She writes: ‘You shout for me in the middle of the night and when I come running you ask what I’m doing there. Johnson relays, in quite stark prose, the effects of this upon both herself and Gretel. When she is introduced into the novel in the present day, Sarah is suffering decline, and a loss of memory. However, things are turned on their head when she receives information from a hospital which ‘interrupts Gretel’s isolation and throws up questions from long ago.’ Having no knowledge whatsoever of where her mother is, she regularly phones around the local hospitals and morgues to try and locate her. Whilst they were close when Gretel was small, they are now estranged. Whilst the prose and Gretel’s thoughts are deeply involved in language and the power of words, much of the story proper revolves around her relationship with her mother, Sarah. Protagonist Gretel Whiting works as a lexicographer, updating dictionary entries. Most interestingly, The Guardian writes of Johnson’s prose style as ‘a mix of Graham Swift and Angela Carter’.Įverything Under is a modernised retelling of the Classical myth Oedipus Rex. There has been, quite rightly, a lot of buzz around the novel, and some of the reviews really caught my eye. Of all of the novels on the shortlist, this was the one which appealed to me most, and her short story collection, Fen, has been on my radar for a long time. Daisy Johnson’s debut novel, Everything Under, was shortlisted for 2018’s Man Booker Prize.
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