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29 February 2016

Etc — February 2016

There are a lot of books and films in my five picks for February: I've written at length at some of the great food and drink I enjoyed in Washington and Portland, which leaves my cultural consumption to dissect.

1. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
I was a little disappointed by Kate Atkinson's previous book, Life After Life, which prioritised, I felt, style over substance. But A God in Ruins — a companion piece rather than a sequel — really won me over, with its chronicle of the life of would-be poet turned WWII pilot Teddy Todd and his family. The story skips merrily (and sometimes less merrily) back and forth throughout the 20th century, revisiting familiar scenes to add detail, resonance and understanding. Atkinson's writing is so utterly compelling, warm and funny, and flawed though they may be, you can't help but want to spend more time with her characters. Don't worry if you haven't read Life After Life; you can jump right in to A God in Ruins. I also posted a more detailed review on Good Reads.

2. Hail, Caesar!
The Coen brothers' films are so distinctive — and divisive — that you would think that by now most people would know whether the Coens' new releases are for them. I went to see their latest film, Hail, Caesar!, while I was in Portland and I was amazed by how many people left the cinema within the first 20 minutes. Yes, Hail, Caesar! is unstructured and yes, it is bonkers, but it is also hugely entertaining. Josh Brolin stars as a 1950s movie studio fixer, who is having a terrible day. The studio is producing a film of the story of Christ from the point of view of the Romans and his star, the handsome, charismatic Baird Whitlock (played by the handsome, charismatic George Clooney), is kidnapped by a group of communist writers. There are all sorts of other wacky sub-plots and set pieces too: Scarlett Johansson as a fin-wearing femme fatale; a nautical Channing Tatum dance number; Tilda Swinton as competitive, identical-twin reporters; and many more. Set during the same period as Trumbo, Hail, Caesar! is its opposite, but is great fun.

3. Honest Brunch
It's no secret that I am big fan of Honest Burgers but I hadn't had chance to try out their brunch. A few friends and I went to their Peckham location, which opened late last year, on a rainy Saturday. The Peckham restaurant is a lovely space — an airy dining room with the usual industrial accents, a few minutes' walk from Peckham Rye. We arrived at noon and didn't have to wait for a table but it got pretty busy by the time we left. The only problem with going at brunchtime is that there is even more choice! The Honest Burger is consistently in my top three burgers in London, and deviating from it is always tough. In the end, I compromised and ordered the Brunch Burger (£8.50): a beef patty with smoked bacon, Red Leicester, bubble and squeak, ketchup and rosemary-salt fries. It also comes with garlic mushrooms but I asked for mine to be mushroom-less.



And how was it? Well, the Honest Burger still retains its crown, but as a sinful, flavour-packed, brunchtime meat feast in sandwich form, the Brunch Burger is rather good. The brunch menu also includes bacon sandwiches, full Englishes, avo toasts and many other delights. If you can tear yourself away from the burger menu, that is!

4. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker
I spotted Joël Dicker's sprawling, epic novel, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, in Portland's wonderful Powell's bookstore but I didn't have enough room in my suitcase for the 600-page tome. I picked up a copy from my local library on my return, though, and ploughed through it over the course of a weekend. The premise is complicated and, indeed, the novel itself is enshrouded in many different layers of text and subtext. Essentially, though, it is a novel about writers, writing, ambition and love.

The narrator, Marcus Goldman, is a successful novelist quickly loses sympathy as he describes his narcissistic, ruthless crawl to the top. Marcus is writing a book about his former mentor, the titular Harry Quebert — also a successful novelist — who has been implicated in the death of his much-younger lover — a 15-year-old girl — several decades earlier. Marcus wants to clear Harry's name and to uncover what really happened, although these two propositions may not be compatible.

Dicker's novel is clever and self-aware: the chapter numbers count down instead of up, and as Marcus progresses with his own novel, Harry gives him advice on how to write. It's all very meta and, at times, unnecessarily complicated (I don't mind novels being clever, except when the novelist is being clever for the sake of it, rather than to benefit the plot), but Harry Quebert is a compelling read, which reminded me of the likes of David Mitchell and Julian Barnes. I think I'll probably get even more out of it on a second read.

