As Meat Loves Salt

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Although this took me an unconscionable amount of time to get through (almost two weeks), I DID really enjoy it. Clearly Jacob is not a well man, but the causes or indeed the aesthetic significance of his behaviour elude us.

Since I opened Maria McCann's astonishing debut novel on June 22, I've found myself dragged into its world of violence, love, sexual confusion and religious obsession. We learn facts about the murder victim and his wife that, if not entirely exonerative of Jacob's actions, at least show that all is not black and white in this world where brother is set against brother and kings were to be beheaded by commoners. She read English at the University of Durham and then embarked on a series of jobs including Citizens’ Advice, telephonist, artist’s model and EFL teacher. I have lost something that he touched, and the destruction of it has gained You nothing, for now I no longer read the words, I hear them, as if he implored me face to face.His deep insecurity makes him easy to rouse to anger, but it makes his love fierce and compelling (and completely fucked up, which bears repeating). His sense of self-loathing, however, is ingrained in every page, less so at the beginning and ebbs and flows throughout. Both have now been added to my TBR pile and if they are half as good as this then I will be in for a treat. Reading the book, though, you know everything is doomed from the start (believe me, this is not a spoiler), which makes it both hard to read and impossible to put down.

It paints people in all their ugly glory: pulsating with need and desire, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but entirely human.

He is dark, brooding, troubled and prone to bouts of anger and jealousy which often spill over into acts of violence and cruelty. They desert their posts in Cromwell’s New Model Army to establish a farming commune in the countryside.