book neglect

What do you do when the pile of books to review gets out of hand again? Well, firstly, you don't beat yourself up about it. Then you give in and write a little quickie about each one, even those that deserve a much better assessment. I do worry that I am reading without reflecting properly, or maybe just that I am but only inside my head and not being able to get it into words on the screen. I have had much enjoyment from my books recently, all very different.

First up, 'The Cockroach' by Ian McEwan, a wonderful rethinking of Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis'. I was really slow on the uptake and it took me a whole page to realise it was a cockroach transformed into a human. Very much a story of the moment, where the cockroaches are on a mission to fulfil the will of the people at any cost. I bought it for my sister, with the intention of borrowing it, but read it overnight when I visited so she could lend it to Geoff and then sent it on to dad, so we really got our money's worth out of that copy. I won't spoil the plot. The only bit that disappointed was that they seemed to adapt to being human far too quickly. Here is the last time their natural insect instincts are mentioned:

"They were in the cabinet room. Halfway down the long table by the largest chair was a tray of coffee, which the Prime Minister approached with such avidity that over the last few steps he broke into a run. He hoped to arrive ahead of his companion and snatch a moment with the sugar bowl. But by the time he was lowering himself into the chair, with minimal decorum, his coffee was being poured. There was no sugar on the tray. Not even milk. But in the grey shadow cast by his saucer, visible only to him, was a dying bluebottle. Every few seconds its wings trembled. With some effort Jim wrenched his gaze away while he listened. He was beginning to think he might sneeze.
'About the 1922 committee. The usual bloody suspects.'
'Ah, yes.'
'Last night.'
'Of course.'
When the bluebottle's wings shook they made the softest rustle of acquiescence.
'I'm glad you weren't there.'
When a bluebottle has been dead for more than ten minutes it tastes impossibly bitter. Barely alive or just deceased, it has a cheese flavour. Stilton, mostly.
'Yes?'
'It's a mutiny. And all over the morning papers.'
There was nothing to be done. The Prime Minister had to sneeze. He felt it building. Probably the lack of dust. He gripped the chair. For an explosive instant he thought he had passed out.
'Bless you. There was talk of a no-confidence vote.'
When he opened his unhelpfully lidded eyes, the fly had gone. Blown away.
'Fuck.' " (p.13-14)

'The Boy Next Door' by Irene Sabatini is set in Zimbabwe in the period after the end of colonial rule. It is the story of Lindiwe and Ian, the boy next door. It follows the years and struggles of their relationship, and the years of political chaos in a country struggling the decide what it wants for its future. It is such an intense picture of how a country copes with the aftermath of colonialism and how that history continues to impact so much of people's lives. While it focusses on the personal situation of the characters the political events sit in the background throughout.  This is the one that should have gotten a proper write up, so much stuff going on in the story

'The Bean Trees' by Barbara Kingsolver had been on the shelf for several years, picked out at random. It is the story of Taylor's escape from her claustrophobic home town, picking up a small child along the way, until she finds a random place and ends up staying there. It is just a lovely life affirming book, about people forming new bonds and building a life. It is about how community is built on mutual support and caring for those less fortunate. She leaves home not knowing what she is looking for, but has the wisdom to accept what comes and see the value of it. As always, thanks to Barbara for the sentences:

"The sun was setting, and most of the west-facing windows on the block reflected the fierce orange light as if the houses were on fire inside, but I could see plainly into Mattie's upstairs. A woman stood at the window. Her hair was threaded with white and fell loose around her shoulders, and she was folding a pair of men's trousers. She moved the flats of her hands slowly down each crease, as if folding these trousers were the only task ahead of her in life, and everything depended on getting it right." (p.119-120)

'Oranges are not the only Fruit' by Jeanette Winterson has sat on the shelf even longer. I had totally the wrong impression about this book. I assumed the rebellion was going to be against the religious upbringing, but she stays devoted to the church throughout, despite its rejection of her. Jeanette's religious devotion felt at odds with her growing sexual awakening, yet she seems perfectly able to reconcile the different viewpoints. She was just all round wonderful, thoughtful, assertive, forthright and morally certain; I could admire the way she stands up for herself even while disliking the upbringing she was getting. They really do eat oranges all the time. I thought the title was a metaphor. And again, she finds people who support her and works to build a different life for herself. Here she is chatting with the head teacher:

