The Irish Times , 4 September , p. The Sound Mirror starts on such a high note that one wonders how the author will ever manage to sustain it. Against all the odds, Heidi James rises to the challenge, parlaying this expository gambit into an exhilarating, heart-rending work that is full of surprises. The main motif, crudely put, is the past in the present; the collective in the individual. Quite an achievement. The pre-emptive incipit notwithstanding, James is a mistress of suspense.
Chapters alternate between the three women β Claire, Tamara, and Ada β whose destinies are limned from the second World War to the present day. Time is out of joint in this hauntological saga, and not only because of the parallel lives and abrupt flashbacks. The chapters devoted to this character are narrated by a Greek-style chorus composed of all her female ancestors.
In the Phaedrus , Socrates argues that the realm of poetry can only be accessed through the madness of the Muses. A bad one. The code has been perverted. Like Tamara, she is ventriloquised. Her cockney patois that remains just on the right side of Dick Van Dyke will prompt her daughter to belittle her own offspring for dropping her aitches.
Language is also a means of reinvention. Throughout their lives, all three women try out different versions of themselves, but are borne back ceaselessly into the traumas of the past. James should be commended for not writing the pain away.
My tribute to the late Marc Zermati in the Guardian , 17 June Marc Zermati, who died of a heart attack on Saturday at the age of 74, was a true underground legend: a national treasure France had never heard of and probably did not deserve.
