Van has finished reading… A Drop of Patience by William Melvin Kelley

 

At the age of five Ludlow Washington, a blind African-American boy, is handed over to a state home by his impoverished parents. Here Ludlow will learn many lessons, some useful, most brutal, about the life that awaits him. At the age of sixteen, thanks to his prodigious talent for music, he is sold to a band leader. Playing jazz in a southern bar he takes first steps into the wider world. But there are many obstacles he must overcome if he is to make it to the very top.

 

Following his stunning debut novel, A Different Drummer, William Melvin Kelley’s second novel, A Drop Of Patience takes us into the heart of a world that’s synonymous with Black America – the world of Jazz. As we follow Ludlow’s journey from State-run home to band we find ourselves in New Marsails, and consequently in the same imagined history of A Different Drummer. Whereas Tucker Caliban in A Different Drummer, though rarely heard from directly, drives the narrative, in A Drop Of Patience Ludlow seems almost driven before it as he searches for a sense of agency. Ludlow is a fascinating character. There’s no doubt he’s as much a product of the failings in his upbringing as the successes. While highly proficient as a musician he’s been taught next to nothing about the outside world, save those necessities he needs to get by – eating, dressing, navigating the streets. It’s in New Marsails, as he begins to get to grips with living that we ask ourselves if he’s not an especially likeable person, and how much weight one gives to his extenuating circumstances in forming that opinion. His youth and talent are magnetic, though he is callow and self-centred. Then again he’s as close as one can get to being Ellison’s Invisible Man. It’s a potent foil that allows William Melvin Kelley to show us Black America not through the eyes of white society as in A Different Drummer, but as viewed by one who cannot see a difference.

What I will say is that Ludlow’s a grower. Mid-way through it’s worth reminding yourself how young he is, experience lending him a voice older than his years, and you can’t help but root and feel for him as life drives him on. The scene at the end of part five is particularly heartbreaking!

 

Is it a Jazz novel? Yes, but maybe not as you know it. It’s a novel about a man who is a musician rather than a novel about a Jazz musician, and you don’t need to know all about Jazz, or music generally to appreciate the author’s work. That said, Ludlow Washington musical journey will be recognisable to those who are in the know. Homes for black orphans across America produced many a noted Jazz musician, while in Jamaica the Alpha Boys School proved a driving force in the extension of Ska and Reggae. For me it’s a wise decision on Kelley’s part to be general in his description of instruments and genres rather than getting bogged down in technicalities, though there’s enough detail to allow a good idea of where Ludlow is at each stage in his career. There’s a route to follow from local dance bands through to big bands behind a star singer and on into smaller instrumental bands as Modern Jazz develops, though I particularly like the way Ludlow, seen by the wider world as a pioneer of the movement, keeps our feet on the ground by saying he’s just doing what he’s always been doing. And then there’s Norman Spencer, who I suspect would be Kelley’s own archetype of the Great Jazz Musician. Seen as an ‘old-timer’ as Ludlow starts his career, it’s his influence that shapes Ludlow’s development, and his unbending desire to stay in his own space, playing his own music to those who come to listen that grounds the point of their profession.

William Melvin Kelley’s A Drop Of Patience is a fabulous novel. A very human story that resonates on many levels, it’s truly engrossing and deceptively easy to read. You’ll be thinking about the time you spent with Ludlow long after the band has packed up and gone home.

 

A Drop Of Patience was published by riverrun on the 3^rd October 2019 ISBN:9781787478077

You can find out more about William Melvin Kelley’s life and work at williammelvinkelley.com

 

My thanks to Elizabeth Masters & Ana McLaughlin at riverrun for allowing me to review this excellent book.

Van has finished reading… The Choke by Sofie Laguna

 

Ten year old Justine is hemmed in by her circumstances. Surrounded by poverty and violence, isolated by undiagnosed dyslexia, her world is painfully small. When she hears her dad is coming home for Christmas she’s excited and also a little afraid; much like the riverbanks of her favourite hideout, The Choke, her life narrows when her dad comes home. Can she find a way to break through the barriers and find a brighter future?

 

The first words spoken in Sofie Laguna’s The Choke are, ‘This is going to hurt.’ Even putting aside the fact that it’s Justine’s older half-brother, Kirk, who says this to her, the reader surely understands they’ve been warned. It’s a great opening scene with a feral menace put into the mouths of children that really sparkles before dissipating into fraternal companionship, and we’re right there, willing Justine on as she holds her own in combat, and keeps a sly eye open when hostilities cease. I suspect anyone who’s grown up with brothers will sense the bite lurking in the smiles.

Where the characterisation really shines for me is in the interplay between Justine and her half-brothers, Kirk and Steve. The way they mesh and come apart is finely drawn and wholly believable, and to see Kirk and Steve through Justine’s eyes when their dad is home is genuinely heart-breaking. Writing convincing kids is always a difficult thing to do, and as with Claire King’s The Night Rainbow, Sofie Laguna gets it spot on.

Speaking of Ray, their father, I’m hard pressed to think of another character so thoroughly horrible. It feels like there’s a genuine commitment on the writer’s part to remove any hint of a redeeming feature yet his presence in the narrative is huge. You find yourself hanging on his every word, every movement in the hope that he’ll just this once take the right road.

There’s a relentless motion in Sofie Laguna’s The Choke that any thriller would kill for. To say Justine is an underdog is putting it mildly. I wonder whether there’s a single page goes by where the fact of her gender is not underlined, and undermined, in some subtle or not-so-subtle way. Even in her imagination she sees herself through the prism of the John Wayne films she watches with her dad and grandfather, films that even she can quote verbatim. Even the titular Choke, a narrowing of the river and the scene of many of Justine’s flights of fancy, for all its natural beauty carries that sense of entrapment in its description.

 

Not an easy read by any means but a book that will certainly reward those with courage enough to stay the course with Justine. Sofie Laguna’s The Choke will surely make you angry, it might even make you swear, but it’ll definitely fill your heart.

The Choke was published by Gallic Books on 3^rd October 2019 ISBN:9781910709627

You can find Sofie at her website sofielaguna.com

My thanks to Isabelle at Gallic Books for allowing me to review this book