This is a short book. A really short book. Which is no bad thing in itself. I’m no fan of the current trend for padding novels out unnecessarily but there’s no way you could accuse Highway Blue of that. It’s barely even a novella and closer to a long story than anything else. That and the prose’s emphasis on evocative imagery and sense of place makes it feel more like a screenplay converted into prose than anything else.
But this is perhaps to do that prose a disservice. Because this is very tightly written. It’s lean, spare writing, with a striking feel for imagery and layers of tightly coiled emotion under its deceptive surface. It’s highly reminiscent of Raymond Carver or perhaps, given its setting and general themes, the short fiction of Sam Shepard.
And yet, what it reminds me of most are the short, punchy novels of Barry Gifford, perhaps most notably Wild At Heart, the first of the Sailor and Lula novels and memorably filmed by David Lynch. Although the books two protagonists, Anne-Marie and her itinerant husband Cal are a lot more damaged, or at least a lot less exuberant, than Sailor and Lula. Anne-Marie, especially, is more a kindred spirit to one of Don Carpenter’s rootless, drifting protagonists – The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan springing particularly to mind. But in its general theme of a young woman’s coming of age, wrapped within a pulp narrative, perhaps a final comparison that could be made is with Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar, with 90s rave culture being replaced with a more timeless, dustily epic Americana.
Highway Blue is essentially a road movie in print. At the start of the book, Anne-Marie is still recovering from her abandonment by Cal when he shows up in her life again. But as ever he’s bringing trouble in his wake and the two are implicated in an accidental homicide, forcing them to flee across country. So far, so very familiarly pulpy and that’s no bad thing. And yet, it feels a little forced and sudden. I get that McFarlane is probably keen to get on with the story but it does feel like a slightly artificial way to bring the two together and keep them that way.
Because this is not a crime novel, it’s not a pulp novel. Not really. It’s about the growth of Anne-Marie’s courage to rid herself of a toxic relationship. I can’t help but feel a little more set-up into Anne-Marie’s state of mind, her past relationship with Cal (and others) might have made the transition into fugitive narrative a little smoother. As it is, the switch from pulp to something more introspective jars just a little.
However, once the pair get on the road, that’s when the story really picks up. The rest of novel is taken up with flashbacks into Anne-Marie’s past and a picaresque series of encounters with Gifford-esque oddballs and misfits as they try to get to the mountain town they believe will offer sanctuary. It’s an engaging series of encounters
There’s already quite a Next-Big-Thing buzz around McFarlane with this book and there’s certainly enough great writing here to justify that opinion. Both Anne-Marie and Cal are credibly drawn and their flight across a bleak sun-parched landscape is evocatively immersive. But I feel Highway Blue is just too slight a work to pin such hopes upon, especially as there are points where it feels like a set of detailed notes for a better and only slightly longer novel. Short novels are deceptively tricky beasts. Everything from pacing, to character, to plot has to be finely calibrated (think just how finely honed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is, or indeed any of Muriel Spark’s short novels. She’s the undisputed master of the form). There is paradoxically more margin for error in a longer novel, perhaps because you’ve got more room for recovery from missteps.
Nevertheless, this is a quick and absorbing read that’s well worth anybody’s time and points to an author with a really promising future. If nothing else, it’s a certainty that Highway Blue is going become a really great movie at some point in the future.

This read was really surprising. Thoroughly engrossing and wonderfully written in gorgeous, atmospheric, singular prose. I'd highly recommend reading for its vivid, transportive imagery and for the honest brilliance of its protagonist. It's very short but a real triumph. Unlike anything you'll read in a long time.

