by Zoe Strachan
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Amazon.co.uk Review
"Making a crematorium too hot. That's what I call insensitive." the narrator of Zoe Strachan's debut Negative Space is full of such sardonic asides, even as she reels with the shock of her younger brother Simon's death, and struggles to cope with his absence. She's a strong woman, whose bluff, tough-talking exterior leads her friends to underestimate the pain she is feeling inside. Unable, and unwilling to find comfort with her family, she returns to a life of anonymity in Glasgow, where depression and a string of empty, alcohol-fuelled encounters convince her finally that her life must change. But this proves impossible in a city whose every windswept corner hides a memory. Then, on a trip to the remote Orkney Islands--part pilgrimage, part escape--the healing process begins, in a way no-one could have predicted. The seemingly pointless death of a talented young man is ultimately rendered meaningful, as his sister discovers a way to continue living.
Negative Space is a powerful, sometimes painful tale, and Strachan's attention to the minutiae of the grieving process is exhaustive. Its chief achievement--and this is no mean feat--is to create a central relationship possessing all the luminous intensity of the best love stories. But this is no romance, nor is there anything predictable about its outcome. Strachan's mission--to write about a love blurred by blood-ties and interrupted by sudden death--demonstrates a courage and an honesty rare in first novels.--Matthew Baylis
Review
When Simon died at 24 his sister was left alone and haunted by the past. In the harsh anonymity of Glasgow it appears that her fractured world has been completely torn apart. Then a trip to Orkney offers a change in her tense and frightening world.An emotionally authentic, painfully honest debut novel.
The publisher calls this 'a fierce and compelling story of grief and identity', and the plot of Strachan's first novel certainly fits the zeitgeist: a young girl, her life turned upside down by tragedy, embarks on a self-destructive wander and looks for relief in sex and drugs. Her family lies in ruins, and her friends are equally messed up, all of them searching against an unpromising backdrop for connection, meaning or escape. Then she goes on a trip which seems to offer a solution, but by now you know well enough that pain and wry humour are the hallmarks of her existence. Strachan's nameless narrator is 26 when her younger brother Simon dies. Finding it impossible to go back to her home town in Scotland, she returns to Glasgow, a city where she makes a living as an artists' model. Along the way we pick up that she used to share a flat with her brother and Ritchie, the sympathetic friend who takes her to hospital when she swallows too many pills after the funeral. Her faraway soulmate is Alex, who also goes through the motions while struggling to find a point in life. This is a generally fluent and well-handled story peppered with moments of authenticity. A fractured life demands a fractured narrative, and following this logic we get numerous jumps back and forward in time, which reinforces the feelings of profound disorganization and dislocation. But Strachan rescues the narrative from excess self-indulgence by her sensitivity to place; Glasgow with its anonymous pubs and studios and the wild beauty of Orkney are penetratingly observed. An impressive debut. (Kirkus UK)
The publisher calls this 'a fierce and compelling story of grief and identity', and the plot of Strachan's first novel certainly fits the zeitgeist: a young girl, her life turned upside down by tragedy, embarks on a self-destructive wander and looks for relief in sex and drugs. Her family lies in ruins, and her friends are equally messed up, all of them searching against an unpromising backdrop for connection, meaning or escape. Then she goes on a trip which seems to offer a solution, but by now you know well enough that pain and wry humour are the hallmarks of her existence. Strachan's nameless narrator is 26 when her younger brother Simon dies. Finding it impossible to go back to her home town in Scotland, she returns to Glasgow, a city where she makes a living as an artists' model. Along the way we pick up that she used to share a flat with her brother and Ritchie, the sympathetic friend who takes her to hospital when she swallows too many pills after the funeral. Her faraway soulmate is Alex, who also goes through the motions while struggling to find a point in life. This is a generally fluent and well-handled story peppered with moments of authenticity. A fractured life demands a fractured narrative, and following this logic we get numerous jumps back and forward in time, which reinforces the feelings of profound disorganization and dislocation. But Strachan rescues the narrative from excess self-indulgence by her sensitivity to place; Glasgow with its anonymous pubs and studios and the wild beauty of Orkney are penetratingly observed. An impressive debut. (Kirkus UK)
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