Author(s): Clare Pollard

Fiction | Mel M's Book Talkers

An electrifying, darkly funny and heartbreaking novel about the way we live now; the way we lived before and the stories, connections and consolations that help us keep on living in a world where everyone is watching and yet none of us feels seen. This is a story about now. It's a story about a woman, and a family. It's about the dramas unfolding on our screens and behind the curtains of our homes, and how time and certainty and, sometimes, those we love can slip away. But it's also about before. It's about the questions we have always asked and the answers that are coming for us whether we like them or not. Extraordinary, electrifying, irreverent and heartbreaking, Delphi is a mesmerising story of our pasts, our presents and our futures, and how we keep on living in a world that is ever-more uncertain and absurd.

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: MEL M

I picked this up based off my interest in ancient Greek history and mythology, and I wasn’t disappointed. Told in chapters or fragments (think Jenny Offill via Sappho) named after different forms of divination, Delphi reflects on our contemporary age  - especially the last two years - through ancient, oracular eyes.

We’ve always tried to predict and control the future, whether through mysterious priestesses or algorithms, and Pollard foregrounds this part of human nature as she tells a story about a woman trying to navigate the thorny waters of parenthood, academic work, marriage, and the ravages of capitalism.

There is a sense that so much of life’s struggles have been compounded and stretched by Covid-19, and I feel that Pollard has crafted an effective piece of reflection here on how this has felt. I was sometimes startled by her insights, especially around the cognitive dissonance and ambient guilt we live with every day embedded in a global system that causes so much human suffering.

There’s real value in this book if you enjoy literature that helps us commiserate truthfully – and poetically - about our strange contemporary world and its uncertain future.