5. Rams
A reader recommended that I check out the much-acclaimed Icelandic film Rams, but my travelling left me with little time to go to the cinema this month. Happily, though, I caught Grímur Hákonarson's film, which won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes, on Curzon Home Cinema. Rams is as understated as Hail, Caesar! is over-complicated, but although often solemn in tone, Hákonarson's film is also very human and is keenly observed, with an offbeat sense of humour. The story centres on Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson), two brothers who have always lived on neighbouring sheep farms in an isolated Icelandic valley but who, stubborn as their prize rams, haven't talked to each other for over four decades. But when a case of scrapie is detected in one of Kiddi's sheep, threatening the livelihoods of the brothers and all of the other farmers in the valley, everything changes, even the brothers' relationship.

Rams is a concise film, clocking in at just over 1h30, and it is beautifully shot and tightly plotted. If you are looking for the antidote to this year's Oscar contenders, this could be it. And it has only strengthened my resolve to schedule a trip to Iceland this year!

28 February 2016

My Picks for the 2016 Academy Awards

The UK release dates of most of the films nominated for this year's Academy Awards made for a rather compressed pre-Oscar season. But thanks, in part, to two Odeon Screen Unseens and a few preview screenings and press screeners, I was able to work my way through most of the films nominated for the eight categories I usually consider.

Best Picture: The Revenant [8/8 watched]
Best Director: Tom McCarthy, Spotlight [5/5 watched]
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant [5/5 watched]
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight [4/5 watched]
Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Carol [4/5 watched]
Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl [5/5/ watched]
Best Original Screenplay: Inside Out [4/5 watched]
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Martian [5/5 watched]

I liked all of the eight films nominated for Best Picture apart from Mad Max: Fury Road, which was visually impressive but not really my thing. The Martian was easily the most enjoyable film on the list and I was also very impressed by Spotlight and Brooklyn. For me, though, there could be only one winner: The Revenant. By turns, brutal and beautiful, bleak and bold, Alejandro González Iñárritu's film took my breath away and then some. But beneath the slim plot and sparse dialogue lies a powerful story of survival and revenge. Yes, a González Iñárritu film won Best Picture last year too, but The Revenant is a much worthier victor.

For that matter, González Iñárritu deserves his Best Director nomination this year more than last year too. However, I think Tom McCarthy should get the gong for Spotlight, which is, in many ways, a harder sell: there are no gorgeous, sweeping landscapes or primal instincts. What Spotlight does tell is an extremely important story about truth and corruption as several investigative reporters for the Boston Globe uncover a systematic cover-up of child abuse in the Catholic Church. It is often understated and sometimes even funny, but it is always fascinating and utterly compelling. This is no mean feat given how much of the 'action' consists of the reporters going about fairly mundane journalist tasks.

Among the Best Actor nominees, surely Leonardo DiCaprio can be the only victor. You can see how much he earned his nomination in every scene of The Revenant. This might not be DiCaprio's finest ever performance, but he does deserve this Oscar and I'm pretty sure he will get it. The Best Supporting Actor category was harder for me to call: I haven't seen front-runner Sylvester Stallone in Creed and I was torn between very different performances by two different Marks for my pick. In the end, I went for Ruffalo, who shone in Spotlight, but Rylance was also superbly understated in Bridge of Spies. Nor would I be too sad if Tom Hardy won for The Revenant, although I think it's unlikely.

Unless there is a huge upset in the Best Actress category, Brie Larson is very likely to walk away with the Oscar for her widely acclaimed turn in Room. Her performance captures her character's utter loneliness and despair, as well as her joy, seen chiefly in her love for her young son. But it is Cate Blanchett's performance as the titular Carol in Todd Haynes' film who wins my vote: a sophisticated but vulnerable femme fatale. Blanchett is superb, although some of the credit should go to Rooney Mara, who is, oddly, nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She is great in Carol, but my pick in this category is Alicia Vikander, who can seemingly do no wrong. Her character, Gerda, is the real emotional core of The Danish Girl, even if she should really have been nominated for Best Actress; at least this way, she stands a chance at an Oscar, I suppose.

In the writing categories, I would really like for Inside Out and The Martian to win Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively. Inside Out is wonderfully imaginative, clever, funny and touching, while The Martian is pure cinematic entertainment. I suspect that both will lose out, to Spotlight and The Big Short, respectively, especially if the latter two don't pick up any other big awards. Ex Machina, one of my favourite films of 2015, feels like it came out a long time ago, so I'm pleased to see that it still picked up a nod for Best Original Screenplay.

