Hello there. I have, as you may have noticed, a shiny new logo-type thing with my name on it and everything. What I don’t have this month is a whole lot of news. So instead, here are some quick ‘n’ dirty thoughts on a book I loved recently.

Last year I wrote a piece for New Welsh Review (free to read) on reading and writing neurodivergence. The essay was inspired by an email exchange with NWR editor Gwen Davies about books that had disappointed us, and at the time a writing buddy asked if I had any recommendations for books that handled the topic well. He was asking specifically about speculative fiction, and I have to admit, I still struggle to think of SFF that really gets me with its treatment of neurodivergence. Please do hit me up via email if you’ve got any recommendations.

But I did want to talk about a non-speculative book I read recently. I first heard of Erica Wooff’s 2002 novel Mud Puppy at a Welsh literature conference a few years ago. I was struck by the title and the conceit – a giant American salamander is found in Newport, thousands of miles out of its element – but, I’ll be honest, I’d probably have read it a lot sooner if someone had told me it was gay.

Of the topics I talked about in my essay, the one that really bothers me, and which I don’t have an easy answer to, is approaching neurodivergence and mental illness as a writer. As writers, we’re exhorted to kill our darlings – to cut and combine scenes, to be ruthless with pretty turns of phrase that do nothing to further the plot. 

I’m not a plot-above-all kind of writer. Vibes are important, man. Fiction that eschews them in favour of moving plot along with machinic efficiency tends to end up, well, kind of boring.

But it is true that, when I write, everything I put on the page needs to do something. Build atmosphere, or character, or theme. Say something with beauty, or precision, or striking strangeness. Living inside a neurodivergent brain is often… not like that. My inability to concentrate on a ‘bad brain day’ doesn’t further or build or convey anything; it just keeps me scrolling through endless discourse that I don’t actually want to read, thinking about the various bits of life admin I need to do before getting overwhelmed and not starting any of them, flipping between checking my email on my laptop and checking the other, smaller email on my phone, again. And again. And again. 

The tension between wanting to be honest about an experience that’s boring and frustrating to live (and probably therefore to read about) and to create work that’s interesting, is part of why I rarely consciously sit down to write neurodivergent or mentally ill characters. (Some of them might come out that way, but it’s not intentional.) There’s an instrumentalism to using symptoms as devices, plot or literary, that I’m not confident in my ability to handle.

But Mud Puppy makes me want to do it.

The titular mud puppy itself is a kind of cipher, a symbol or miracle around which the lives of the two main characters orbit. These are two young queer women. First off: Daryl, late-twenties, an artist and vicar’s daughter returning home to Newport after several years living in London. She’s feeling like a failure, and she latches on like a barnacle when she meets: Ani, late teens, a sixth-form college student who dreams of getting out of her hometown and her shit job at the local garage. 

They develop an awkward, ambivalent, inappropriate push-pull of a relationship, and at the same time, a chance encounter with a drag king named Carlos leads Ani to develop an elaborate fantasy of moving to New York to open a club with him. It gradually becomes evident that Ani is suffering from a delusional disorder, never explicitly named in the text but more and more obvious to those around her.

Rather than present Ani as an object of pity or fear, Wooff invites us to experience her delusions alongside her, not offsetting them from the main text, but allowing the reader to draw our own conclusions about her state of mind from small hints and changes. The delusions are cyclical: the same events are presented again and again, with minor alterations that render them progressively more unreal. It is frustrating to read, but in a way that invites both empathy and attention to theme at the same time. Wooff's portrayal is never sanitised -- the experience of reading Ani's delusions is often unsettling -- but it resists monstering and othering.

Mud Puppy is a novel deeply concerned with performance. Ani’s delusions are genuine, but they run alongside and intertwine with her first forays into drag, rendering time and reality fluid while her performances do the same to gender and identity. Our selves are bounded by time, space, gender, and these things can be destabilised for good and for bad – and in ways that aren’t straightforwardly either. In less skilled hands, Mud Puppy could have been clunky and ableist, but Wooff balances theme and humanity expertly. I’m just sad she doesn’t seem to have written any other books.

Not much going on this month, publishing-wise, as I keep plugging away on novel projects and a couple of short stories, none of which seem likely to see the light of day imminently. 

Later in June, Fusion Fragment will be reprinting my short apocalyptic story, The Last Good Day, which is about a disintegrating relationship in a disintegrating world, and first appeared in Cossmass Infinities last year. It remains one of my favourite things I’ve written, and I’d love to see it get a few more reads. FF is pay-what-you-want, so if you get the chance, please do give it a look.

What I’ve been reading

My favourite read of the month was probably Matthew Haigh’s poetry collection, Death Magazine. I’ve read three of Matthew’s books and they’ve all been stellar, but this might be my favourite – sharp, striking poems about health, bodies, masculinity, queerness, beauty, and all sorts of things.

What I’ve been watching

Last week I managed to catch a showing of Polite Society at my local cinema. It’s a comedy about the relationship between a teenage wannabe stuntwoman and her art school drop-out sister, with a thoroughly bizarre twist. It’s heartfelt, bawdy, both clever and exquisitely dumb, and really good fun.

What I’ve been listening to

I’ve seen a lot of live music recently, but highlight of the month was probably the mighty Otoboke Beaver, who were as raucous and riotous as ever, with support from the also rather good Drinking Boys and Girls Choir.

That's all from me for this month. Take care!

J