there are more things

by Yara Rodrigues Fowler

Published by Fleet

Available at West End Lane and all Good Bookshops

What They Say

there are more things is a novel about two women – Melissa and Catarina.

Born to a well-known political family in Olinda, Brazil, Catarina grows up in the shadow of her dead aunt, Laura. Melissa, a South London native, is brought up by her mum and a crew of rebellious grandmothers.

In January 2016, Melissa and Catarina meet for the first time, and, as political turmoil unfolds across Brazil and the UK, their friendship takes flight. Their story takes us across continents and generations – from the election of Lula to the London riots to the darkest years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

there are more things builds on the unique voice of Yara’s debut to create a sweeping novel about history, revolution and love. In it we see sisterhood and queerness, and, perhaps, glimpse a better way to live.

What I Say

I read Yara’s brilliant first novel The Stubborn Archivist when I was asked to be a Shadow Judge for the Sunday Times Young Writer Award in 2019. I’m not trying to show off by telling you, but if I hadn’t been part of that, I would never have read it, and would have missed out on discovering an incredible writer whose books are now both firmly on my list of all time favourite novels.

there are more things is the story of Melissa and Catarina, two young women who meet in London in 2016. Catarina has been raised in Brazil and her family are well known for their political views, while Melissa has been born and raised in South London. When they meet, their worlds collide and change in ways they could never have imagined, and it is their friendship and histories that form the basis of this intricately layered and unique novel.

While London has always been home to Melissa, who has had a vibrant and supportive upbringing, populated with aunties and her Mum, Catarina has made the move to London with her boyfriend Pedro, unsure of what the future holds for them and leaving a prominent political family behind.

When Catarina moves into Melissa’s flat, their lives intersect and each becomes undoubtedly a part of the other’s world. Yara uses this as an opportunity to move us backwards and forwards through the narrative, to learn not only about the womens lives and how they got to this point, but also of their histories and heritage. We see where they have come from and how Brazil has been shaped by the political events over the years. There is a whole narrative about the political events in Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s, which for me was initially daunting, but also made me sit and look things up, to read about a world I had no knowledge of, to understand how the events then shaped the world now. This novel is undoubtedly epic in its scale, but Yara’s writing makes the reader feel intimately part of it, that you are not being lectured to, but are instead being asked to read, to understand and to appreciate the experiences of a country that you know little of.

I loved the way that Yara uses the blank page so creatively to tell the story in so many different ways, that this is not line after line of text, but plays with our expectations as to what a novel should look like. Words meander across the pages, there are pages of dense text, of poetry, recipes, texts, pages where the only text is a a sound reported, pages of Portuguese and short sharp vignettes. Our histories and worlds are not neat and linear, they are peppered with half remembrances, solid facts, different stories and explanations and no one will tell the same story twice – and this is why there are more things is so vibrant and authentic.

This novel also perfectly articulates so many things about the realities of flat sharing (especially when the flats aren’t particularly great!), of going out, of needing your phone to be welded to your hand, of living for the weekend, and always having your friends around. I love the depiction that time of immense freedom in your 20s when you are not answerable to anyone, and can live and love as you want, with the energy and stamina I could only read about with envy. Melissa has this incredible vibrancy and drive, her commitment to make this world better for those in it, and when she and Catarina join a grass roots group who are determined to stop deportations, seeing how these women work together is something that was a learning experience for me.

there are more things is a brilliant and unapologetic novel about being who you are and not trying to fit in to the world around you. By having sections of the text in Portuguese, it really makes you stop and think, because we are so used to everything being accessible for us, expecting everyone to use English so we are included always. This device serves to exclude us momentarily from the narrative, as so many people have felt excluded from ours for so long. World and historical events happen around Melissa and Catarina as the story moves on, but they are not the focus of the plot – as for so many of us, they are incidental details, part of the backdrop as we try to carry on with our own lives, and this for me helped the novel feel truly realistic.

If I had to try and describe this novel to you, and tell you why you I think you should read it, I would tell you this. there are more things is a novel that encapsulates so much of the world we have lived in so perfectly, it is a novel that needs the reader to understand that they are not a bystander, but to really appreciate Yara’s writing, you need to be an active participant in the narratives that unfurl in front of you. Most importantly, I think it is a novel that acknowledges we are all searching for the same thing – trying to work out not only where we fit in, but who we are, and how we want to be seen and remembered, whilst ensuring our histories and heritages are acknowledged and not forgotten.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Hayley Camis at Fleet for my gifted finished copy.

You can order your copies from West End Lane Books here.