"'Well,' pressed Mrs Vole, 'I'm waiting.'
'I don't know,' I replied.
'And why, and this is perhaps more serious, do you terrorise, yes, terrorise, the other children?'
'I don't,' I protested.
'Then can you tell me why I had Mrs Spencer and Mrs Sparrow here this morning telling me how their children have nightmares?'
'I have nightmares too.'
'That's not the point. You have been talking about Hell to young minds.'
It was true. I couldn't deny it. I had told all the others about the horrors of the demon and the fate of the damned. I had illustrated it by almost strangling Susan Hunt, but that was an accident, and I gave her all my cough sweets afterwards.
'I'm very sorry,' I said, 'I thought it was interesting.'
Mrs Vole and Miss shook their heads.
'You'd better go,' said Mrs Vole. 'I shall be writing to your mother.' (p.41-2)

Whenever we go to Waterstones to browse I always end up in the poetry section, and I bought 'Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes' by Billy Collins, well, just because I love Bill Collins. The title poem is very subversive, but I found the four page meditation on the Victoria's Secret catalogue a little self indulgent. It has been bedtime reading for a week or two.





Sweet Talk
You are not the Mona Lisa
with that relentless look.
Or Venus borne forth over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell.
Or an odalisque by Delacroix,
veils lapping at your nakedness.

You are more like the sunlight 
of Edward Hopper,
especially when it slants
against the eastern side
of a white clapboard house
in the early hours of the morning,
with no figure standing
at a window in a violet bathrobe,
just the sunlight,
the columns of the front porch,
and the long shadows
they throw down
upon the dark green lawn, baby.

Making my way gradually through 'This is not a drill', a handbook of ideas and understanding the reality of the climate crisis. Get a copy if you want to be better informed about what is happening across the globe, and what people need to do about it. 
The election and the prospect of another Tory government has driven me to bury my head in the sand somewhat, but I did go out last week with some people from 'Stitch Up' in Chorlton to do some flyposting for the Labour Behind the Label campaign. 

The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller's 'The Song of Achilles' had been sitting on the side of the sofa for a month. It looked like a big fat book that would take me a while to read so I put it off in favour of shorter reads. It won the Orange Prize, since renamed the Women's Prize for Fiction, in 2012 (I discovered on browsing the archive that I have read four of the twenty long listed books from that year, and five from 2013.) This is a wonderful and enthralling book, and a fascinating alternative view of a well loved Greek myth. It is not so much the story of the Trojan War as the story of Achilles and Patroclus; Madeline Miller takes a story of friendship and transforms it into a bond of love that spans from their childhood into the long years of the war. It is a multi-sensory book, filled with rich descriptions of the time and place and people of ancient Greece. In the opening chapters we meet the cream of the Kings and heroes as they gather to bid for the hand of Helen, and the atmosphere bristling with testosterone sets the tone for the whole book, the undercurrents of tension and distrust. Add in the tensions between gods and mortals and you have the basis for a pretty eventful story. 
The young Patroclus is exiled after the death of a boy, so he is sent to be fostered at the palace of Peleus, where he is befriended by Achilles. As son of the goddess Thetis, Achilles is destined for greatness, but he is also a mortal and has human weaknesses. She does not approve of the friendship between the two boys and tries to separate them, but the bond between them almost has a destiny of its own and they try, pointlessly it turns out, to resist the prophesy. 

I have dithered over this review for several days because much as I enjoyed the book it was overshadowed somewhat by the frustration and anger that it evoked in me every time any women appeared in the story. The concept of women as mere chattel pervades the tale, beginning with Helen who is being sold off to the highest bidder, though in an unexpected turn of events is invited to choose her own husband (I think so her father doesn't have to upset any of the very tough men congregating in his palace). Thetis is a goddess but is 'given' by the gods to Peleus (for being such an all round great guy), who proceeds to rape her and she is then obliged to stay 'married' to him for a year. Slave girls in the house of Peleus exist partly for the pleasure of whoever feels like it, and to produce offspring who become new slaves. On Scyros Deidameia is 'given' to Achilles by Thetis in order to ensure a son to come after him. The woman Briseis taken in battle is 'rescued' from ravishment by Agamemnon by Achilles who takes her as a war trophy, but she becomes a pawn in their macho confrontation game. The events paint Patroclus is a positive light when he intervenes to save her again, when Achilles was more concerned about his own honour, a truly flawed hero I felt. While I know that this is part of the cultural attitudes and therefore part of the legend I found myself bristling in annoyance as I read, and so was left with the feeling that Achilles was a bit of a self-centred arsehole. 

