The Mountain In My Shoe – Louise Beech, Orenda Books, July 2016
An extraordinary tale of a young woman in a difficult marriage and her connection with a looked-after boy with troubles of his own, The Mountain in my Shoe is both a beautifully-written parable of loneliness and modern life, and an astutely-observed psychological thriller.
First and foremost, Louise Beech has a remarkable way with words. Every description is both precise and evocative, from the cold ominous depths of the Humber, to the everyday gesture with something more significant hovering inside it. A house becomes a prison; its trees sentinels; a taxi is a refuge; a book is a life. Although shifting between narrators and (occasionally, by way of the character history that forms the backbone of the novel) between timeframes, there is nothing “difficult” about The Mountain in my Shoe; indeed, the only confusion the reader feels is that of the characters as they try to establish what is happening to them on one Hull night that will change their lives forever.
And what characters! No one is wasted; no one is “incidental”, every last one drawn to perfection and beyond, with hints, gestures and telltale phrases. Pages of exposition aren’t necessary when a sentence or two serves to bring these people to life, from Bernadette and Conor, the central protagonists, all the way to the taxi driver and the young friend and the mysterious woman on the other end of the phone. Each has their own individual voice, right down to the social workers and other figures who we never really see at all, but still feel we know well enough to spot in a café or on a street corner and strike up a conversation. There is a plot, of course; it’s a brilliant plot, both surprising and somehow, when it all comes out, inevitable, but it’s not the plot that will stick in my mind. It’s those people, it’s Conor and Bernadette, Anne, Frances and Richard. It’s Sophie, Mark, Bob Fracklehurst. It’s people whose names I won’t forget, whose successes and failures I’ve felt as my own, whose lives seem so real you almost expect them to burst from the page.
The Mountain in my Shoe is a remarkable achievement from a remarkable writer. I don’t know what they’re putting in the water up there in Hull, but the 2016 City of Culture is turning into the heart of the literary world.