Turning Blue – Benjamin Myers

The first in a detective series marketed as folk crime, Turning Blue is a slight departure for Myers.  He’s never written outright crime before.  However, this is definitely not a police procedural, it is more rural crime noir with flawed but decent heroes at its heart.

Obsessive and antisocial Detective Brindle and ex-hedonist journalist Mace form an unlikely alliance to uncover why a local teenager has mysteriously disappeared.  They expose so much more than a run of the mill missing persons case.  In a work where art often imitates recent real life news stories and police investigations which have shocked the British public, Brindle and Mace wade through sleaze, establishment corruption and cover ups involving the police, close knit silent communities, a grotesque character who seems to be a mash up of Jimmy Saville, Jonathan King and Stewart Hall and a revolting, disturbing loner pig farmer whose behaviour as the story progresses goes from the bizarre and creepy to alarming and sinister.  His pathetic existence invades every page cultivating a feeling of unease from the beginning.

It’s easy to compare Ben Myers’ writing to the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Derek Raymond or James Ellroy – I’ve done it myself before.  Here’s another comparison: There’s a touch of the David Peace Red Riding about Myers’ latest offering; hard Northern men, institutional corruption, sleaze and violence in small, overlooked communities.  Such comparisons are useful to allow those who’ve never come across his books to get a flavour of what to expect, but also slightly erroneous.  Ben Myers’ writing is difficult to define or pigeon hole.  He seems unsure himself of how this new book should be described.  But does it matter?  Do I need to compare it to other work?  Do I need to identify it as writing of a particular genre?  I don’t think so.

Myers has his own style, he is an exciting writer of extraordinary  talent with an ability to weave heart-breaking tales about marginalised communities and individuals with brutal, bleak and stomach-wrenching stories into the evocative tapestry of a landscape setting.  This creates a dichotomy for the reader; admiration for the perceptive descriptions and economy of writing mixed with feelings of revulsion at the violence and horror. Myers has never been for the faint-hearted or easily offended and Turning Blue is no different to its two predecessors in that respect.  It is visceral.  Human beings can be sick, we just don’t like admitting it to ourselves and Myers continues to make no apology for holding the mirror steady so we can’t avoid the myriad of vileness and the depths some of us can stoop to.  This is what I love; honesty in fiction.  I’m pretty sure the stuff Myers writes about in Turning Blue does/has happened, no matter how uncomfortable that makes me feel.

The outdoors is the scaffolding on which Myers overlays the plots of all his recent fiction and Turning Blue continues that trend.  The countryside sometimes feels like an afterthought in some “nature” writing, but Myers has always used it to represent emotion and propel a plot onwards.  In Pig Iron the landscape provided solace and refuge (and there is a lovely nod to John John Wisdom’s green cathedral with its mention in Turning Blue), in Beastings it was a menacing means of escape, in this book, the Yorkshire countryside is brooding, an irritant obstructing the investigation.  It is harsh and bleak, wet or snowbound and difficult to navigate if you are not from the “Hamlet”.  You know the ancient sod and dirt will triumphantly remain long after these characters are dead and buried.  It is the constant.

I am continually excited and blown away by Myers’ awesome writing.  I swallowed down this book with the thirst of the seriously dehydrated.  I suggest you all get the drinks in as soon as you can because Myers is the landlord serving up intoxicating fiction.

Thanks to Ben and Moth Publishing for sending me a review copy and the lovely tin of moss, wire and plastic pig.

Other Ben Myers stuff to read on here:

Q&A with Ben Myers author of Pig Iron

Beastings by Benjamin Myers

Pig Iron – Benjamin Myers

Q&A with Ben Myers author of Pig Iron

My favourite new book of last year was Pig Iron by Benjamin Myers.  It’s special to me because it evoked such an emotional response when I wasn’t expecting it to.  I still think about it now, many months after first reading it.  It is an earthy book, a book of the land and nature.  It gets under your skin and your fingernails (if you know what I mean).  I was  pleased when my friend Trueblood chose it for her bookclub earlier this year and I asked Ben some questions to help with their discussion.  His answers form the majority of this Q&A (with his permission, of course), last week I asked him some further questions about his forthcoming work.  Here’s what he had to say:

Please give me a short biography?

I was born in 1976. I grew up on a nice sedate, lower middle class estate in the north-east of England. I remember neat lawns, the miner’s strike, summer holidays, spirited people. A sense of safety in the world. I was and still am close to my family. At the age of 10 my grandfather killed himself then at 11 I was seriously ill and had a kidney removed (AFH: weirdly, we have this in common). That was my first awareness that life is fragile.