" 'Do you not wonder why he did not prevent you from taking her?' My voice is disdainful. 'He could have killed your men, and all your army. Do you not think he could have held you off?'
Agamemnon's face is red. But I do not let him speak.
'He let you take her. He knows you will not resist bedding her, and this will be your downfall. She is his, won through fair service. The men will turn on you if you violate her, and the gods as well.'
I speak slowly, deliberately, and the words land like arrows, each to its target. It is true what I say, though he has been too blinded by pride and lust to see it. She is in Agamemnon's custody, but she is Achille's prize still. To violate her is a violation of Achilles himself, the gravest insult to his honour. Achilles could kill him for it, and even Menelaus would call it fair.
'You are at your power's limit even in taking her. The men allowed it because he was too proud, but they would not allow more.' We obey our kings, but only within reason. If Aristos Achaion's prize is not safe, none of ours are. Such a king will not be allowed to rule for long." (p.277)

If you add in the glorification of violence and senseless slaughter the actual context of the story left me cold. Patroclus tells the story in first person so it is his view of the situation that is most real, I came to care about him, and respect his love and utter devotion to Achilles. So, in conclusion, while it is beautifully written and true to the spirit of greek mythology, it's not really my kind of story.

All the world's a stage

Creature and I started reading 'The Rehearsal' by Eleanor Catton when mum first sent it for her several years ago, but then it was abandoned on her bookshelf. I picked it out for the Read-a-thon partly because her most recent offering had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (which it has since won). This is such a clever book because it constantly subverts what the reader thinks they know about the story and the people in it. Scenes are played, but then the people in them appear to 'step out of character' and be someone else, who is merely playing the role. We are following one story, but then are following the people who are telling that story, but then even that telling becomes unreliable, and then, because some of the story takes place in a drama school there are all sorts of other performances being rehearsed and acted out. And then there is this enigmatic saxophone teacher (unnamed) who acts a little like god, watching over the whole performance, trying to extract the 'truth' from some of the main players, but also trying to interfere and influence events and characters. Life is all about playing roles, and we all play different parts depending on the situation and the people we are with. People talk about the idea that you can only be 'the real you' with close friends and we tell our children to 'be themselves' when trying to make friends. The language of pretence and acting is all around us in our daily lives. This book really makes you think about how much of human behaviour is just playing a role. I liked it because nothing was straightforward or quite the way it appeared, that it felt like the reader is being taken for a ride, but you don't really mind because the view is fascinating.

Lots of quotes coming up just to give examples of why it was such an interesting read. Here Isolde and Julia are at a concert with the saxophone teacher, and Isolde is getting a closer look at the girl that the others in her year talk about:

"Her cardigan is buttoned with gold dome buttons and is unravelling slightly at the hem, giving her a careless scholarly look that makes Isolde feel young and clumsy and naive. She is wearing a silver turquoise ring on her ink-stained nail-bitten fingers, and tight-knit fishnet stockings underneath her skirt. Isolde drinks it all in and then feels oddly disappointed, looking at this newer, more complete version of Julia who is a whole person and not just an idea of a person. She feels jealous and excluded and even betrayed, as if Julia has no right to exist beyond Isolde's experience of her." (p.142)

And this one that follows a few pages later, and both of which touch on the idea of self-knowledge, and the individual's perception of reality and how we never know if what we perceive is 'real':

"Isolde thinks how strange it is, that every person in the auditorium is locked in their own private experience of the music, alone with their thoughts, alone with their enjoyment or distaste, and shivering at the vast feeling of intimacy that this solitude affords, already impatient for the interval when they can compare their experience with their neighbour's and discover with relief that they are the same. Am I hearing the same thing they are hearing? Isolde wonders half-heartedly, but she is distracted from pursuing the thought any further, turning her attention instead to watch an elderly woman in the stalls flounder noisily in her handbag for a tissue or mint." (p.144)

The main thrust of the story is about an affair between a male teacher and an older pupil, Isolde's sister Victoria, but partly it uses the idea of sexual experience as some kind of symbolic crossing point from youth into adulthood:

