An attentive novel about a young couple negotiating grief and their conflicting views about their future
Niven Govinden's novel was originally issued in electronic form, but made it on to paper as a result of appearing on the 2013 Fiction Uncovered list. Amal and his wife Claudia are feeling raw from a recent miscarriage and now face the motorway journey to her parents, who have just blown more than a grand on fancy invitations to the baby shower. It's a long, stressful drive as Claudia is approaching the latter end of her 30s and feels conception to be a biological imperative, while Amal contemplates the absence of passion in a partnership so pragmatic they discussed pension plans on their first date. Govinden captures the bewilderment of a couple surprised at the extent of their grief: "Something which is not yet a baby but more than a cluster of cells ... how does ten centimetres of cell and pliable bone get to do that?" And there's a fine scene in which Amal finally flips over the stale scones in a tea shop in Battle. But the unremitting focus on the couple's self-absorption makes the novel's range feel a little narrow: it's attentively done but not necessarily worth chopping down trees for.
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
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