Here are links to all of my reviews for the nominated movies:

The Big ShortBridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Carol, The Danish Girl, Inside OutJoyThe MartianThe Revenant, RoomSpotlight, Steve Jobs and Trumbo.

26 February 2016

The Queen of the Night — Book Review

"'Lilliet Berne' was in every way my greatest performance, but almost no one knew this to be true," explains Lilliet Berne, the tragic heroine of Alexander Chee's sweeping epic novel, The Queen of the Night. She grew up in Minnesota and fled to New York after the death of her family, acquiring the name Lilliet Berne from a New York graveyard. She joins a circus as an equestrienne and then arrives in Paris in the latter half of the 19th century, taking on a series of other 'woman of the night' roles: prostitute, courtesan and, eventually, opera star.


By 1882, she is a celebrity — the Kim Kardashian or Lady Gaga of her day, except that beautiful as her singing voice is, she never speaks in public. The final pinnacle of success for Lilliet is to perform an operatic role written specifically for her. "For a singer, this was your only immortality," she says. "All the rest would pass." But when such an opera is written, it contains secrets about Lilliet's scandalous younger years that only four people could know and that threaten to ruin her. As she tries to work out who is responsible, she delves back into her past looking for clues.

Chee's novel is meticulously researched and richly imagined, in terms of both historical detail and its compelling but flawed central character. Set amid a rapidly changing Paris, caught in the middle of the Franco-Prussian War, it transcends the world of opera, politics and espionage. Really, though, The Queen of the Night is concerned with love and especially fate. In its most literal sense, Lilliet talks of an opera singer's Fach — a German word meaning the range and type of roles a singer is fated to play. Lilliet's Fach is as a Falcon or a tragic soprano. "Nothing to fear from a fate that was already yours, then, except, perhaps, that it would never leave you," she says.

Structured itself like an opera, The Queen of the Night borrows heavily from Greek myth; the marks of Orpheus, Icarus and Narcissus are all there. Complex and imaginative, Chee's novel makes for a fascinating read. It is long and slow-burning at times but well worth persevering.

Disclaimer: The Queen of the Night, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is out now. I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

24 February 2016

12 Specialty Coffee Shops To Visit in Portland, Oregon

Portland feels to me like the coffee centre of the universe and it is home to dozens of specialty coffee shops, cafes and roasters. I didn't manage to visit them all during my three-day visit, but I did pretty well, visiting 12 different coffee shops and cafes, including the five I took in on my Third Wave Coffee tour.



22 February 2016

A Caffeinated Tour of Portland with Third Wave Coffee Tours

One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Portland was to explore its extensive coffee scene. But with only three days in the city, there were only so many coffee spots even a chronic caffeine-addict like me could fit in. A good friend, who travelled to Portland with her husband last year, recommended I check out Third Wave Coffee Tours, founded by "second-generation Oregonian and third-wave coffee lover" Lora Woodruff. Lora and her team of guides run several different three-hour walking tours, which visit various combinations of Portland coffee shops.




18 February 2016

DC Coffee Guide: 2016 Edition

I visited Washington DC this time last year for work but managed to take a couple of days' holiday in order to explore the city and its caffeine scene. Earlier this month, I went back to DC for a conference but I had a day off in the city at the start of my trip, which I spent coffee-shop-hopping, and I was able to find a couple of good cafes near the conference venue in Woodley Park.



16 February 2016

DC Part II: Pandas, Snow and WONDER

I'm back home in London now but after my holiday in Portland, I spent most of last week in Washington DC. As I was working most of the time, I didn't have much time to explore the city, so quite a few of my highlights are food- and drink-related but I managed to fit in a few non-conference-related activities too.



09 February 2016

Portland Day 3: A Gorge-ous Morning on the Columbia River

I awoke on Monday morning to another beautiful, sunny day. I am starting to think that Portland's rainy reputation is a fabrication! I was particularly pleased with the pleasant weather because I was heading on an organised tour to the Columbia River Gorge, a beautiful scenic area with dozens of waterfalls and hiking opportunities along the second widest river in the United States. 