"Isolde hasn't yet learned to drive and Julia's offer makes her feel young and inexperienced and graceless, as if she is being forced to reveal that she can't read or that she is still afraid of the dark. The older girl seems impossibly mature to Isolde, like Victoria's friends always seem impossibly mature, powdered and scented and full of secrets and private laughter, contemptuous of little Issie for all that she does not yet know." (p.150)

There are many conversations between the saxophone teacher and the mother's of her pupils (always the mothers), who want to know something about their daughters that they think she will know, so we have this lovely observation on the nature of how unfathomable teenager are to their parents:

"The saxophone teacher doesn't speak for a moment, just so Mrs De Gregorio feels uncomfortable and wishes she hadn't spoken so freely. Then she says, 'But how can you ever know?' She is more brooding now and less abrupt. 'How can you ever get to the kernel of truth behind it all? You could watch her. But you have to remember there are two kinds of watching: either she will know she is being watched, or she will not. If she knows she is being watched, her behaviour will change under observation until what you are seeing is so utterly transformed it becomes a thing intended only for observation, and all realities are lost. And if she doesn't know she is being watched, what you are seeing is something unprimed, something unfit for performance, something crude and unrefined that you will try and refine yourself: you will try and give it a meaning that it does not inherently possess, and in doing this you will press your daughter into some mould that misunderstands her. So, you see, neither picture is what you might call true. They are distortions.' " (p.153-4)

It is also about the closed world of adolescence, and the power relationships between groups, and the way they all pass judgement on each other's lives and recognise the inequalities between them. I liked this one:

"The repeated validations become their mantra, and soon the richer girls come to believe the things they are compelled by shame to say. They come to believe that their needs are simply keener, more specialised, more urgent than the needs of the girls who queue outside the chippy and tuck the greasy package down their shirt for the walk home. They do not regard themselves as privileged and fortunate. They regard themselves as people whose needs are aptly and deservedly met, and if you were to call them wealthy they would raise their eyebrows and blink, and say, 'Well, it's not like we're starving or anything, but we're definitely not rich.' " (p.233)

Then towards the end the saxophone teacher sums it all up quite neatly for us, after all the trauma and stress and anxiety that the girls and their parents and their teachers go through over the affair and the random death of another girl:

"The saxophone teacher suddenly feels weary. She sits down. 'Mrs Bly,' she says, 'remember that these years of your daughter's life are only the rehearsal for everything that comes after. Remember that it's in her best interests for everything to go wrong. It's in her best interests to slip up now, while she's still safe in the Green Room with the shrouded furniture and the rows of faceless polystyrene heads and the cracked and dusty mirrors and the old newspapers scudding across the floor. Don't wait until she's out in the savage white light of the floods, where everyone can see. Let her practice everything in a safe environment, with a helmet and kneepads and packed lunches, and you at the end of the hall with the door cracked open a dark half-inch in case anyone cries out in the long hours of the night.' " (p.244)

But the last word falls to Julia, who, in an excellent performance, breaks down all the barriers and calls the adults on their small minded hypocrisy. This, I find, has something very theatrical about it, it has the ring of the final speech of Romeo and Juliet where we are warned to learn the lessons of the story; take heed:

" 'We learned that everything in the world divides in two: good and evil, male and female, truth and falsehood, child and adult, pleasure and pain. We learned that the counsellor possessed a map, a map that would make everything make sense. A key. Like in a theatre programme where you have the actors' names on one side and the list of characters on the other - some neat division that divides the illusive from the real. We learned that there is a distinction - between the performance and the performer, the reality and the lie. We learned there is no middle ground.'
Julia surveys her audience.
'Only those who watch,' she says, 'and those who suffer being watched.'
The others don't dare to rustle.
'But the counsellor lied,' Julia says. 'You lied. You lied about the pain of it, the unsimple mess of it, immeasurably more thorny and wrecked and raw than you could ever remember, with the gauze veil of every year that passes settling over your eyes, thicker and thicker until even your own childhood dissolves into the mist.' " (p.309-10)

Swaddled in Stories

"As my aunt twisted in her seat in the shade searching for the right word, as Vincent licked his fingers and filled his mouth with jerk pork, and as Violet scowled and chided me to listen, they laid a past out in front of me. They wrapped me in a family history and swaddled me tight in its stories. And I was taking back that family to England. But it would not fit in a suitcase - I was smuggling it home." (p.325-6)

