Burntcoat

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Burntcoat by Sarah Hall is, however, one of the first novels – and, although admittedly a bold claim, possibly the first literary masterpiece – to be written during lockdown and to explicitly reference Covid-19.

Perhaps I felt more detached because the pandemic described didn't feel right - not COVID-19, yet similar enough that I found myself comparing. He will do it for me too,” she thinks, after cleaning his mess of body fluids, “and there will be nothing left hidden between us. Edith Harkness is a sculptor whose works are based on this ancient Japanese art with her most famous work being the Witch, a huge installation that is reminiscent of The Angel of the North. It’s a wildly controversial piece, simultaneously attracting fulsome praise and reactionary outrage – a point that Hall, to her credit, never labours or overplays. At fifty-nine, Edith is living alone at Burntcoat, her warehouse-sized studio-cum-apartment, purchased several years earlier with the proceeds from a prestigious prize.We slept as the flames settled and died, tucked together like pigeons in a loft, the sleet creeping over the roof, the country waiting. 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. 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.

Edith, the main character, is an artist who lives with after-effects of a virus that resemble long-haul covid. Either reaction is understandable: producing art because you can’t sit still or throwing your hands up in despair. There is a deep sense of poignancy to the novel, a quality that stems from our understanding that Edith is facing her own mortality – she knows the resurgence will prove fatal this time as others have already succumbed. On top of that, the final 20% is extremely well written and haunting…describing what I can only imagine is the worst of the worst of symptoms.Burntcoast it is extraordinary, proving once again (to quote the first line) that “those who tell stories survive. Burntcoat stands at the edge of the old industrial part of the city, where the riverbank links workers’ cottages, trade buildings and docks. We now live in a contemporary, modern world where pandemics happen, and our lives are impacted in multiple ways, including our innermost thoughts and feelings. First things first, we fight to survive, it might be that we have to fight this fight all alone and yes die alone like so many did and continue to do because of Covid19. It's worse than the one we've just lived through, and what Halit and Edith suffer made me cry, made me finish the book and sit for half an hour, thinking.

Like some of your other contributors here I was reluctant to embark on a pandemic themed novel when the current one is still raw in my memory. Her mother Naomi I find especially fascinating and the sections where she is in the narrative are the ones I most enjoy. 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.Extra kudos to Hall for crafting Garth Greenwell-level sex scenes, this is excellent writing of sex as a form of communication. When I was eight, my mother died and Naomi arrived,” she later tells us, in a wrong-footing line that sets up the history of her mother’s life-changing brain injury, central to our understanding of Edith’s upbringing. I'm deliberately keeping this review short because I think each reader deserves to experience the trajectory of the story for themselves. A major success in her 20s finances her acquisition of Burntcoat, a large riverside warehouse-like building at the outskirts of an unnamed British town. From Hecky, the 'Scotch Witch' that towers over the road, constructed from ancient timber burnt using techniques learned in Kyoto, to Burntoat, the studio filled with a life's work.

Written during the early feverish months of the first wave of COVID-19, Burntcoat is a haunting, beautifully-crafted story of love, trauma and the creation of art, all set against the backdrop of a deadly global pandemic. The novel is presented in sections, almost like a series of extended vignettes, a structure that gives it a wonderful sense of fluidity as we move backwards and forwards in time, alighting on various elements of Edith’s richly-textured life. I’ve looked at those images often, the spontaneous moments– which seem to frieze history, to make it, in a fixed moment, epic, still kinetic with human dynamics. She isolates herself in her immense studio, known as Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows.

Now Sarah Hall has turned those imaginings into a novel, at once epic and miniature, the story of two lovers cut off from a disintegrating world. I could appreciate the mastery and craft that went into the product, but man-oh-man… sometimes less is more. It’s written in a nonlinear and in some places dreamlike way, to start with I found it confusing but it gets into a style that was suited to a woman looking back, remembering her childhood (also a difficult time as her mother suffered brain damage after a haemorrhage), her early adult years and now post pandemic facing probable death from the virus recurring. Hall's use of Art as a reminder of the primal, of the wild, of the us we are made to hide is something to read. Compassion is a choice, and it's possible to make it happen - that's a key message of this bleak novel, which is rendered in beautiful, dream-like language.