My childhood was a happy one, though I hated school. In my teens I played in bands, voraciously read fiction, took drugs, met girls. I went to university and studied literature. At the same time I started writing for the now defunct Melody Maker. I interviewed pop stars. After graduating with a low-level degree from a provincial new university I became their staff writer and moved into a squatted building in South London. From 1996 I travelled widely with bands on various rock missions as the paper’s staff writer, and wrote novels in my spare time. I barely slept. In 1999 I went freelance and embarked upon many more years writing for many magazines.  I spent a lot of time in cold dressing rooms and strange hotels across Europe and America….

Fiction was always my first love though and I published a lot of stories and poems in small press journals and anthologies during this time. I also had many attempts at writing novels. I have a stockpile of unpublished works.

In 2001 I vomited blood on a plane from Los Angeles and stopped drinking. Soon afterwards I began to concentrate seriously on fiction, and my first novel The Book Of Fuck documented this time. From 2003-2006 I published a series of non-fiction music books and also co-ran a self-financed record label. In 2009 I moved back up north, to Calderdale, West Yorkshire where I have thrown myself into writing novels with a new-found intensity that borders on the dangerously obsessed.

Pig Iron is a book about travelling communities, what research did you
have to do?

I did research the old-fashioned way, really: by reading books. But also talking to people, being told anecdotes, watching documentaries, reading old press cuttings.  It’s a subject I was interested in long before I actually decided to write a novel set in that community.

John John Wisdom feels more at home outdoors than anywhere else. What about you?  Do you take inspiration from your natural surroundings and landscapes nearby?

Oh, definitely. As a child I climbed up lots of mountains and now every day I try and walk in the woods or up hills or across the moors. Even just for a few minutes. I lived in London for 12 years and that was the thing I struggled with most – the lack of open space and fresh air. I like to watch the season’s change, observe bird and animals and plant-life. I actually know very little about the theoretical/technical side of nature – the science of it, the naming of species and so forth – but instead still feel an emotional response. I like being around animals. I like watching their behaviour and habits. I like weather. I like rain, snow and sunshine. I like to exhaust myself in order to prevent my brain from running away with itself. It’s true what they say. Fresh air: it’s good for you.

The book is set in an area deeply affected by Thatcher’s policies that depressed the local mining industry. Is your book a metaphor for the social inequalities in today’s Tory Britain?

It was only after the book came out and a Guardian reviewer said the same thing that I thought that, yes, perhaps it is. It wasn’t a conscious attempt to get that point across but sub-consciously I think the book does work as a metaphor for Thatcher’s extreme prejudice against The North as a whole, and serves as an outlet for my anger at what she did – and what Cameron and co are doing now. Because in recession and/or under the Conservatives, it seems as if the poor and marginalised are always the first to be demonised and further disenfranchised. It’s happening again now with the unemployed, the disabled, the foreign nationals. After 15 years of paying tax I tried to sign on for a brief period last year when there was no freelance work and was effectively told, in the nicest terms, to piss off.

The book contains several violent scenes yet the end is quiet and calm did you consider a more bloodthirsty ending?

Yes. I considered having a much more violent showdown at the end with John-John wreaking revenge and retribution on his adversaries, but that seemed a clichéd cop-out too reminiscent of spaghetti western films. I wanted to show him as someone who has advanced beyond his background and disadvantaged upbringing, and who has ultimately become a better man than anyone else in his small world. He is actually the only moral person in the entire novel, and I wanted to reinforce that through the ending.

I’ve seen one commentator compare the writing in Pig Iron to Salinger and Golding. Do you see this as a “coming of age” novel?

I see it as a novel about consequences. Cause and effect. And also about man’s animalistic impulses – how violence has not yet evolved out of us as a species. I suppose in that sense, thematically at least, it could be seen as similar to Lord Of The
Flies.

The narrative in Pig Iron is sort of stream of consciousness, why did you chose this style and how does it help the tone of the book?

I never really considered it stream of consciousness as to me that suggests a sort of free-flowing, spontaneous and often disconnected / meandering type of prose, whereas Pig Iron was quite heavily re-written a number of times and the sentences pared down. But, yes, it is certainly written from inside the minds of its two narrators.  Hopefully this style gives a heightened emotion and a different sense of perspective that a third person narrative would provide.

I’ve not read your other books, but I imagine “The Book of Fuck” to have autobiographical elements and Richard (a fictionalisation of the disappearance of Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers) is about a world you know well so what parts of you can we find in Pig Iron?