This little quote pretty much sums up 'Fruit of the Lemon' by Andrea Levy, which I have been reading for the TBR Pile Challenge 2013 (but also because of how much I loved Small Island). This book is similarly about a family who's roots are in Jamaica, but it focusses on Faith, the daughter of the family and her experience of growing up black in Britain. She is vaguely embarrassed by the notion that her parents 'came over on a banana boat' and seems more concerned with fitting in than understanding her family history. She gets her degree, starts work in a lowly job at the BBC and moves into a shared house with some friends, including, to the horror of her parents, two boys. They in turn try to pair her up with a nice young man who works with her dad, and her brother Carl's new girlfriend is aghast that she seems to have no sense of her true identity. Her parents are also making plans to return to Jamaica. She cannot understand their link to the island and is determined to separate herself from them and forge her own sense of belonging. Then she witnesses a violent incident and it brings home for her the realities of racial politics. 

The second half of the book takes Faith to visit her extended family in Jamaica and here she learns her family history and develops a real sense of connection to who they were and what they experienced. Various members of the family each in turn tell the the story of various other members and gradually the whole story is built up. 

What I loved about this part of the book was the family tree that appears at the beginning of each chapter, and that is gradually added to as we are introduced to new people and go further back in time. It was very helpful too as it allowed me to visualise the links between each generation and remember who was married to who, or grandmother to who, or sister to who; it did all get quite complicated. It was all so beautifully written, the whole atmosphere of the place and particularly the culture shock that Faith experiences when she arrives that is transformed over her visit into a genuine sense of belonging.

Here she is arriving:
"My aunt took both my hands in hers then moved my arms open and looked me up and down. 'You skinny,' she concluded with a laugh. I laughed too then leant forwards to hug her. She was angular and brittle like a bag of crisps and I didn't use my full force in the hug for fear of crushing her.
'I was scared you wouldn't be here,' I said with a smile. One of my aunt's eyebrows rose alarmingly on her forehead and her lips tightened into a thin line as she pierced Vincent with a stare. Vincent looked at his mother and then at me and laughed, 'Of course we here.' " (p.176)

Stories: 
Grace's story (Faith's grandmother) as told by Aunt Coral:
"Nathaniel and Grace had known each other since they were little children. They used to play together by the river when she met him on her way from school. It was Nathaniel who taught her to climb trees and it was Nathaniel's fault Grace got beaten for ripping the sleeve of her dress. 'I don't think your mummy knows this so don't go tellin' her...' Nathaniel asked grace to marry him and she said she would. But Grace's mother did not approve of the match. She said that Nathaniel's family were only cane cutters. That he was too rough, too poor, too dark, too ignorant, for her daughter. Her mother told Grace she must never see Nathaniel again. But they met in secret and nathaniel gave Grave a ring that he made form an old coin. It didn't fit her finger so she kept it in her pocket. 'I saw it once - big ugly thing.' " (p.229-30)

Cecelia story (Faith's great grandmother) told by cousin Vincent:
"Then one day Cecelia was standing on a chair and stretching up to pick tamarinds from a tree with her baby strapped to her back in an old curtain, she slipped and was caught by a man. The man was Benjamin Nelson Hilton. 'Your great-grandfather. But when my mummy tells that story there is no baby, no curtain - nothing is strapped to her back.' " (p.260)

Obadiah and Margaret (Wade's parents, Faith's paternal grandparents) told by Violet:
"Obadiah began to import ribbons. He bought then from an American man who sent Obadiah the finest-quality ribbons in Kingston. Silk ribbon - grosgrain and watered. Satin ribbon - plain, brocaded and striped. Obadiah then sold them to shops. After a while he added lace - torch on, Chantilly and fine silk chiffon - gentlemen's collars and cuffs, embroidery silks, sewing silks, cotton thread on spools and the occasional bolt of novelty gingham cloth.
He met Margaret Little, my grandmother, in one of the shops he supplied. She worked at the back of the shop as a seamstress. 'Although she say she was dressmaker. No one knew the difference but her. But she stick up her nose and say dressmaker not seamstress, if you please. All show.' " (p.281-2)

The whole book has a real sense of history, both as a big thing that encompasses everyone and as a personal tale of the events of individual lives. And Faith is drawn in to the story of her family, and sees and experiences the island that forms the backdrop to the stories. It is a complex interweaving of events that brings her to understand where she comes from and where she belongs. All the story tellers are open and honest, seeing the flaws of their family characters but loving them anyway, not judging, just telling it like it was. Very engaging and real characters, the book takes you into a family and almost makes you feel like you belong too.

