Jo Hamya

Interesting debut novel. Riffing off Virginia Woolf's A Room one's Own, but suggesting how that theory is failing the current middle class generation. A room of one's own is unlikely to be the answer in and of itself.

The skeleton of the narrators three rooms of accommodation over a year: in Oxford (doing a short junior academic post), in London (a 'per day' paid job at a shiny magazine, and heading back to her parents house in rural suburbia where the room was never previously hers, and she show more has no job to go to.

Hamya picks up and turns the political pebbles of the time, including Brexit, the success of the Tories at the polls, wealthy protestors, the low pay of workers across the lower and mid classes.

There is a lot of mundanity observed. And a flat sense of powerlessness in many respects.

The fourth room, and maybe the predominant one, is the one carried in the narrators hand. That oblong light box which bleeds into the world noise to be viewed if not always digested, relevant, true, but increasingly addictive.

A deft debut. I shall certainly watch for her work going forward. show less

The Hypocrite was a topic of the New York Times book of view podcast, so peaked my interest when I heard of the premise. In the novel, a 27-year-old playwright by the name of Sophia has written a screenplay adopted to a stage presentation, one that’s going to be live streamed as well. Her father, a well-known sixtyish author of another generation, a bit of a misogynist, is anxious to come see his daughter’s play. He’s curious when someone says, “It’s very generous of him to show more come.” When the play begins the scenery reminds him of an extended vacation he took with his daughter 10 years ago on an island off of Sicily, where she helped him with his new novel, he dictating while she typed. When the play begins with the sound of an orgasm, and a discarded Paisley shirt that looks very much like his favorite, her father begins to realize that this play is about him. So that’s the set up, and it’s a good one.

Also interesting is that while this matinee is going on, Sophia is having lunch with her mother who it turns out had recently gone back to her ex-husband to help him through the pandemic, clean up after him, make him food, etc. She proceeds to drink her way through the lunch, the response of someone that has to be the buffer between these two artists. A subplot in the narrative reverts back to that vacation 10 years ago and what Sophia experienced sharing a house with a man who keeps bringing back strange women, and sets her up with an unpleasant dating experience.

The author writes well and does a masterful job with the interplay of the various scenes, all seemingly occurring at once. I’d be interested in reading her first novel and would look forward to seeing her future work. The New York Times podcast would be a recommended follow up to the reading as they discuss the more philosophical aspects of conversing through art and generational tropes.

Lines:

In a room full of cubicles, fake ficus plants on tiny desks are getting watered by garbage language conversations about theatre memberships and arts funding: evergreen to the tune of sustain the arts to sustain the future spoken by tired employees’ wilting mouths.

Sophia watches the impatience on her mother’s face shift slowly to boredom and thinks about something her father once said, that: the only thing missing from your mother’s otherwise perfect face is a beak. It’s a terrible sentence, made more terrible by the fact that he said it, and now, in moments like this, it will always live in her head.

Determined to give Sophia a thoughtful, and therefore original, ovation of her work, he avoids summaries of the show. He has come to it blind: he would like to preserve the chance of being pleasantly bowled over by his daughter’s talent.

This is a talent she has. By nothing more than setting down her bread and saying, Well? Sophia’s mother has made her daughter wish for an embolism.

Every-thing was sound, sound – the tide’s white noise rasping closer, then withdrawn, the maracas of pebbles being disturbed.

In fact, he asked me to agree that it was possible to feel unhappy or uncomfortable with a scenario despite having agreed to the conditions that enabled it.

We as people are so stupidly dull. There is never anything to stop our thoughts from destroying the beauty of something we fear may overwhelm us.

It is important for her, he knows, to tend to his wrongs. Often, he lets her. It helps her feel better. She hangs them like wet laundry on his bones. When they dry, she takes them down and replaces them with others. It is never very long before she has cycled through to the original load.

Ten years ago, you upset your daughter by writing a book she didn’t like. Ten years later she has upset you by writing a play you don’t like. And your solution to all of this now is to write another book. Yes? show less

I wish I had more empathy for the disaffected character of this book, blurbed enthusiastically by [a:Olivia Laing|4463840|Olivia Laing|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1625056139p2/4463840.jpg] and [a:Claire-Louise Bennett|6431820|Claire-Louise Bennett|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], two favorite authors of mine. The references to [a:Virginia Woolf|6765|Virginia Woolf|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1419596619p2/6765.jpg]'s show more [b:A Room of One's Own|18521|A Room of One's Own|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327883012l/18521._SY75_.jpg|1315615] were of interest, but all the admiration I have for the humor and gumption of Woolf's narrator is missing in this woman who seems so resigned to her lot in life. Am I just one of those fogeys who lived and worked from age eighteen, lived independently, and don't see why she can't get it together? Perhaps. The writing is good, pms so resigned to her lot in life. Am I just one of those fogeys who lived and worked from age eighteen, lived independently, and don't see why she can't get it together? Perhaps. The writing is good, particularly the part near the end on the Turners at the Tate. show less

A debutante playwright invites her father to a play she wrote without telling him what it’s about. As he watches the play he slowly realizes that it’s about a summer she spent with him 10 years before when she was 17. His memories of the summer are much different than hers. This is a very layered portrayal of family disfunction. Who is the hypocrite?