08 February 2016

Portland Day 2: *Lots* More Coffee, Food and Shopping

The sun was shining again in Portland on Saturday morning — a rare phenomenon at this time of year, locals assure me — so I went on another run along the waterfront. My hotel has its own cafe on the ground floor, so I decided to take my breakfast there. The coffee was great: they use Ristretto Roasters coffee and my cortado ($3.50) really hit the spot. I also managed as slice of pumpkin bread, which was delicious.



07 February 2016

Portland Day 1: Coffee, Doughnuts, Tunnels and Light

When I arrived at Portland Airport on Friday night, it was raining heavily, of course. There was a live musician playing in the arrivals hall and he was actually very good. The airport carpet has its own Twitter handle and a sign politely reminds travellers that they are not permitted to take recreational marijuana on flights out of Portland. On MAX (Portland's light rail system) into the city centre, I was asked two sign two petitions.



06 February 2016

DC Part I: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Washington

After a hectic January, I had more than earned a few days off ahead of a work trip toWashington DC. I've wanted to go to Portland for some time (the coffee mother ship has been calling me home) and although this wasn't the most convenient way to do it — or the best time of year — I decided to seize the opportunity. First, though, I had 24 hours in DC before my internal flight to Portland.




03 February 2016

"I'm Not Willing To Lose It All but I Am Willing To Risk It All" — Trumbo Review

There are no heroes or villains in this story, just victims, explains Hollywood screenwriter Dalston Trumbo towards the end of Jay Roach's biopic, Trumbo. Trumbo, like many others in the industry and beyond, was blacklisted during the 1940s and 1950s for his political beliefs.

Indeed, brave, charismatic and clever as Trumbo, portrayed here by Bryan Cranston, is shown to be, he doesn't make an especially likeable hero at times: he is often selfish, vain and bullying. He is, however, a remarkable character and Cranston really deserves his Oscar nod for the role. Trumbo itself is sharp and engrossing, with sparkling dialogue and a lot more humour than I was expecting, although perhaps I should have checked out Roach's back catalogue.

Roach's film opens in 1947 as Trumbo and a number of other writers and directors — soon dubbed the Hollywood Ten — come under suspicion for their association with the Communist Party. Trumbo, their de facto leader, calls for his colleagues to refuse to testify when questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Some, including Trumbo, are jailed and all are blacklisted, unable to find work in Hollywood, thanks in part to campaigns by actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (played by a wonderfully bitchy Helen Mirren), producer Buddy Ross (Roger Bart) and John Wayne (David James Elliott).

Trumbo follows its titular star over the next two decades as he tries to raise awareness of the absurdness of the blacklist and to do what he loves best — writing. The latter proves quite challenging, until he realises that he can sell scripts to studios under a pseudonym. He even sets up a sort of pyramid scheme of writing and editing — studio boss Frank King (John Goodman) assigns Trumbo various scripts to write, he farms them out to his fellow blacklisted writers and then edits the scripts to ensure that they are of a suitable standard.

But as Hopper and her cronies hear rumours of this move, it is clear that they won't go down without a fight. And Trumbo has other things to worry about: for one thing, his friend Arlen Hird (an amalgamation of several writers, played by Louis C. K.) is struggling with cancer and sometimes questions the purity of Trumbo's motives. Meanwhile, Trumbo's wife Cleo (a beleaguered Diane Lane) and three children, who are all coerced into helping to run the 'family business' of script production and delivery, have to put up with an increasingly irascible and thoughtless husband and father. The loving father and doting husband of the late 1940s seems to have long since disappeared.

I knew embarrassingly little about Trumbo and the Hollywood blacklist before I saw Trumbo, and Roach's film tells a fascinating story about a very dark period of American history. Cranston is terrific in the central role; his Trumbo is outspoken, clever, bossy and bold. Mirren too puts in a great performance — her eyebrows alone deserve a Oscar nomination — but Roach has assembled a talented ensemble cast. John McNamara's script, adapted from Bruce Cook's biography of Trumbo, is as adept as the script of a film about screenwriters ought to be: it is witty, engaging and hugely entertaining. Listen out for the inevitable but well-played Spartacus gag. Trumbo has a lot in common with Argoincluding cast members Cranston and Goodman; both examine the interface of Hollywood and politics, and both are great movies for movie-lovers.