Highway Blue
Anne Marie is 21 and lives in a small town called San Padua. It’s not so much a life but an existence of dog walking by day and bartending by night. After work she goes home to a house that she shares with 4 strangers and it’s been like this since her husband, Cal, got up one morning and left. She hasn’t heard from him since. They got married when she was 19 and he left on their first anniversary.
Then he unexpectedly appears in her life again but Anne Marie doesn’t have what he wants. Money. And when an encounter in an alley ends in a death, he and Anne Marie take to the road to escape with a vague destination in mind. It’s a long trip across America and what will happen at the end of it?
This is a slim novella at 192 pages but I thought that Anne Marie was a believable character. She let things happen to her and seemed to be numb to the world. Cal turning up again out of the blue was the turning point that she needed to feel part of the world again although it wasn’t a welcome one.
Anne Marie narrates the story in the first person as she describes life on the road for two people without much money and a desire to vanish quickly. The long, long road, coffee shops, a model of a giant chicken on top of one gas station, framed misspelled Bible quotations on the walls of a pizza restaurant and the kindness of strangers who offer them lifts or a bed for the night. Along the way, she tells us about her history, her mother’s tragic death when she was aged 15, how she and Cal met and their honeymoon night in an abandoned house. Vignettes of lives and towns that flash past and out of sight as you drive past on your way to somewhere else. The impression that I had of Anne Marie was that she seemed to be someone who was walking through treacle. She had settled for a ‘little life’ and now she was stuck in it. But somewhere on the journey, Anne Marie realises that she has got to change her life.
Cal is someone who can put on ‘a different front’, she says that he’s untrustworthy when she finds a message on his phone from another woman, and he admits that he never loved her. He only came back to her out of desperation.
This is a confident debut novel which features a protagonist whose life isn’t what she would have chosen but appeared to be too alienated to have chosen anything else. However, the ending seemed to be more positive for Anna Marie. I really enjoyed her keen observations of life on the road with its brief glimpses of other lives and the way in which she tells us her story and her mother’s own thwarted dreams. She sees Cal and her as being ‘bunches of cells’ and I loved the description of the abandoned house in which they spend their wedding night which was full of drifted sand. It felt like a metaphor for their doomed relationship. This is a writer to watch.
My thanks to Vintage Secker and Netgalley for an ARC.

This is the story of Anne Marie, a young woman living in an apartment with 6 roommates. She works in a bar and doesn't really have much to do with her room mates. Anne Marie was married to Cal who left her on their first wedding anniversary. 2 years later Cal is back, knocking at Anne Marie's door looking to borrow money to pay back a debt. A reluctant Anne Marie agrees to a drink and, on the way home, they are mugged in an alleyway. During the mugging a gun goes off and their attacker lies dead - but who fired the fatal shot? Cal convinces Anne Marie to leave town immediately by hitch-hiking their way across the country in a bid to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the crime.

Being brutally honest, I did not like this book. I found the characters to be too one dimensional and there was no character development or apparent story arc at all. The writer relies on huge passages of dialogue that is so poorly structured and punctuated that it is not clear exactly who is speaking. I had no attachment to the characters in any way as there just isn't any character shown - at best we get a thumb nail sketch of them. I felt that the story is incomplete and feels more like reading a few chapters from the middle of another story. This is shown in the fact that Cal and Anne Marie run from the crime they committed and never have to pay for it - no body looks for them, no body cares about the dead guy, not even the girls that Anne Marie live with seem to care about where she is gone and it is days before they phone another friend to see if she has been in touch as they don't know where she is. The whole story seemed to serve the purpose of moving Anne Marie from one place to another for no apparent reason.

Avoid

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This novel comes across more like a screenplay, with highly descriptive passages oozing with atmosphere and heavy on the dialogue. The first person narrative is also cleverly written like spoken word, with cadences and repetition, lending an hypnotic quality to the reading experience, and although there is little action, it feels like being part of someone’s dream - a most impressive debut.

I'm sorry to say this was not my cup of tea. This could have been a great short story, but I'm under the impression the author was pushed to turn it into a novel by adding more and more useless information. And there were just far too many references to cicadas!

This was a short and interesting read, but I feel like it was let down slightly by the long sentences and repetitive style of writing.

The story is a modern Bonnie and Clyde - it follows a young 20-something woman called Anne Marie, who’s husband left her suddenly, a year after their wedding, two years ago. When he shows up again out of the blue, a law-breaking incident takes them on a soul-searching road trip where they are forced to rediscover the new people they have become.

There seemed to be a lot of unnecessary details in the text, especially things like full names of unimportant, fleeting or past characters, so I found myself skipping over a few disposable details. The writing style comes across as quite child-like sometimes - there are a lot of repeated descriptions and settings, especially when describing smells and heat. Repetition is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but the style of writing did feel accurate to the age of the character.

Choosing a favourite quote was easy, this one stood out to me by a mile and I love it! Anne Marie is describing why she slept with so many strangers after her marriage separation…

Favourite quote:

I thought he would stop me from being alone in my own head. I pinned that expectation on another collection of cells who was just as lost and hopeless and confused at finding themselves in the unexpected state of being conscious as I was.

Highway Blue will be available on May 6th 2021, thank you very much to Penguin Random House for the ARC.

Highway Blue by Ailsa Mcfarlane is about a young woman whose ex-husband comes back into her life bringing trouble and a road trip as they go on the run together.

I absolutely love this modern-day Bonnie and Clyde type story. The scenery is so real it could actually be a character in this vivid book. Well told perfectly paced, this will be one of the best books of the year.