Book review: Makings of a masterpiece

Debut novelist Irish-American Kimberly Campanello has already achieved acclaim as a poet. Picture: Will Robson-Scott

• Use the Words You Have 
• Kimberly Campanello 
• Somesuch Editions, £9.99 

The teenage protagonist of Kimberly Campanello’s debut novel, introduced to us simply as K, has landed in Brittany in the late 90s to improve her French. 

She’s attending a programme with other overachieving American trainees or “stagiaires”, where speaking and writing in their native language is strictly forbidden and the English-French dictionary can be consulted only once a week for emergencies — K, an aspiring poet, uses it to look up the word “wasp” for a poem.

She’s staying in a charming cliff-side home with a warm host family and their three children; Rozenn, Gwenn, and the enigmatic M, another character we know only by initial. 

Close in age, K and Rozenn become fast friends. 

M is a few years older than K — she’s felt drawn to him ever since the programme sent her a photograph of the family in which he appears shirtless, teasing her formative summer abroad.

This isn’t a will they won’t they tale, we know from the first page that K and M are involved, yet romantic tension drips from the story: 

The everydayness of living in pleasure with the one person who gives you nothing but. 

Pleasures of the body and art are explored, frustrations and freedoms are found, empowering options are embraced: “If she can’t find the words she actually wants, she must remake the ones she has.”

Irish-American Campanello has already achieved acclaim as a poet and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.

Use the Words You Have is the first book from the new imprint of Somesuch, a Bafta and Oscar-winning production company and publisher of an arts journal, founded in London.

Aptly, Campanello’s writing is filmic, yet this isn’t a novel shamelessly constructed with an adaptation in mind; it is one in which each page is a soft spectacle, appearing to unfold from within and above for a result that is somehow both personal and panoramic, and serene, like a solo cinema date.

When poets first defect to prose, it can feel as though they are stepping into a hired costume without quite allowing themselves to be zipped into its conventions — poetic devices such as repetition and white space become showy accessories they are determined to work into the look.

The novel isn’t untouched by this, but it’s less like Campanello is trying the form on for size, more like she is pointing us towards an ingenious way of styling. 

She applies a poet’s precision to the unfurling of the narrative that is thrilling to observe, elements of its construction are playfully exhibited, space works for dramatic and humorous effect.

Campanello wears her significant skill lightly — although no stranger to a knockout sentence, she seems less concerned with these than with serving the work as a whole. 

The outcome is a layered, annular artistry that is often breathtaking to witness. K tells us, “You cannot mouth a photo the way you can mouth and breathe words and skin”, and Use the Words You Have is one of those rare books that not only sparks excitement for the talent on show, but revives a passion for the very possibilities of the medium itself.

The author and her publisher display innovation, and in an environment of brazen technological advancement, an award-winning production company expanding its print offerings, of all things, feels like a heartening move. 

Amidst feverish publicity campaigns vying for the book of the summer, Campanello has discreetly slid a masterpiece into the mix. 

For admirers of Annie Ernaux and André Aciman or indeed any avowed lover of language, if you read one debut this season, make it Campanello’s.