02 February 2016

Etc — January 2016

I have decided to rename my monthly round-up posts "Etc" going forwards as I often found that the five things I included weren't necessarily my favourite things of the month — those tend to get their own posts — as much as things I've enjoyed but to which I hadn't dedicated a whole blog post. Here are my five picks for January:

1. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
I first came across Choderlos de Laclos's novel in the form of Cruel Intentions, which transports the story of scheming, cruelty and betrayal in 18th century Paris to the Upper East Side of Manhattan with spoiled, rich teenagers in the central roles; I was 16, OK... Cruel Intentions is actually a decent film, and it plays out like a scene-by-scene remake of Christopher Hampton's stage adaptation of the original novel. Although I've since seen the Stephen Frears film based on Hampton's script, I had yet to see Hampton's work on the stage.



By the time I realised that the Donmar Warehouse was putting on Les Liaisons Dangereuses with Dominic West and Janet McTeer in the central roles, it was already sold out. It still is and is only on for another two weeks, but it's worth giving the returns queue a go if you are keen to see the production — I tried one Saturday afternoon, and just missed out (there were four tickets and I was fifth in the queue), but kept checking back on the Donmar website and eventually got lucky.

It was definitely worth the hassle: although West still wasn't quite word perfect, he oozes charisma and stage presence, showing a greater depth of emotion in the denouement, and McTeer is brilliantly wicked as the Marquise de Mertueil — perhaps as good as Glenn Close in the Frears film. It was also nice to see Una Stubbs and Edward 'London Spy' Holcroft in supporting roles.

2. Randall & Aubin
I've walked past seafood restaurant Randall & Aubin, located on Soho's Brewer Street, so many times, but never got around to eating there. They don't take bookings on Saturdays or weekday evenings, but that is hardly usual these days. We went a few weeks ago for a family lunch on a sunny Saturday and what a feast it was. We shared some oysters, and then I had some delicious scallops with pancetta to start, followed by roast cod on pea mash (if you aren't in the mood for fish, there are plenty of meat options too). I definitely didn't have room for pudding but couldn't resist the cheesecake with salted caramel ice cream and didn't regret my decision. The staff were friendly and efficient, and the music was perfectly in keeping with the giant disco ball that hangs in the centre of the small dining room. Randall & Aubin has great food and great ambiance.


3. Oldboy
I've been wanting to watch the classic Korean revenge movie for years — long before the ill-advised American remake surfaced in 2013 — and happily, it popped up on Netflix recently. In Oldboy, a man (Min-sik Choi) is abducted in the middle of the night and kept in a shabby, furnished room for 15 years before he is freed without any knowledge of who kept him captive or why. The rest of the movie follows his efforts to try to find out — and to seek revenge on whoever did this to him. Yes, it's dark and often violent, but Chan-wook Park's film is a masterclass in uncomfortable tension and vengeance. It's clever, it's knowing and it's laced with dark humour. If you haven't already seen it already, I would highly recommend it — it would even make a nice double-bill with The Revenant.

4. Missing Pieces by Heather Gudenkauf
How well can we ever really know another person? This is the question Sarah Quinlan is forced to ask in Heather Gudenkauf’s new novel Missing Pieces. Sarah and her husband Jack have been married for 20 years and have a happy life in Montana with their college-age twin daughters. But when an early-morning phone call brings the couple back to Jack’s Iowa hometown, Sarah is forced to confront a battery of family secrets from Jack’s past. Jack clams up, forcing Sarah to don her former reporter’s cap as she looks into the brutal and technically unsolved murder of Jack’s mother in the family home some 30 years earlier and tries to work out if it links to a present-day murder.

Missing Pieces is a real page-turner — I read the book in a single sitting, racing through to solve the mystery. Gudenkauf’s protagonist Sarah is sympathetic and relatable as the sudden ‘outsider’ among her husband’s hot-headed and secretive family, but seemed a little too slow to pick up on the many well-sign-posted clues to be fully convincing as a former ‘hard news reporter’. There are plenty of red herrings too and a bounty of suspects, which means that even if you think you have identified the culprit, it is hard to be fully certain until the novel’s climax. 

