Ash

Ash
By Louise Wallace
Review by Bel

Female rage is as old as our species, and yet in this elegant experimental novel, Louise Wallace manages to find a new way of communicating it. She playfully captures the particular madness of being the primary carer of small children, alongside the frustration and bone-weariness of being generally undermined, undervalued and underpaid, even now. I made the mistake of reading this at the hairdressers, where I then ranted like a lunatic, but was understood nevertheless. There was much nodding. Wallace’s ingenious use of metaphor is poetic and powerful, as is the roar and the restraint in these pages. This book made me laugh in recognition, nash my teeth, and when I finished it I let out a very long, controlled breath, right to the end. For fans of Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch and Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead.