Saltwater: Winner of the Portico Prize

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Just off out on me horse!’ she called as she wheeled her rusty bicycle down the hallway. She was a self-educated woman, and she taught my grandfather how to write and to read constellations in the salty night sky. This is a promising coming-of-age debut novel set partially in England, and partially in Donegal, Ireland. This is an author I know I will read again for her ability to pull me into her world, her story unflinchingly real, occasionally dark, heartrending, raw and honest, but oh-so lovely overall. Shared in what feels like a memoir-ish style, we follow her as she shares her memory of people and events that have shaped her life, the focus at the heart of this is on the bond between mothers and daughters. Friends, neighbors and family. Her mother, a mostly absent father, and a younger brother who was born profoundly deaf, which led to some life-changing moments for them all. A grandfather’s death that leaves her with a haunting memory. A grandmother that brings light and love to her life, she reminisces in her writing that ”Everything about her was silver; her voice as she sang along to the radio in the morning, the shiny fish scales caught on her tabard at the end of the day and the hole that she left in our lives when she died, edged like a fifty-pence piece.” This book comes lauded with acclaim about its freshness, voice and vision - but, you know, it's just that old, old story of a girl struggling to become an adult and to find her place in the world. There can still be mileage in this theme but this book hits all the predictable milestones : wayward bodies, boys, sex, struggling not to be objectified, pigeon-holed by class and accent, the push-pull of mother-daughter relationships, wanting to be separate and individual while wanting to belong. The writing was raw, haunting and poetic (even if at times a little purple). Had I read this instead of listen to it I know I would have underlined many many passages. It had the feeling of a memoir rather than a work of fiction. They walked around the streets in the cold, trying to stay wrapped up in the orange fur that pulsed from the street lights. When enough time had passed, my grandmother took them home and they crept up the stairs, being careful not to wake him as he snored on the settee with his mouth open.”

The novel begins with Lucy’s birth, “It begins with our bodies . . . Safe together in the violet dark and yet already there are spaces beginning to open between us.” The timeline jumps around a lot but I never lost the essence of what the author wanted to convey. The chapters are also very very short but I soon got used to it. Before I came to Ireland, I was living in London. I was seduced by coloured lights hitting the river in the middle of the night and throngs of cool girls in chunky sandals who promised a future of tote bags and house plants. I thought that was the kind of life I was supposed to want. I worked in a bar every night while I figured out how to get there. I have noticed that many of the young men in Donegal have shaking hands. [...] I ask my mother what it is that makes them shake. 'It'll be the drink,' she says, sagely." It begins with our bodies . . . Safe together in the violet dark and yet already there are spaces beginning to open between us.I can highly recommend the audio narrator but on the other hand with a book like this you may want to have an actual book to be able to re-read passages. Yes. Once I left Sunderland and went to London, going home was never the same as you change yourself to fit in, in ways like dialect and accent. I feel that the cultural divide is vast. Saltwater could be seen as a three generations of mother/daughter relationships, also a commentary on northern mentality and attitudes, it’s also a coming of age story, a search for identity. Lucy also recalls childhood memories of 90’s and early 00’s culture. I was a teenager in the 90’s and remember Oasis-mania and then in my mid 20’s as a music reviewer, I remember the power of Myspace and the new breed of indie bands. To a certain extent, Lucy’s past echoed mine.

But once she gets there Lucy can’t help feeling that the big city isn’t for her, and once again she is striving, only this time it’s for the right words, the right clothes, the right foods. No matter what she tries she’s not right. Until she is. In that last year of her degree the city opens up to her, she is saying the right things, doing the right things. Until her parents visit for her graduation and events show her that her life has always been about pretending and now she’s lost all sense of who she is and what she’s supposed to be doing. I rode the coloured snakes of the tube to parts of the city I'd read about' (coloured snakes? coloured snakes!) I felt confused by love; the way it could simultaneously trap you and set you free. How it could bring people impossibly close and then push them far away. How people who loved you could leave you when you needed them most.” This was so nostalgic for me. So many instances where I saw myself in the narrative. From what Lucy was having for tea, to the what she was wearing to go out. Perhaps if you are not a similar age to me (mid twenties) and didn't grow up in the more Northern areas of the UK, then you might not 'get it'. Its so nice to see the way I grew up written in a novel which seems odd to say but I do feel like my class and childhood era seems rarely represented in UK fiction. I suppose books written by and about my generation are hopefully going to become more popular in time.

As my grandfather grew he worked as a gardener, pruning rhubarb and thatching roofs and occasionally mending leaky plumbing. When he was old enough, he travelled to England on the boat with the rest of the boys, looking for labouring work. He helped to build the Tyne Tunnel, spending his days deep beneath the ocean, installing lights so that strangers could see in the dark. Impressionistic recollections . . . coalesce into a characterization of a young woman taught by her mother’s example how to navigate a society ruled by men... [Lucy will] experience her life fully, and . . . to be present in the world she must allow its weight to dissipate.” I saw a chance and I grasped it. I texted my landlord and told him to keep my deposit. I put my books into boxes and gave all of my clothes away. I took the train north to my mother’s house, then we boarded an aeroplane and hired a car and now here I am. As you noticed I said segments and that’s how the book is divided ; small paragraphs, which work as little memory blasts, obviously the more one reads, the more a plot forms, I have been utterly, utterly spoilt with my January reads, and it’s not over yet! This was my FIFTH five star read of the month if you can believe it (out of around 16 so far), and I for one hope the good times will keep on coming! And clearly they will for Jessica Andrews as this book WON the Portico Prize!

un libro aperto alla speranza: nonostante tutte le sofferenze inflitte da chi doveva prendersi cura di lei, la protagonista, Lucy, ad un certo punto del racconto, non naufraga, ma trova in sé la spinta per rinascere. Andrews is very good on subtle gradations of class, however, especially as Lucy moves from Sunderland to London – and she’s even better on the general youthful yearning for our lives to begin, to become some other, ill-defined, more exciting thing. Also impressive is how the disappointment at not finding that, at not fitting in, is often rendered in bodily terms: Andrews smartly elides the notion of feeling uncomfortable in our own skin with the idea of not having found our place or purpose in the world. I feel the mother-daughter relationship has the same intensity as a romantic relationship – a really heightened emotion. You get some friendships like that in which the emotions are so strong; you can love them and hate them. I wanted to explore this. Writing the book was good as it meant I could ask inquisitive questions – I asked my mum to write me an account of what it was like to have a baby with a disability. We were able to spend time with important questions. It’s about making sense of your position in the world.Jessica Andrews doesn’t exactly write. She paints . . . Saltwater is the story of Lucy remembering—but also, sort of, forgetting—the life that has left her so fractured . . . If Lucy’s been pulled into pieces then so has the book. It’s splintered into dozens of very short chapters, each one an artist’s impression of her infancy, her childhood or student days. The primal craving for her mother is always there, but alcoholism . . . hangs over the whole, too, cloying and sad . . . This is a book worth taking yourself off to bed early for.” Saltwater] features something very rare in literary fiction: a working-class heroine, written by a young working-class author . . . The writing is disarmingly honest . . . This is a courageous book dealing frankly with youth, puberty, mother-daughter relationships, class, disability and alcoholism . . . I found parts of this novel intensely moving – I wish I had read it when I was 19."