Burntcoat

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The novavirus is only one means of several which Sarah Hall uses to explore the themes of trauma and loss and resilience. Under the charred coat, the true grain was revealed, in dark vectors and knots, patterns so suggestive they became stories. She isolates herself in her immense studio, known as Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. The government responds with more authoritarianism: the military patrol the streets, curfews are introduced for all.

This is a virus that kills everyone it infects; people don’t usually survive in remission for as long as she has. The Witch won a major prize which funded her acquisition of Burntcoat, a huge abandoned building that she turns into her residence and studio (the building actually based on the former Eastern Electricity building in Norwich: https://www. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Military curfews are introduced as society collapses in Burntcoat. I can't say that any of it didn't work - but I wish it had been longer, and in a way, I wish it had been chronological. With those she has loved the most now dead, Edith turns to the virus or to death itself as a lover once illness has overtaken her; the “you” of the dead Halit and the “you” of death become hard to disentangle.Throughout the book, Edith achingly remembers the stories—stories from her unconventional childhood, stories of past abusive loves, stories of her creation of a masterwork of art—with a special emphasis on how and why we live and create in unprecedented times. It is an intimate and vital examination of how and why we create--make art, form relationships, build a life--and an urgent exploration of an unprecedented crisis, the repercussions of which are still years in the learning. I think I would have benefitted from it as I found the novel rather difficult to pin down – as if it kept changing shape! It's taut and intense, reflective and passionate, this is a book about connection and transformation. Hall highlights instantly recognisable features through the scenes witnessed by Edith: aggressive racism; rampant individualism and hoarding; street protests and deniers; a collapsing health system presided over by a tottering, ineffectual government, marked by its indecision and cronyism.

They are all one-of-a-kind shades that won't reappear, so if you see something you love grab it while you can. Like Sarah Moss’s The Fell, this is first and foremost a pandemic novel, but it’s edgier, somehow more organic and yet slicker than Moss’s vision of post-Covid society – genteel in comparison to Hall’s. her artistic career, including time spent in Japan which has fused her with something of an East-Asian philosophy of life as well as inspiring her work, including a visit to the real-life island of Teshima and its art museum designed by Ryue Nishizawa; https://www. We also learn of Edith’s training as an artist, a process which takes her to Japan to learn the highly skilled process of ‘shou sugi ban’, a technique for charring cedar, rendering it waterproof. She is an artist of renown and Burntcoat is her huge studio where she lives, works and will ultimately die.

Just like her narrator Edith, in Burntcoat Sarah Hall has given us a poetic tribute to the all those who have suffered losses during Covid. It’s perhaps telling, too, that the pandemic we actually have doesn’t seem sufficiently dire to sate the demands of Hall’s narrative logic, even if you suspect she fully recognises the ticklishness of that position. I often feel the same when I read other bloggers’ reviews…’hmm, maybe not for me personally, but definitely something I would recommend to others’.