Book Review: Burntcoat, Sarah Hall

Burntcoat, Sarah Hall

My rating: 4 /5 stars 

Book of 2022: 15

Read: 05 - 10/12/2022

In the bedroom above her immense studio, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. Her life will draw to an end in the coming days. 

Downstairs, the studio is a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and feverish world. 

This story is beautifully told. I could not have fallen more in love with the way it was written. Sarah Hall has the ability to craft raw emotion, intensity & frivolity in such a delicately lyrical way. 

I got this one on my 24th birthday book crawl with Nat, Bel, & Becca. It jumped out from the shelf & I’m so glad I picked it up when I did. I keep accidentally choosing books at the perfect time in my life. Hall’s words reached deep inside my chest over the 5 days it took me to read them. I want more. 

Burntcoat is a magnificently eclectic portrayal of a pandemic - she paints the fear, desperation, hope, isolation, denial, anxiety, & hope: 

It was in the water, on the counter, the letter, the gift of a kiss. (127)

There was a new way of moving in the city, fleet, covered. (129)

Reading this, I was taken back to the UK lockdowns in 2020 & 2021 & they are so vividly recent, but so cognitively distant. I was a different person when they happened, but there is a mental separation I think we perhaps all put into place, to distance ourselves from how alarming it really was. 

Unless you have severe PTSD from the pandemic, I’d highly recommend this book, as perhaps a way to remember, & reflect. It’s alarmingly similar, whilst weaved amongst a much larger story. 

The story explores grief, sex, love, art, & the complexities of the self. Edith as a narrator or storyteller has a vast, lyrical way of digesting & describing these themes. 

Her relationship with Halit is one of raw passion, excitement. Hall nails the feeling of unparalleled connection of new lovers, of feeling totally unique in your love. It’s breath-taking to read, you’re behind the couple all the way.

Every interaction, whether domestic or exciting, is seductive to read. You’re behind them all the way:

When we pulled apart it felt like drowning. We could only breathe with our mouths held together. (25)

creatures consuming each other, building shelters with their hopes. (51)

All we have was love, its useless currency, its powerful denial. (125)

It’s delicious. Read it. Revel in it. Sink your teeth into the thick, luxurious descriptions that litter this novel.

Lines I liked the most:

Those who tell stories survive. (1)

I was ready for her to disappear. (1)

blossom in the creases. (2)

I have a high tolerance for uncertainty (5)

There are small blisters in the web between my fingers. (5) 

I remember those delusive moments when we shared the same mouthful of air (5)

She held up a hand, carefully touched the air. (7)

They saved her life; they could not save her self. (13)

My bones had sunk back into my flesh. (19)

I stared at you through your series of questions. (20) 

We were traveling through what would happen, the wet map of intimacy (21) 

Suddenly I was aware there were rules, a finesse to exchanges that I didn’t possess (23)

When we pulled apart it felt like drowning. We could only breathe with our mouths held together. (25)

Naomi and I grew round each other like vines that need mutual support to be upright. (34)

it’s simply about having my hand held to cross a difficult stretch (35)

How is it possible to live with fear and hope? (36)

I liked the routines, times when solitude was expected (45)

light traveled in moons across the wall. (47)

It was chaos and peace. (47)

finding myself in tears and becoming part of the flood. (47)

There’s a blindness to new lovers. They exist in the rare atmosphere of their own colony, trusting by sense and feel, creatures consuming each other, building shelters with their hopes. (51)

I gripped you towards the end, desperate for depth, the latch. (52)

The fucking of innocent gods. (66)

The world had caught fire; not even the sea’s tonic would put it out. (67)

She lay half-demolished, her eyes swimming up out of the medication. (68)

I hated the brown-stained pants on the washing line, the invasive ache and hormones. (74)

I’d been raised, capably but neglectfully, by a borrowed woman and her shadow. (76)

I was being told who I was but had no sense of it myself. (81)

the little blue boat of my soul had capsized. (83)

Her compliments were half political, designed to reassure and educate. (87)

I was full of fireworks; light kept sparkling in my head, my pelvis, between the discs of my spine. (88)

The party had been baptised. (89)

It might take a lifetime to know how to live. (90)

I tried to be as neither man nor woman, nor an artist. (90)

my identity was folded into a bag and left beside the pallet bed. (91)

The phrase we would all use again and again, until it was devoid of meaning. (92)

I have this feeling - of being unplugged and too far from the socket. (93)

You and I, we’re just one mountain apart. (95) 

The strangeness of a shirtless back, that plate of muscle from spine to shoulder that seems wrongly wingless. (99)

We learnt each other, domestically. (99)

the game dissolved, became human (103)

If we went deep enough into each other, there would be a hiding place. (103)

She is insectile, strong as an ant. (104)

We closed our eyes but our minds still made images. (105)

You hadn’t been raised with the recoil of English boys. (106)

The bar stories, which were better than the experiences. (112)

All we had was love, its useless currency, its powerful denial. (125)

It was in the water, on the counter, the letter, the gift of a kiss. (127)

There was a new way of moving in the city, fleet, covered. (129)

There was the cackle of bad energy in the air. (130)

For weeks you’d reached for me across the bed, in the layer between awareness and unconsciousness, bonding warmly to my hip and waist. (151-2) 

You kissed me with a new, uncovered mouth, the old mouth from our beginning, when we’d stood in the winter street. (154)

There’s no good way to wait for disaster. (160)

I was incinerating your carcass, holding the blowtorch to your rotting face. Something was moving inside you, black & oily inside the cocoon. (174) 

Halit had gone & you had come. I let you hold me. (179) 

You were my only certainty. (195) 

It was still hard for me to be with people, & I found myself caring less whether I conveyed it. (201) 

I’d felt somehow returned to the margin while his sense of belonging had been reinforced. (203) 

My body can’t help fighting, can’t change its instinct - cells crawling along the blood’s hot walls to save it. (208) 

A life is a bead of water on the black surface, so frail, so strong, its world incredibly held. (208)