Poem of the week: Salt, Snow, Earth by Naomi Foyle
The relentless cycle of human violence plays out as a brutal symbolic game
Salt, Snow, Earth
Salt bites Snow.
Snow slaps Earth.
Earth pounds Salt.
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Father Figure by Emma Forrest review – a slippery tale of teenage obsession
Bristling with sexual, political and emotional angst, this finely tuned coming-of-age tale thrives on the grey areas of adolescence
Father Figure opens with a memory of murders, bought and paid for; then skips briskly to scholarship girl Gail, who is on the verge of being expelled from her expensive London academy for writing a scandalous essay. The connection between death and day school is new girl Agata, the daughter of notoriously corrupt East End businessman Ezra Levy.
Ezra, a man who takes phone calls from Putin, buys football clubs and has had people killed, wants more for Agata than he had when young. Her anorexia is killing her, and he, “fleshy and stupid”, can’t stop it. Gail sets her sights on Ezra: part compulsion, part seduction, an adolescent power game taken to dangerous conclusions.
The Parallel Path by Jenn Ashworth review – a soul-searching walk across England
Forget the Salt Path – this writer’s introspective journey provides genuine food for thought
When Jenn Ashworth set out on Alfred Wainwright’s 192-mile coast-to-coast walk, from St Bees in the west to Robin Hood’s Bay in the east, she was stepping out of character. Her daily circular walks round Lancaster during lockdown were no real preparation, and a brief orienteering course was no guarantee that she wouldn’t get lost. She wasn’t walking for charity or running away from a marriage or, like the fell runner who’d done the route in 39 hours, trying to break any record. A homebody “inclined to slowness”, she was a 40-year-old novelist, professor and mother of two going off on her own for two-and-a-half weeks for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate.
Not that there weren’t contributory factors. Lockdown had left her with post-Covid cabin fever, itchy to be elsewhere after the long months of caring for her family and students (“a one-woman battle against entropy”). She also knew that at every pub and guest house she’d booked en route supportive letters would be waiting from her terminally ill but brilliantly animated friend Clive. Most importantly, although her walking wouldn’t be solitary, since she couldn’t avoid bumping into other (potentially annoying) hikers, she’d be “the sole owner of my own skin again”.
