Innominate

by Naomi Pearce

Tower Street, East London, 1975: a crumbling block of artists’ studios shaped by the myth of male genius but maintained by Connie, a female caretaker struggling to find her creative voice. Cut to 2017, and this same building is now luxury apartments, the new home of young couple Jane and Tam. Yet their fresh start is jeopardized when a chance discovery brings past secrets to light.

Drawing on interviews with artists, photographers and administrators, as well as autobiographical elements, Innominate is a mystery story about privilege and power, in which buildings (and bodies) alternately nurture, trap, and entangle their inhabitants. Perhaps it is only by dissecting the architecture of a place that we can truly understand what happened there?

Paperback

Published July 30, 2023

Reviews

[Elior]

Innominate defines as “not named”, and serves as a name for what we call the hipbone, being a structure formed by the fusion of three other, named, bones. The latter meaning forms an explicit analogy to the structure in this novel and the structure of this novel, split between timelines that take place in a massive building that was first a London factory, then a 1970s artist collective in a decaying post-industrial setting, then a redeveloped block of expensive flats that advertise their “authenticity” in the marks left by the buildings’ prior uses.

The image of bone as permanent, like a skeleton forever stuck in a cupboard, has created a false impression. Once formed, bones change. Osteoblasts secrete new bone, laying it down like bricks, while osteoclasts dissolve old bone tissue: a cellular demolition crew. What occurs is an ongoing process of replacement; this bone remodelling is occurring constantly within us. It is happening right now.

The general meaning of “innominate” also has applications to the novel. It has been partly written as a means of bringing to light the hidden role played by women who managed these historical artists collectives, kept them going concerns by doing the necessary practical work in the background while the mostly male artists did their art. Here she has a name: Connie, a young woman trying to develop her own art while living on-site in a shabby caretaker’s quarters, occupied by the myriad tasks that come along with that role.

That general meaning of the term can also apply in the situation of a crime that links the building’s artist collective era to the building’s tony redevolopment era in blood. It’s not really a mystery that gets solved so much as a dramatic illustration of something that Pearce writes,

Most of the time the artists keep themselves to themselves. Many live elsewhere: Notting Hill, Archway, Hampstead. The few who stay on site often never leave, only scuttling off to Cork Street openings or late-night dancing. They have little contact with the people around these streets. A city within a city. The encounter was a reminder: this is someone else’s patch.

The disconnect between the building’s occupiers in its post-factory history and the poorer residents in the terraces of nearby neighborhoods is also more subtly explicated in the redevelopment era when one of the flat’s new residents notes how expensive the basics of coffee and bread are at a popular trendy bakery that has appeared in the midst of the general gentrification of the area. “Must support local businesses” she thinks, ironically? Or maybe not?

The novel thus tackles several interesting topics and is smartly written. Excellent.

[endrju]

I was hoping for a more sustained and deeper exploration of relations between art, environment (both built and natural), queerness, and politics, but despite that novel is quite good, except for the last quarter or so when it turned into a sort of a whodunit. Bits like these are the reason why I wished it dealt more with the art: "An earthwork, according to the Americans, is a direct intervention into the land. But London is not California, and instead of black basalt rocks or great salt lakes, he makes do with polyester fibers and industrial emollients". This is the stuff of my academic career. Additional enjoyment came from the fact that the novel's set in Hackney, where my accommodation was when I visited London this year.

[misfired monologues]

bought on a whim and because it was clearance at a.p. books in berlin shortly before they closed.
enjoyed it immensely.

recommended it to a stranger when I saw it at a used book shop earlier this week and hope they took it home ('there's lesbians' seemed to be a major selling point to them)

[Manu]

I loved this quick gem, simple and complicated characters. Fun darkness all around

[Alice]

You know it’s a great book when you SLOW down so you can read longer 💪