Belated Book Club
Small Joys by Elvin James Mensah
The last couple of weeks have flown by, between our house falling like flies with illness (thank you nursery) and just life getting in the way this bookclub review is a little late. Many apologies! Our May bookclub read was Small Joys by Elvin James Mensah. In an effort to read more male authors I was really excited for this to be our May pick. To be honest choosing Small Joys was a bit of an impulse pick. I had read the synopsis and liked the premise and just went for it. Sometimes I do feel choosing a book for bookclub slightly daunting. I want each and every book to inspire or evoke big feelings in everyone, which I know doesn’t always work.
I do like picking a book that is a debut novel as it can be a great introduction to an author, it also means that if you love it and they have more novels then you can go off and read more. I was a bit gutted that my local bookstore didn’t stock this so I purchased on my kindle. I would have ordered through the bookshop, but alas I had left it too late and wanted to start reading it ASAP! Please note that there are spoilers below as I discuss my thoughts on the book, so, if you want to read and comeback then feel free to bookmark this page!
The story follows Harley a 21 year old gay man, he moves back to Kent after dropping out of university and moves back in with his best friend Chelsea and a new her roommate Muddy. The topics covered are heavy, interesting and felt weirdly refreshing. I loved how gentle the book was, I think that is down to the energy that Harley brings to the page. He is subtle and anxious whilst still being funny and interesting. I loved his character, I felt extremely sympathetic of his journey as a gay man coming out to his heavily religious father, the experience he had with loneliness and pure sadness on how he chose to deal with it all.
Harley’s anxiety feels extremely real, Mensah manages to capture it so well and makes it feel so relatable. Harley is quiet and everything he says or does seems very intentional and well thought out. His relationship with Paul for me I found heartbreaking. I would have loved the story to have been more focused around Paul and his father. I think the story could have been more about the coming of identity story rather than spending so much time on slightly irrelevant less important scenes that I thought went on far too long. I found the ending to Paul and Harley’s “relationship” really rushed, although it was horrid and toxic I thought it was a really interesting side plot. I thought the same about Harley and his father, who was a terrible man, just felt that there were only snippets of these relationships, which would have shaped Harley as a person so much. I thought this would deserve much more time on the page than job searching for Noria (or similar) which dragged on for me.
I found the book focussed on Muddy and Finlay a lot more than I would have liked too. I have a lot of thoughts about Muddy, looking at other reviews online I feel that general senses was that everyone LOVED him. That everyone wanted a friend like him. I do feel slightly alone in my opinion but throughout the book I had a very up and down relationship with whether or not I liked him. During the first half of the book I found him actually quite irritating. I just felt that he was constantly peacocking himself around Harley in a way that felt patronising to his sexuality or at times felt that it mocked it. However once Muddy came honest about his sexuality and his confusion to what is true to him I felt I opened up to him more. It made me feel that this jarring side to his personality made sense a to me.
There were plenty of examples that made me cringe, like how Muddy and Finlay would call Harley their son, again it felt really patronising to him - but I feel like it was just a humour that I didn’t possibly understand. This is where I felt slightly removed from the characters, I think the age difference made it feel hard to connect, which was contrasting to the cultural references which really resonated with me. I loved the musical references to this book, although the characters were older than me I felt that I really recognised the cultural references. I have older siblings who throughout the years played nearly all of the music spoken about. I remember dancing along in the front room to lots of these tunes on MTV. I think choosing something that is so British made me realise how americanised my reading list has been.
The last handful of chapters dragged slightly, as each chapter passed and Harley hadn’t told Muddy about university I became more and more anxious. I remember just constantly screaming internally for him to just get on and tell Chelsea about how he is feeling or to Muddy about going back to uni and I found those in-between scenes just really dragged until he did. But I feel that this is maybe just a reflection on how young adults act and feel.
All in all I liked the book, I thought that Harley was an amazing protagonist and it was quite refreshing to have a main character who was sensitive and gentle. For a debut novel I think there were areas that could have been better, but I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for what Mensah goes on to write!
Let me know your thoughts?
Next Bookclub!
We are going to take a small summer holiday and get back to you end of august with starting to read a new book. I would love to open up suggestions to anyone who would like to participate. So please feel free to send suggestions. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts.