Tag: Keith Ridgway

A Shock by Keith Ridgway

Sara CrowleyLeave a comment

A Shock is Keith Ridgway’s latest (not-exactly-a) novel (not-exactly-a-short-story-collection). In nine chapters his London based characters pop up in each other’s lives, sometimes peripherally, sometimes centrally, and the sections layer and themes build and it feels like both traditional and new storytelling. At the heart of Ridgway’s writing is his astonishing skill writing people who breathe on the pages. He digs beneath surfaces and reveals the interesting quirky parts of being human we all have. His dialogue is naturalistic, full of things unsaid, pauses and tangents. He takes a typical setting – the pub – and conjures it all so vividly, the boring mate, the pub weirdo, a shift in mood. People in the pub tell each other tales which echo those in A Shock. One story they make up cannot be told. “It untells itself.” Which is exactly the kind of headfuck A Shock offers.


There’s a wonderfully awkward exploration of racism within a long-standing friendship, the loneliness and sadness of a widow, gay sex and drugs, rented flats, and more rodents than I’m comfortable with. People go missing or are lost or hidden. The reader is gifted an intimate view and it’s all superb.
“It was a blank-sky day, all of London suspended in a bowl of hot milk, her headache spooning through the sludge of her brain, her eyes almost closed, a taste in her mouth of the metal in the air and the shit in the metal and the blood in the shit.” I mean, how fucking amazing is that?

The beginning story is of a widow listening to a party next door, the last story is from the party itself. There are loops and circles and echoes throughout this intriguing book. It’s a witty and smart and human and dazzling read and I think Ridgway is a rare genius. This is storytelling to be excited by. Such a treat to read something so cleverly crafted that it immediately demands to be reread and paid attention to.

Not really a best of the year with salt

Sara Crowley5 Comments

This is not really one of those end of year best lists as it relies solely upon my rubbish ability to recall what I have watched, read, listened to and thought for a whole year. So, instead I’ll call it a “thing” – tada:

Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn and Child is my most memorable read of 2012. My review is here and I love that despite reading it in August I am still thinking about it in January.

Honourable mentions to Kerry Hudson’s Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma which fair fizzes off the page, and Jenni Fagan’s superb The Panopticon (review here).

2012 began with me adoring Nicki Minaj. She seemed poised to be the smartest, coolest rapper/singer/hip-hopper in the universe. But then… that didn’t happen.

I don’t know what I did before Spotify, making my own playlists makes me so damn happy. I surprised myself by listening to my “Beans. Cheese. Toast.” playlist far more than “Hip Hop Happiness” or “Goodness”. Turns out you can’t beat damn fine pop. I did really like Mark Lanegan’s “Blues Funeral” – it sounded proper. And I rediscovered my love of Pearl Jam.

Telly was Elementary, The Mentalist, Chicago Fire, Home and Away and Neighbours (always) and my absolute fave – Sons of Anarchy. Edit – Oh, and Homeland of course. I am ever so slightly obsessed  with how awesome Clare Dane’s nose is.

I took these snaps on New Years Day when I went for a walk on Littlehampton Beach – it was a day bright with possibility and made me feel entirely content. I wish you all a wonderful 2013.

Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway

Sara Crowley2 Comments

I picked up a copy of “Hawthorn and Child” a while back, when I hadn’t heard of Keith Ridgway. Blurbs on the back mentioned Eggers, Nicholson, Murakami, Eugenides, and it’s published by Granta, so seemed well worth a go. Now I can barely recall a time when the name Ridgway was unknown to me. There’ve been a lot of online mentions of this novel-in-stories. John Self championed it, people I think are super smart have raved about it (@seventydys I’m looking at you), and there are a fair few reviews around (I try not to read reviews when I’m planning to write one of my own). I’ve looked Ridgway up online and come across some scorchingly good blogs of his, including this:
‘Writing is running full tilt at a closed door with your shoulder down. And each time you write it’s another hit. And you hope each time that this time you will break though, into that part of yourself where all the skill is, where everything will be within reach, where it will all be easy. And you just keep on rushing the door. And you just end up with the skin gone purple and a shard of bone slicing a muscle, and you’re fucked. You are fucked by a collar bone trauma and the door is so solid that you are looking at the wall and you are starting to think that you might have been better a little to the right or the left, or that the thing that you think is a door is not a door at all and you are not supposed to go through it, it is a cliff and you are supposed to climb it. And you think, at your age, why don’t I try the handle? But it’s locked. Of course it’s locked. You’re sure you must have checked. At the start. At the beginning. Of all this.  And you think, over your grey tea and your cold toast, maybe I should ask for a key.
Writing is running full tilt at a closed door with your shoulder down. And each time you write it’s another hit. And you hope each time that this time you will break though, into that part of yourself where all the skill is, where everything will be within reach, where it will all be easy. And you just keep on rushing the door. And you just end up with the skin gone purple and a shard of bone slicing a muscle, and you’re fucked. You are fucked by a collar bone trauma and the door is so solid that you are looking at the wall and you are starting to think that you might have been better a little to the right or the left, or that the thing that you think is a door is not a door at all and you are not supposed to go through it, it is a cliff and you are supposed to climb it. And you think, at your age, why don’t I try the handle? But it’s locked. Of course it’s locked. You’re sure you must have checked. At the start. At the beginning. Of all this.  And you think, over your grey tea and your cold toast, maybe I should ask for a key.”
It’s not taken long for me to become a fan. His words resonate and sing with truth. 
“Hawthorn and Child” are “mid-ranking detectives” introduced to us in the first story while they investigate the shooting of a young man who recalls only, “A car. Shot me.” 
The ensuing investigation sets the tone for the rest of the book. The detectives question witnesses, talk together, wait in the hospital. A witness says the victim told him the car was “ochre” although Hawthorn and Child think he may have said, “old car.” As is often the case in life, there is no neat wrapping up of the mystery, no resolution. 
It’s a slippery read. The prose is so clear and natural, it flows beautifully, and yet there are gaps, missing information. Each story is linked, sometimes just by a glimpse of one of the recurrent characters. (As well as Hawthorn and Child, the criminal, Mishazzo recurs. He weaves in and out of the narrative; a shadowy danger.)
It’s a contradictory text, at once engaging and puzzling. There’s confusion and precision as  what is unsaid, the silences, the gaps, the missing pieces of information, add together to form a whole. And that whole becomes a curiously realistic portrayal of London, crime, and daily realities. There’s a mash up of sex and policing, there’s violence, and death. Yet it’s the quiet moments, the spaces between, that count most.

Something mentioned in one story reappears as the centre of another, Hawthorn and Child are not the focus. It’s a tough book to review – I find the idea of it being a detective novel quite misleading, and yet, it is ostensibly about police work. It’s an easy read because the quality of the story telling is so good, and yet it is not simple.

For me the stand out story is “Rothko Eggs”. It’s a pitch-perfect tale of a young girl and her relationships. From the misfire of the title (you’ll have to read to find out) to the gaps between her and her boyfriend, it’s skilfully done and I was left wondering how the fuck Ridgway was able to convey so much.

“He said nothing. She looked at him.
He was quiet. He had drifted off somewhere.”
It’s an excellent book.