust, beauty, and love are. The book forces us to consider whether the same is true in our society, in our relationships. It also asks the question: if this is so, then what holds society together?

You don’t need to be part of a religious cult, the masons, or any secret society to flourish - but we instinctively understand the value of seeking out our “tribe” if we want to be successful or happy. Even that, the book suggests, is transactional. I’ll clean the kitchen if you mend the window. I’ll cook the meal if you take out the bins.

You might read this book simply to find out who becomes the last remaining resident in the compound - and as a game show, it certainly holds our interest. But for me, the most compelling aspect of the book is what it reveals about the society we live in the real world, our world. This book will not change your life, but it may start you thinking about where truth lies, and the limitations it holds.

Still Life ~ Sarah Winman

Because, in Italy - as on holiday - anything can happen.

Sarah Winman’s novel may initially draw you in with nostalgic echoes of the 1985 film A Room with a View, starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Maggie Smith, and Judi Dench. But while the Italian backdrop is undeniably enchanting, it’s the characters that will steal your heart.

Imagine Only Fools and Horses transported to Florence, and you're getting close. Winman gives us a cast of unforgettable characters - funny, and forgiving. Each one arrives with their own baggage and backstory, all of them searching for something: a home, a purpose, a sense of belonging. The warmth and bonhomie that radiate from every page make the novel irresistibly uplifting, even when the characters are at their lowest.

While the story’s themes are universal—identity, reinvention, love—it is the geography of Italy, and Florence in particular, that makes it all possible. Removed from their usual setting—mostly London—the characters find the freedom to remake their lives. Like travelers on an extended holiday, they are forced to shed what no longer serves them and carry only what’s essential.

Ulysses, the central figure, begins as a soldier and ends as a Florentine property owner. With him are a makeshift family: a wise child (Alys), a grandfatherly figure (Cress), and a startlingly human parrot (Claude). Together, they form the nucleus of a growing, unconventional family. Over time, others join—Pete, the soulful musician; Des, the flamboyant benefactor; Col, the irascible uncle; Evelyn, the sage grandmother; and Peg, the beautiful and flawed woman everyone seems to love.

But this isn’t a story of fixed roles. There is no designated mother, father, or child. Care and nurture pass fluidly from one character to another. Ulysses sometimes mothers Alys, Cress nurtures Ulysses, even the gruff Col surprises with tenderness. This fluidity makes the novel feel strikingly modern, despite its 20th-century timeline—spanning from Evelyn’s youth in 1901 to the 1980s.

Major historical events—World War II, the moon landings, England’s 1966 World Cup victory—anchor the narrative in a tangible reality. And yet, the story’s magic lies in its willingness to stretch plausibility: an almost-human parrot, windfall inheritances, properties donated like secondhand clothing . These fantastical elements allow the characters to remain, in a sense, on holiday—free of financial constraint, open to possibility.

Because, in Italy - as on holiday - anything can happen.

Could chance meetings change lives forever? Could lost lovers reunite after decades and pick up exactly where they left off? Could the forgotten, the unloved, and the aged find themselves cherished once more? Winman says yes. On holiday, all things are possible.

Of all the characters, Peg left me cold. In my imagination, she was part Jayne Mansfield, part EastEnders barmaid. For all the love and attention she received—largely because of her beauty—I found her undeserving. Even the formidable Evelyn, at 86, had a crush on her. For me, the male relationships held far more emotional resonance. They were warm, funny and supportive. And it’s because of them that I loved this book as much as I did.  
Michelle Burrowes

To Free the Captives - by Tracy K. Smith

To catch a poet dipping their toe in the world of prose is a risky business, the verbosity alone could sink you like a stone . And so I came to the curious memoir of US poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, by way of an introduction to her poetry and what I found was a perfectly blended text - part prose, part poetry - that reveals Smith to be a master of both forms.

Smith maps the landscape of her life and world, which is familiar to readers of her poetry, but in the form of a book, she has the time and space to dive into the stories of the past, into the lives of those who came before her. ‘To Free the Captives’ gives her imagination full reign, the space to follow metaphor wherever it leads, to chase logic and ask questions, free from the strictures of poetic meter. Smith picks at the fabric of her history and pulls the threads gently, coiling the stings in her patient hands, feeling the heft of their weight, remaking their lives in her own words. She tells us, there is a difference between the free and the freed. She considers, ‘The framing of the past serves to shore up and justify existing hierarchies of worth, power, and belonging’. 

