Burntcoat

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Hall started writing this novel when the UK went into lockdown in March 2020, and I love the hazy atmosphere of this melancholic, lyrical novel about love and illness. But, as one would expect, the novel keeps circling around those (literally and figuratively) feverish months. I’ve been wanting to read this all year, but my mixed reaction to The Fell by Sarah Moss made me think it might be too soon for a pandemic related book. Edith is a sculptor (and having been one myself, once, it was wonderful to read about making art which rang true), and lives in Burntcoat, the building where she has a huge studio to create her monumental pieces, and apartment above.

I think the labelling of this book as a pandemic novel does it something of a disservice as it’s so much broader than that description suggests. She is an artist of renown and Burntcoat is her huge studio where she lives, works and will ultimately die. Edith’s ground-breaking creations find a parallel in the (very explicit) sex scenes, which hungrily, almost desperately, challenge the impending siege of the virus. Love, family, coping with illness and disability, humanity particularly in the face of calamity and disruption, art, memory and loss are some of the many themes here.The parts that resonated most with me were about Edith's art - and the process of her sculpting with burnt wood. Sarah Hall's 6th novel, Burntcoat, is a beautifully written story of artistic creation, love (and lust), and the aftermath of medical trama both personal (a severe stroke) and societal (a Covid-like epidemic). Certainly not because of the theme of coping as a child with a mother who, after a stroke, develops a rather brutal way of dealing with things, without compromises. Just as with other dystopian novels I’ve read, this one got under my skin and the realism left a huge mark on me.

The descriptions of dealing with a dying victim without any medical assistance are vivid and disturbing. Having lived through a worse-than-COVID pandemic, Edith’s main focus while recounting her tale is the days of the virus and its aftermath, but her narrative encompasses her formative years as well.Hall’s fictional version isn’t the virus or the lockdown we’ve had, and there’s a danger that we could fall further into our current impasses if we give in to the desire to fantasise apocalypse. It's taut and intense, reflective and passionate, this is a book about connection and transformation. Under the charred coat, the true grain was revealed, in dark vectors and knots, patterns so suggestive they became stories. As usual, Hall doesn’t shirk from making broader political points here: Edith’s account of events parallels England’s handling of Covid although elements are exaggerated for maximum effect. I don’t think Burntcoat is intended primarily as a pandemic novel – it may feature one and was written during one, but it is a novel not a documentary.

Almost everyone Edith encounters has a complicated story of migration in their past, not least Halit, whose family were ethnic Turks who fled persecution in Bulgaria, but you can’t help wonder if dislocation is merely a symptom of the novel’s slash-and-burn approach to those relationships, most starkly felt in the deus ex machina impact of the virus. Edith’s mother was a popular novelist before her stroke (and it isn’t until the future scenes that her books will be reassessed as “works of merit”, the “Gothic label stripped off like cheap varnish”; a dismissive term that had been “used for women whose work the establishment enjoys but doesn’t respect” as only “men are the existentialists”.Not only is Edith a carrier, she is also finalising a national memorial for the dead, an installation set to endure long after her death. As life outside changes irreparably, inside Burntcoat Edith and Halit find themselves changed as well: by the histories and responsibilities each carries and bears, by the fears and dangers of the world outside, and by the progressions of their new relationship. The story of two new lovers confined, it is a sublime and scorching experience, an elegy burning with resistance, which no reader will forget. I'm deliberately keeping this review short because I think each reader deserves to experience the trajectory of the story for themselves.