 I think John-John’s love of nature, his isolationist aspect and disillusionment with the horrible ways in which some people treat one another, are essentially me. Like him I abhor violence too.

You’ve been reviewing a lot of music and interviewing musicians recently, is this influencing your current fiction writing much?

I’ve done paid freelance music journalism since 1996 – aside from doing copywriting in the advertising world it’s the only job I’ve had – so the two of always gone hand in hand really. Last year was quiet but over the past few months I’ve been back out there interviewing more bands than ever. I get about fifty press releases for new albums every day. Tonnes of stuff. More music than I can keep up with. I think I’ve interviewed eighteen bands these past three months, and reviewed a lot more music.

I like the discipline and economy of journalism – the quick turnarounds, the limited word counts. And I like talking to rock and pop stars. I listen to a lot of dark music which possibly infiltrates my fiction. My previous novel Richard was completely in that world but I don’t think writing about music is particularly influencing my current/future stuff at all. That said, I have been working on a novel which I described to someone as being like “if DH Lawrence made death metal”. It’s not, but I liked the sound of that.

What made you first decide to write novels and how does it differ to journalism?

I have been in love with literature all my life and being a writer is all I have ever wanted to do. Journalism was a good way to learn how to write, and to just about make a living while doing so. Also, I’m terrible with authority so self employment seemed like a good option. How does it differ to journalism? In the obvious way really. Fiction is fantasy, escape, kingdom-building, playing God – whereas with journalism you are bound by facts and at the mercy of your editors and each magazine’s differing house style. I think both feed the other.

I’ve read about the literary movement called Brutalists that you started a few years ago with some other writers.  Pig Iron has the raw honesty the movement talks about.  Could your book have been published by a large/corporate publisher? How has it been received? Has publishing changed since you started the movement?

I love reading, writing and books but I don’t much like the mainstream publishing world. I’ve been published by tiny publishers and huge publishers and feel it is easy to get lost, overlooked on a big publisher – if you can even get a foot in the door in the first place. The mainstream industry has tried and tested ways of doing things and if you or your writing doesn’t fit squarely into those methods then it is doubly tough. Pig Iron was only read by one corporate publisher who turned it down because “stories set in Northern towns tend not to sell” but fortunately Bluemoose had the guts to publish it.

The publishing world is quite Oxbridge and for all the recent technological advancements doesn’t really change that much. They want Hot New Things. They want novels that Tell Us Something. They want Narrative Arcs and Marketable Story Hooks. None of the other big publishers would even read Pig Iron. Yet still: it is by far my best received book and I currently get a few emails, messages and online reviews each week from readers who have reacted positively. It was runner-up in The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. I’ve heard from farmers, oil rig workers, hairdressers, prison officers, bare knuckle fighters, travellers, academics. It is a key text on a creative writing MA at a London university and has been entered for various prizes by lecturers.

I sleep on a bed of rejection letters. I light fires with them – but I’m not bitter about it. My attitude is to ignore the publishing world, just keep writing and hopefully everything will work out in the end. The business ebbs and flows but the written word is immortal!

You wrote a post on your blog last year called “2012: A year in writing” which made life as a writer sound very unglamorous. What keeps you going?

I love my life. I love writing. I’m always broke and often fraught with financial concerns, and have to skimp on many things to survive, like clothes and food and entertainment, but I feel a great sense of freedom that is worth more than any money. Besides…writing. It’s not exactly back-breaking is it? Really it’s a luxury.

What’s your next novel about and what else are you working on?

I’ve written two novels. One is about a young girl who abducts a baby that has been placed in her care and goes on the run in Cumbria, pursued by a sadistic priest. The other is about a vile pig farmer who kills a girl then falls in love with her. that one is set in the remotest corner of the Yorkshire Dales. Along with Pig Iron they collectively form a very loose trilogy of rural noir. Folk fiction.

(Asked last week, so slight overlap with the answer above) I know you’ve got a couple of unpublished novels under your belt at the moment, what else are you working on right now?

As far as I can tell I have a new novel coming out in 2014. It is set in Cumbria and the main protagonist is female, which is a first for me. It also features a priest. And a wooden leg. Then I am about to start re-writing another novel – the “if-DH-Lawrence-made-death metal-but-not-really” one. It’s by far the darkest and most disturbing work I’ve written. I read a bit recently and felt ill. I actually offended myself.

You recently announced on your blog and twitter that you have written a novella to be published by Galley Beggar Press and available in the summer. What can you tell me about it?