And so it is that she wanders through the past, introducing us to her ancestors and kin, searching for who she is. She tells us of a nightmare she once had. Waking, ‘I remain afraid of something elemental as my safety and the sanctity of my family. And that this fear extends from history’. In this way Smith explains that is haunted by the collective memory of her ancestors, her people. ‘We repeat’, she tells us. ‘Our voices, our features, our names’. When meditating, they come to her:

     ‘They rise as if from the ground… They grow tall and draw near… One by one they climb down into             me … reclining there like a low boat before them. They flood in.’

Still, in some ways, this book feels like a poem. There is a wisdom in almost every line, echoes that you at once recognise from your own life but which are uniquely part of an American life experience, and especially an African-American life experience.  Through her use of rich imagery, Smith is able to grapple with such metaphysical concerns that another autobiographer might baulk at. But she leads the reader down a path that is fearless, brutal and blindingly truthful, in her search for who she is, and who we all are. 

Similarly, the antithesis of the book’s title, ‘To Free the Captives’, captures something of the poet’s sensibility, constantly balancing, swaying, to an innate rhythm of ebb and flow, that pulls a poem to its ultimate conclusion. Here Smith considers the present and the past, the free and the freed, love won, love lost, despair and hope, endings and beginnings. 

‘Where is the past?’, she asks us. ‘Behind us or up ahead?  It is here. Beside us and within.’ Lines like this, poetic in their shape and form, cannot help but echo in our imagination, lingering for days, as only lines of verse can do.

And in the end, she makes the plea, as if to ask a question that is answered in the book’s title, ‘Oh, My country!… Is there yet a chance that certain words, uttered in the right ways , will land? And detonate?’ For me, this is the key concept in this book. She writes to explore self identity, yes, but also to remake, renew; to reimagine a new America, where change is possible. But first, the past must be dealt with, realities faced. ‘What would you do if I were to tell you that we are, all of us… the Free and the Freed - equally captive in our collective enterprise?’ 

She gives what she seeks a name, calling it ‘hope’. ‘What will save us?’, she asks and then answers, ‘We will save us. We must.’ Smith use of the inclusive ‘we’ unites America in all its diversity, with an imperative energy that is captured in the breathless repetition of ‘w’s and the certainty of sibilance. And when she says it, we believe her. She is a poet, after all, and she knows which way truth blows. 

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

I came to George Saunders’ novel ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ fresh from a few weeks re-reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and while the latter presents death as essentially a lonely, personal experience, Saunders creates an afterlife that is populated with the numberless, riotous dead. Angry, bitter, regretful, people inhabit the Bardo, lingering, for various reasons, in limbo, seemingly with unfinished business tying them to the place.   

His story is concerned generally with the early death of young Willie Lincoln, son of the Civil War President, but it is really the story of Everyman. Like the central character of the medieval play, who is suddenly faced with the character of death calling time on his life, Willie Lincoln too is not ready to leave his life behind. The collection of souls, or beings who the president’s young son meets on the other side, try to convince him that he should move on, but he delays. This is only one part of the problem, the other is how reluctant his father, President Lincoln, is to let him go.

The real genius of this story is how Saunders manages to dazzle us with many truths and realities of life, while presenting the story in a fantastical reality, which is, let’s face it, bizzare and unknowable. Yet, it is because the story is so surreal, that we can focus on the struggles of the characters, as they tell their stories and jostle for position in the cruel life that is the afterlife. In this way, the book reminded me of Samuel Beckett, with a multitude of Didi and Gogos, all waiting for something to happen. And like Beckett, Sauders’s novel feels very like a drama, consisting mostly of conversations, and monologues - it would not be out of place on the stage - although with a cast of thousands - the actors looking like extras straight from the set of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.

Towards the end of the book Roger Bevins III says:

‘None of it was real; nothing was real.

Everything was real. Inconceivably real, infinitely dear.’

This line, when all is said and done, is everything you need to know about ‘Lincoln and the Bardo’, and everything we need to know about life, if you think about it - and THAT is the power and magic of this book. It will make you want to hug your kids, hold your partner’s hand, and wake up in the morning and feel like you have a million more mornings to wake up to, and also like this is your very last day. The emotion is startling.

Emily Dickinson wrote feverishly during the American Civil War, especially during 1962-3, and so it is no wonder that her poems deal with death, when the war took so many. The character of Miss Isabelle Perkins, who writes letters to her brother about the dead souls that she sees wandering in the cemetery - ‘angels of various shapes and sizes’ - reminds me of Emily Dickinson. Like the poet, she is immobilised in her bedroom, and watches the world go by from her window. I like to think that Saunders was inspired by the reclusive poet, and endowed her with the ability to see those lingering in the Bardo, ‘comfortable having these Dead for company’. And by the book’s end, we feel the same way too. 

If the zombie apocalypse is your thing, you won’t find it in ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’, but you will find a boy and man by the name of Lincoln, struggling to make sense of death in life, and life after death - just like the rest of us really.