When I start writing a new book, I always begin with a relationship between two people. I write it on a piece of paper and circle it. Siblings, neighbours, friends, parent/child, colleagues, rivals, idols… there are endless combinations that are rife with potential closeness and conflict. Everything else, for me, comes afterwards: where it is set, the year, the season, the circumstance. I’m a character writer. I come by this honestly, because as a reader, my favourite books are character – and relationship – driven. And deeper than that, one of my favourite dynamics are those that play with power. Who has more power to start? How does it shift? What are the bargaining chips and how are the stakes raised so that characters may not get what they want but might get what they need. Or better: what they deserve.
In my latest novel, The Rayburn Affair, I’m exploring power dynamics again, and this time they are set against the academic and publishing worlds, in a friendship and in a marriage, in public and private. Struggling young academic, Ruth Morgan, befriends her literary idol, the novelist phenom Shelby Rayburn, along with her sexy and talented artist husband, Oscar Frost. Over the course of the novel, we see the power dynamic between the two women, and between all three characters, on campus and online, shift subtly and dramatically, as they each go after what they want under the guise of helping the others. One of the inspirations for this novel was the dynamic and questionable relationship between Simone De Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre, two philosophical and literary figures who coloured my PhD work and whose relationship with one another and with other young writers and artists has long intrigued me. And, as always, I’m curious about ambition and fame and how women in particular see and are seen through the lens of achievement and stardom.
Many of my own favourite books deal with power couples and power dynamics, with parasocial relationships and the haunting shadow of fame. If I was building a book playlist for novels that compliment The Rayburn Affair and prepare the imagination for reading it, these are my top recommendations.
The Children by Melissa Albert
This phenomenal debut novel is likely to go on any recommended booklist of mine for a long time to come. It features a creative family, a fantastical and magical farmhouse where they live and create, but where other, stranger things are afoot. At the heart of the novel is the dynamic between the two siblings, each extraordinary and imaginative, close as children and estranged as adults, and their novelist mother, who mined their lives to make her own name as a world-famous writer before her violent and suspicious death alongside their father.
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Whilst reading this book on a plane, I distinctly recall, near the end of the book, putting it down on my lap and just staring out the window, marveling at how the author had written such an entirely unique adventure out of thin air. Even as a novelist myself, I was left wondering how on earth she’d done it. Washington Black is unlike any other book out there. It is a coming-of-age story of an enslaved boy; the survival of a free man; the ambitions of an artist and scientist; the guilt of an abolitionist, and so much more. A sweeping lifetime of a book that takes us from a hellscape of a plantation to a world’s fair, a book that features the horrors of humanity and the wonders of the sea, this novel not only explores the power dynamics between the main character, Washington Black, and ‘Titch’ Wilde, but it offers reflection on every aspect of freedom.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
I absolutely adored this novel. The words practically sweat off the page in this retelling of the sudden and heated relationship between the protagonist, a young man named Elio, and Oliver, the slightly older doctoral student visiting their Northern Italian family retreat, over the course of a summer. Elio’s narration outlines every shaky shift in power between them, from glances to tiny movements, to throwaway comments that are packed with meaning. His youth and infatuation inform even the most innocuous events like a meal, a swim, or a bike ride, and we witness how Oliver lightly holds the power in the relationship, and how it gently moves over the course of two decades both in Elio’s mind and in reality. It is a wonder, this book.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Without giving away the brilliant core premise of this beautiful debut, I’ll say that the story revolves around two women and a house in 1961 in the Netherlands, and the dynamics between the women and the setting change incredibly over the course of the novel. Isa and Eva are thrown together as unlikely roommates in Isa’s family home, which her brother Louis, Eva’s boyfriend, has laid claim to despite Isa’s meticulous care for the place and its memories. The notion of power and ownership is woven deeply into the book as it crosses through the events of the war, gender, survival and even romantic entanglements. Power is arguably the dominant theme of the book, and I love how many ways it can be applied to the unique concept that is the beating heart of the story.
I am among the countless adoring readers of Sally Rooney’s work, and one of my favourites of hers is Normal People. Class and social hierarchy are not the only currencies of power in the dynamic between Connell and Marianne, but they are certainly the most obvious ones. While the unlikely friends turned lovers grapple with their own relationships with family, wealth, love and social dynamics, we see how they cope, both in healthy and unhealthy ways, and how their responses rebound and reflect off each other. Rooney’s economic and intellectually brilliant prose brings conversations and conflicts to a kind of electrifying life. Even when it seems like not much is happening, so much is.
Katabasis is the latest sweeping R.F. Kuang novel that deals in matters of the heart and mind, and this one takes us to Hell. I’ve read that the novelist conceived of a book about academics descending into the underworld while she was working on her doctorate and found the experience to be its own special kind of Hell. The book sees to graduate student rivals who need to band together to rescue their horrible advisor from the afterlife. The two are on their own personal quests as well, as we – and they – learn through the novel. It’s another brilliant page-turner that explores the role of power in academia and the lengths we go for success.