It is a novella, but there is no prose in it – only dialogue. So in a way it’s a play,but there are no stage directions, so it’s not. It’s very much a novella. It’s called Snorri & Frosti and is about everything else I tend to write about really – life and death. It concerns two brothers who live in a log cabin in the mountains in an unnamed northern European country. They are old. It is snowing. One of them has a headache. I would say it is slightly influenced by Beckett but I’ve never actually read his work nor seen it performed. The set-up is maybe a little like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Well, there’s three acts anyway.

How is writing a novella different from writing a novel – or isn’t it?

I suppose it’s the difference between a sprint and a marathon. Snorri & Frosti was written in a short, intense burst in sub-zero conditions. The pace of a novella is much easier to maintain, whereas perhaps the hardest part of writing a novel is keeping focused on the story and the tone for months or years at a time.

You told me it was slightly too long to be a short story. When does a short story become a novella?

The eternal question. Who knows, really? I don’t think there is a rule-book, or if there is I’d rather not see it. I’d say 10,000 words is about as long as I would go with a short story, and this novella just tops that. It could be five times the length but I think it would lose something if I stretched it out that far as that as it all takes place over one day and it was only ever something I wanted to write over three or four days.

Are you influenced by other media like art, film or TV?

Massively. Especially film and photography. I visited many photographic exhibitions while writing Pig Iron and would say it was as influenced by a few key contemporary documentary photographers – Janine Weidel, Don McCullin, Chris Killip, George Plemper – as any author. Music too.

Who are the writers, modern and classic, you go back to time and again, and why?

Knut Hamsun, John Fante, Cormac McCarthy, Bret Easton Ellis, DH Lawrence, Daniel Defoe, Roald Dahl, Gordon Burn, Ted Lewis, William Wordsworth, David Peace, Mikhail Bulgakov, John Rechy, Derek Raymond, Denis Johnson, Jean Genet, Henry Miller.

What are you reading at the moment?

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower.  Its brilliant.  Also Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, which is a ripping yarn. And Sight & Sound magazine.  I like that.  It’s probably the most intelligently-written magazine out there.

Recommend a book that will surprise us – why should we read it?

I read a lot of books about nature, animals, landscape and all things countryside-related. The best I’ve read in recent years of ‘Waterlog’ by Roger Deakin, which is about his love of outdoor swimming in Britain. It only came out in 1999 but is already an undeniable classic in its field. (AFH: see right Mr FH reading it at the moment!)

A big thanks to Ben for answering my questions.

My reading year 2012

This year reading has been pretty similar to previous years.  The books I’ve read have been a mix of recommendations, book club choices and stuff that takes my fancy, chosen at a whim.  Where things have differed massively this year, is this blog.  I started it in February to offload some of my thoughts on books, but it has become so much more than that.  I have met, albeit virtually, many lovely people  through blogging.  Whether that’s readers popping by, or stumbling across other bloggers with interesting things to say about books and reading.

I might not have been dependable as a blogger (just see my last post where I promised one more review this year – that’s not happened!), but I have managed to maintain my reading habit and to some extent upped my game in certain areas by reading books slightly out of my comfort zone.

Having also challenged myself to read a few more books by women, I managed to exceed the number of post 1950 books I wanted to read.  This exercise made me realise that there is some brilliant writing out there by women and I don’t know why I’ve not read more.  I will continue this policy of positive discrimination into next year!

I’ve read so many great books this year, I’m not sure there is much merit in me writing my “Best Books of 2012” but I will mention four books that really touched me and still mean a lot to me weeks and months after finishing them, if you fancy discovering something different in 2013, I can highly recommend any of the following (I’ve left my favourite till last).

The first is a classic Victorian novel.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte is special for me because unlike other Bronte novels where I slowly grew to admire the characters, I instantly fell in love with Helen and Gilbert and was completely swept away with their misery, desperation and difficult lives.   Anne Bronte gets the action going almost immediately in this book, there is very little scene setting, which I absolutely loved.  She also had great courage publishing this book as some of the themes would have shocked to the Victorian reader.  The beautifully descriptive language is a pleasure to read but the main thing going for it is its fabulous story of love overcoming many pitfalls, rooting it most definitely in Bronte country.

The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks is a book everyone should read just to get a glimpse of what life was like for women and minorities in the 1950’s.  The story follows a young woman after she is thrown out of her home when she accidentally falls pregnant.  She moves into a boarding house and encounters various characters while there.  They become her surrogate family.  It is a wonderful tale of survival and friendship as well as being an amazing commentary on the social norms of the mid twentieth century.  Reading this book makes you appreciate how far we’ve come since then, but also makes you realise how different things were only a generation or so ago.

