Dialogue writing, even at its most realistic, invariably leaves out all the stutters, misspeaking and other flubs that punctuate conversation between us mere mortals, because the alternative would likely be unbearable to read. With this in mind, consider one’s internal monologue, and the idea of it being transcribed. It would be smoother and less error-strewn than an in-person talk with others, you’d suppose, but also rambling and tangential. That’s what you’ll find in Amy Arnold’s Lori & Joe.
Arnold’s second novel, Lori & Joe gives Lori Fitzgerald a day to collect her thoughts, in extraordinary circumstances. Of inexact age but seemingly retired, living in the Lake District (as does Arnold), a normal morning is upended by her husband Joe’s sudden, unexplained death. Lori’s response is to leave him in bed and take a lengthy, circular walk, and in the subsequent hours of solitude, the accretion of memories edge into focus, and we learn of trauma folded into decades of mundanity.
Lori & Joe is a relatively short novel, and its protagonist’s thoughts come in plain English, yet it asks a certain resolve of the reader. There isn’t a plot as such: rather, Lori’s thoughts, in between mulling scones and bicycles and classical music, will occasionally turn to matters of awful gravity, sometimes dispatched so quickly one could inadvertently skim past them. She – or rather her mind – repeats phrases and establishes verbal tics, expressed by Arnold via run-on sentences that can take up a page or more. Like the rain-sodden traipse across rural Cumbria on which Lori embarks, this book’s arduous qualities are part of its reward, and you too might get sufficiently wrapped up in it to overlook something more important you ought to be doing.
Lori & Joe, Amy Arnold (Prototype)
Price: £12. Info: here
words NOEL GARDNER
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