It’s a fun and smart mystery, but Missing Pieces falls short when it comes to the relationship between Sarah and Jack, which feels two dimensional and poorly sketched. The circumstances of the story have introduced distance to their marriage, of course, but as we have never seen them any other way, it’s hard too care too much what happens to them.

Disclaimer: I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

5. Lumiere London
For four nights in mid-January, a festival of light-based art installations took over central London. Lumiere London is over now, but it's possible that the Lumiere festival will return in the future, either to London or elsewhere in the country, so it's worth keeping an eye out on the website. King's Cross, where I work, was one of the main hubs of the festival, and I went to check out some of the installations. Among my favourites were Diver, which was set up next to the King's Cross Pond, and Litre of Light, a tunnel made from water bottles illuminated in rainbow-coloured lights.



On Saturday, I was in the West End anyway and so decided to stay to look at some of the Regent Street installations too. Janet Echelman's 1.8 London — a fishing-net-inspired sculpture that hung over Oxford Circus, rippling in an ethereal way, and gradually changing colour (the lighting was inspired by the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011, which shortened the day by 1.8 microseconds).



Leicester Square was filled with a Garden of Light, and the Trafalgar Square fountain was turned into Plastic Islands. Although I had to battle huge crowds, I really enjoyed both evenings, which took me back to my annual childhood visits to the Walsall Illuminations with my family.



01 February 2016

Two Tales of the City — Why We Came to the City Review

Like The Iliad, Kristopher Jansma’s new novel Why We Came to the City begins in media res. Homer’s work, and its sort-of-sequel, The Odyssey, feature a lot in the novel, both in direct references and in the structure of the novel, which is divided into two halves. The first half opens with a prologue in which an as yet unknown ‘we’ explain their reasons for coming to the city, the city, in this case, being New York (not Troy). But the prologue could almost be authored by any millennial New Yorker and it is only when the novel proper begins that we begin to understand who the titular ‘we’ are, why they came to the city and why they stayed.

Jansma’s novel tells the story of four twenty-somethings who met in Ithaca (named for Odysseus's own home) and have been trying to carve out lives in New York ever since. As the story begins, they arrive at an art gallery's holiday party in a fancy hotel where the cocktails are named for poems (“‘The Wasteland is pretty good,’ the bartender offered. ‘Got tea-infused bourbon in it.’”). Irene is an artist who also works as an assistant at the gallery, Sara — the 'mother' of the group is an editor, George — Sara's boyfriend — an astrophysicist, and Jacob a poet/hospital orderly. They are a close-knit group with few other good friends, but at the party, Irene meets William, a quiet classics major turned investment banker who attended Cornell with the others and who always envied their closeness. After a drunken night involving a hot tub, William is gradually accepted into the inner circle.

But before we can begin to get to know the friends properly, a routine doctor’s appointment turns into the start of a long and nightmarish journey as Irene is diagnosed with a rare cancer. Suddenly, everything the friends loved about the city and their struggles with their jobs, apartments and love lives become trivial as they rally to support their friend. Irene is at the centre of the novel, but the other characters all make various odysseys too — some literal journeys, others journeys of discovery as they try to find out who they really are and whom their loved ones are.

Why We Came to the City is keenly observed, moving and extremely engaging. New York City is arguably the main character, but the story of Irene and her four friends is rich, complex and beautifully written. At times, it is painful to read: the descriptions of Irene’s declining health are incredibly visceral (“Her skin had turned so white and bloodless that it no longer blended with her makeup. She looked like someone wearing an Irene mask made in a knock-off factory.”), and parts are heartbreaking, although never maudlin. That isn't to say that there aren't lighter moments, such as the Borders clerk who asks for Homer’s last name when Jacob is looking for a copy of The Odyssey and wonders if he means Homer Simpson.

The book reminded me a little of Claire Messud's excellent The Emperor's Children, and there are also some similarities to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life — my favourite book of 2015. Both examine the relationship between four college friends who have made New York their home and who, variously, have tragedy buried in their past — and their future. Jansma’s work is more focused and, despite its constant references to ancient Greek epic poetry, is less epic in scope, although its themes of of love, identity, creativity and loyalty are ambitious and well depicted. Why We Came to the City ended exactly where it should have done, but still left me wanting more, just as a great novel should.

Disclaimer: Why We Came to the City will be published by Penguin/Viking on 16 February 2016. I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.