John Burnside is the author of an impressive bookshelf of elegant novels and slim, precise volumes of poetry, and like all prolific writers he has certain repeated themes. Nicely, repetition is one of his themes. He writes of the tricks of memory, and the impossibility of perfectly recalling the past. He writes of absent fathers, often, and how they are remembered by their children. His poems sound like hymns, or the blues. ‘Before the songs I sang there were the songs/ they came from,’ begins his poem ‘Death Room Blues’, and ends: ‘I’m half convinced that childhood never happened.’ Burnside’s new novel Ashland & Vine is a story about telling old stories again, and never quite settling the truth of a childhood long past.
In summary, it sounds a little pretentious. A student called Kate is having a moderately unhappy, druggy relationship with a film-maker in a fictional American college town called Scarsville.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in