I read Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (trans. Anthea Bell) for the only common reading/blogging event I joined this year.  German Literature Month took place in November and is quite self-explanatory by its name.  Peirene Press is fairly new and specialises in short European fiction.  They chose a corker with this book.  It well and truly fills its 140 pages with more than some lengthier books manage, focusing on how a small change can cause a devastating ripple effects, leaving upset and destruction in its wake.  It is a sad story of ageing, loneliness and  fear of dying, but it is so sensitively written you can’t help but admire it.

If you’ve visited this blog before or read any of my twitter feed you will know that Pig Iron by Benjamin Myers is a real favourite. It is not only my favourite book of this year, it is quite possibly the best book I’ve read for several years.   Reading my original thoughts on Pig Iron, I’m not sure I did it justice.  It is a haunting tale of a young man trying to do the right thing whilst attempting to distance himself from his violent past.  John John Wisdom’s voice is so engaging and realistic it sucks you in and elicits an emotional response.  It is beautifully written and Ben Myers deserves much more praise for this book than he gets.  I tell everyone who will listen how brilliant it is and now I’m repeating myself to you!

So there you have it.  There is a definite theme running through the four books getting a special mention above.  They all deal with loneliness, personal hardship and dealing with the crap life deals you sometimes.  Maybe, these sorts of books make me appreciate what I have in my own life, who knows?!  One thing I do know is that I’m looking forward to finding some more gems next year – I’ve already read a couple that I’ve not managed to review in December.  So roll on midnight and a new year of exciting bookish finds!

Pig Iron – Benjamin Myers

The thing with camping abroad when you take all your own stuff is that you can only carry the essentials, and unfortunately books take up precious space.  Mr Fictionhabit and I make sure we take a small selection and share them.  Luckily we weren’t as badly off as a Dutch camper we got friendly with who had to leave his copy of Steve Jobs’ biography at home because he literally had no more room in his car.  Mind you, it is a heavyweight tome.  One of the books Mr Fictionhabit added to our selection was Pig Iron by Benjamin Myers.  He’d read a review in the Guardian and having read another BlueMoose book, King Crow by Michael Stewart last year, he decided to buy it.  I read the review and was interested in the book when it arrived, but my to-be-read pile was so backed up I thought I probably wouldn’t get to it.  Racing through the two books I chose to take with us to France, I was very chuffed to settle down in my camping chair with Pig Iron.  

The first thing that strikes you about this books is the cover.  The photography is stunning, striking and bleak.  The bleakness of the cover image is certainly prophetic of what you find within.  There are stark points in this story, but there is also humanity and moments of tenderness that make your heart ache.

John John Wisdom is a young man from a travelling family trying to distance himself from his violent past and the legacy left by his bare-knuckle fighting father.  Despite his ordeals, he is likable, relatively level-headed although a little naive.  He is an outsider to his own kind because of something he did and he is an outsider to others because they think he is weird.  He is not at ease in other people’s company, but he comes alive in his”green cathedral,” the countryside where he can be himself.

“Cos like wherever I gan there’s people and bairns and buses and concrete and music and pissheads and smackheads and people dealing and people chorring and people fighting.  And they’re all bloody hassling us all the time.  But there’s none of that here..”

Despite getting a job, falling in love with a local Durham girl and trying to keep his head down, he can’t shake his past or who he is.  Trouble follows him.

In Pig Iron Myers has created a character so utterly convincing (at least to this white, middle class, home counties dweller) with a distinctive voice of Durham/Traveller vernacular, and a plot so engaging, that it is compulsive reading (imagine headtorch in the dark).  There were times when I winced, when I had to shut the pages, take a deep breath before continuing, because it is violent in places; one part in particular is nasty and there is a Lord of the Flies type episode which is anxiety inducing.  The graphic descriptions of violence are however totally necessary to underline the viciousness surrounding John John Wisdom’s childhood and the generations before him.  It is seat-of-your-pants stuff, I felt something awful might happen any moment and hoped it wouldn’t, because I cared about what happened to John John Wisdom.  That’s when you know you’ve been moved by writing.

If you are after refreshing, original writing, I urge you to seek out this book, it is compelling and will reward you long after you have read the last word.

PS Pig Iron has been short listed for the Guardian Not the Booker prize.  Look out to see if it wins here.