Burntcoat

Product Information

Now Edith is finishing her final piece of work - another monumental piece as a memorial to those who died and will still die - final because the virus is resurfacing in her system and Edith knows she is dying. Similarly, Hall comes up with a work which might challenge some sensibilities, but which is also incredibly moving and ends, albeit without any sentimentality, on a note of cautious hope. 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. I think I would have benefitted from it as I found the novel rather difficult to pin down – as if it kept changing shape!

Agora, que estamos nisto para ficar, achei que deveria tentar conhecer a nova ficção que se está a criar em torno do tema e a escolha recaiu sobre “Burntcoat” de Sarah Hall, onde o vírus AG3 se revela pior que o Covid-19, com uma taxa de contágio e mortalidade superior, ficando latente dentro dos sobreviventes até ao dia em que volta a manifestar-se de forma letal. Leaving aside for the moment the problematic implication that the Gothic is cheap (alas, a centuries-old prejudice), this sounds much like an apology for Hall’s own novel. It gets one of my ambivalent ratings because I didn’t always connect to the story’s execution, though I appreciated its relevancy, its ambition, and the visceral rendering of the toll illness takes on the body and on caretakers. There’s a tendency too for Edith to express herself via pseudo-philosophical, gnomic observations, which I found slightly overblown and irritating at times. Even renovated, Burntcoat is ugly by most standards, a utilitarian warehouse, but it stands beside the river’s lambency — a hag in a bright mirror.Written in the second person, it tells the story of English artist Edith as she deals with the long-haul effects of a pandemic virus. Hall has written an emotionally-charged novel that is tribute, extended nightmare, love story and - somehow - manages to claw back some kind of human dignity and strength in the face of the inevitability of death.

Sarah Hall apparently began writing Burntcoat on the first day of the UK’s COVID-related lockdown in March of 2020 (finding time to work in the early hours before homeschooling her daughter) and everything about this novel struck me as a perfect literary response to what Hall (and the rest of us) lived through over the last year. Then again, the wider scope of Burntcoat helps to set it apart from say The Fell or other COVID-centric fiction. I love the words and the sentences and the story they add up to; I was moved emotionally and intellectually; provoked and challenged.

On the announcement of lockdown, it is to Burntcoat that she retires, accompanied by restaurant-owner Halit, the new-found lover with whom she has just started a relationship. Têm pouco com que se entreter, é verdade, têm de passar o tempo de alguma forma, mas quando ficam doentes, sendo um vírus com sintomas gravíssimos, com manifestações físicas como pústulas e altamente mortífero, acho que a pornochachada se torna ridícula e de mau gosto. A few days later he develops lesions – Aids seems to be in the imaginative mix here, too – and his illness begins. Nevertheless, something inherent to Naomi was displaced during the stroke, rupturing her sense of self and deep-rooted psyche.

This quote refers to the ancient Japanese art of Shou Sugi Ban in which the surface of cedar wood is charred until it turns black.

I’ve long been a fan of Hall’s short stories, ever since The Beautiful Indifference came out ten years or so ago, but this is my first experience of her novels – an overwhelmingly positive one, I should clearly state upfront. She is torn between the truth of the virus and the truth of her dead lover, “a tear in all that, a gift of sudden truth”.

In the interview I was asked if my proposal was realistic, whether it would exceed the funding, who my influences were.

As a stand-in for the people who experienced COVID, Edith ponders what we can learn about humanity in such a situation, which connects the text to The Plague. Groundwater rose through a million pressure holes in the floor, and droplets shifted towards others, joining, trickling, playing with their own constant difference.