Book Review: Exciting Times
19.06.2020
Book Review | Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Released during lockdown, Exciting Times was a book whose cover I kept seeing but it wasn’t really on my radar and I knew nothing whatsoever about it. I finally read it when a friend listed it as one of their top reads and I spent the first few chapters trying to work out if I loved it or was deeply irritated. In the end the love won out.
Naoise Dolan has a really unique voice and the novel is written from the point of view of her protagonist Ava, a young woman who’s moved from Ireland to Hong Kong to work as an English teacher. I found the prose incredibly easy to read and sped through the novel. Ava is a fascinating character. I think a lot of my initial confusion about how I felt about the book was rooted in how frustrating Ava is. She’s very vocal about all sorts of things including workers rights, abortion, class and feminism but her actions rarely follow through. Instead most of her behaviours come across as self-absorbed, selfish and sneaky. For a while I found this disconnect irritating and wasn’t sure if I could bear to listen to someone’s strong and somewhat judgemental opinions while she was simultaneously profiting off the very people she judged.
I never completely lost this sensation and there were moments near the end of the novel where I again became frustrated, but it’s testament to Dolan’s writing that actually I mostly fell for Ava. I loved being inside her head exactly because she had such complex and deeply felt opinions. Her descriptions of the parties Julian takes her to, and of his banker friends who populate them, are hilariously scathing and her attempts to negotiate toilet breaks at her work are such a specific and consistent issue throughout the book. Conversations are peppered with highly intelligent, quick fire banter. Julian and his father in particular have a highly politically charged dialogue that I struggled to follow, yet alone comprehend half the time, and Ava also seems to naturally keep this pace. Ava, and in turn Dolan, is so extremely sharp and political which at points made me feel quite slow and dull in comparison.
I was particularly absorbed by Ava’s meditations on coming from Ireland and her ruminations on England and the English. I’ve only visited Ireland a couple of times and I think the familiarity and proximity of the country have made me unaware of the many differences. So this felt like an opportunity to see me, an English person, through the unapologetically clear lens of an Irish person. Which was surprisingly uncomfortable at times, though I think the fact it was surprising means that this novel was a perfect pick for me in that it became a form of education.
The relationship between Ava and Julian is complicated, and at times it seems senselessly so. Although the nuances became clearer as the novel goes on and I was drawn into Ava’s confusion and divided loyalties, I did find that precisely because much of their relationship is so superficial it meant that I struggled to see Julian as a particularly fleshed out character. To avoid spoilers I don’t want to go further into what those divided loyalties are or how they force Ava to take more responsibility over her decision making.
While Ava dwells on a lot of weighty issues there’s also parts of the book that simply celebrate language itself. Irish turns of phrase are pulled apart and compared with their English counterparts. Verbal sparring occurs at dinners and parties, secret jokes are thrown back and forth and playful fun is poked at Ava’s mother when she calls with her updates from home.
The story itself pulled me in but the star of the book for me is definitely the digging around I got to do in Ava’s brain. She’s at once unique and deeply familiar. Some of the ideas and thoughts her brain came up with or how she connected them to her reality were completely alien to me but even then they reminded me of how my brain does the same thing, albeit in different ways. I’m not really like Ava. But I got to know her innermost thoughts on a level that’s rare and I felt like I began to understand a character I may have never otherwise understood. That’s a pretty great read for me.