'M'

Author: David Samuel Hudson

Publisher: Horizons / 2024

Pages: 202pg

A group of young people get together occasionally at a Sa Maison bar and all the time on a Messenger group.

They all profess they want to be writers but then their abilities vary from each other.

Some find out they can't write or their friends realize they really can't.

One, Pawlu, bombastically thinks he's the best, but he isn't, even though he runs down all the others.

The story is told by Damian, who knows he's the best writer but who has to struggle against many obstacles.

And there's Valeria, who effortlessly and apparently naturally writes the best poetry in English.

For this is a group of Maltese writers who write in English. They continually have to explain why they, Maltese, write in English.

At the end they realize that the kind of English spoken in Malta is a very special kind, that mixes swear words and other words (like mela etc.) in a way you will not find anywhere else.

Even this does not explain what makes us Maltese. For the book's main tenet is that it is the Maltese language that makes the Maltese who they are.

That doesn't mean a starry-eyed approach - "We're all tired of Malta one way or another," Damian says before admitting his ambition is to write the best Maltese novel in English.

Latching to something saying "Hemm fejn?" Damian replies: "M is for Malta, for median, M is for mediocre. And M is for me."

Elsewhere he comments: "There aren't any geographic extremes in Malta - no mountains or gorges, no lakes or dust bowls, it doesn't snow, there aren't any forests and therefore no forest fires. Malta is the median.

"People make up for it by being at either one end of a given spectrum or the other: you can either be Labour or PN, you can be a hamallu or tal-pepe, you could be a hunter or a tree hugger, a racist or a human rights activist, a businessman or a Che Guevara devotee - anyone claiming to be on the fence is branded a liar or a coward."

The best pages in the book are when Damian attends a literary event at MCC and blows up Pawlu's dream of glory.

Or when he is hauled in front of a university board and accused (and found guilty) of plagiarism, a manifestly wrong charge just because he previously made fun of an incompetent lecturer and this was her revenge.

At the end this is a sweet love story which ends well, at a funeral at sea.