The Swimmer

'The Swimmer' by Roma Tearne has been on my mental TBR list since I heard her talk at the literature festival back on 2011 though the listening to has taken a back seat over the last few weeks to all the other stuff. I have to start with a thumbs up to Patience Tomlinson who does an excellent job of the narration in this production, articulating the different characters beautifully.

Spoiler Alert (some disclosure of the plot events.)
Although the story is centred around the killing by mistaken identity of a young illegal immigrant, Ben, and there is quite some discussion about the issue of immigration and the perpetuation of distrust and dislike of immigrants, the book is really focussed on three women. Rea is a middle aged poet living in a house that had belonged to her aunt and uncle, having returned there after the breakup of a long term relationship. We are given her background story of the loss of her beloved father and the neglect of her mother. In her adult life she has a strong bond of friendship with Eric, an older neighbour, but is politely tolerant of her bigoted and arrogant brother. Into her very quiet life comes Ben, a qualified doctor who has escaped the violent regime and war in his homeland of Sri Lanka and is trying to stay out of trouble while he waits for the immigration people to grant him permission to stay. The first third of the book follows their gradually developing friendship that turns unexpectedly into a love affair and sweeps away all the preconceptions Rea has about herself. Just as she is beginning to think he will be part of her life Ben is snatched away when he is shot by police, having been mistaken for a terrorist, a group of whom are coincidentally holed up in a neighbouring house. The second part shifts narrator and we meet Anula, Ben's mother, who arrives from Sri Lanka for his funeral. She relates her tale while on a coach journey back to the airport and it shifts in time, telling of her life back home and then segments of her time in England and then back to her feelings as she is leaving. Both women keep up a front of stoicism, neither allowing the other to share what they feel is a private grief; I kept expecting them to break down and bond over their love for Ben but it never happens. At the same time Anula allows herself to be swept up by the caring tenderness of Eric, an experience that both shocks and delights her in the face of her grief. The third part introduces Lydia, Rea's daughter, a young teenager trying to come to terms with the loss of her mother and her sense of lack of identity. With Eric's help the story and the women are drawn back together to find some kind of solace and resolution. (Her existence did not come as a shock to me as the lingering reference at the beginning to Rea's childlessness and then her feeling unwell seemed obvious clues to where the story was headed.)

The whole story is about the different ways that people grieve; all the characters have lost someone, mostly in traumatic ways. It is about how people isolate themselves, or how grief isolates you. It is quite an emotionally charged story, lurching between love and death. Roma Tearne's homeland is obviously very important to her and she gets across the damage that the political strife has inflicted on the people, the sense of uncertainty and vulnerability that is experienced when a regime tries to suppress a population. It is contrasted quite starkly with the quiet unruffled life of rural East Anglia. The two women's reactions to the encounter with the lawyer is very telling; Rea is determined that the police will be called to account for their actions, Anula is resigned to the absolute power of anonymous authorities and wants only to be left with her private experience of having lost her son. Although the story opens with some animal murders that were designed to implicate the immigrant community (perpetrated it turns out by right wing extremists) I felt that the politics of the situation was very secondary to the human story. All the characters are well drawn, complex and sympathetic in their own ways, particularly Eric who takes on this wonderful, sightly counter-intuitive nurturing role for the three women. There is also the lovely contrast of atmosphere, from the summer of Rea and Ben's blossoming relationship to the depths of winter for the funeral; there are lots of wonderful descriptions of the countryside and seascapes. This is a lovely intense story, quite dark and serious; in some ways the anger expressed by Lydia in the final few chapters is almost refreshing after so much suppressed sorrow. Certainly a very emotional read (or listen in my case), highly recommended.

Stories are what keep us alive

Julie lent me 'If I Told You Once' by Judy Budnitz (who doesn't seem to have her own website). It is storytelling in the old tradition, a family saga that proceeds down the generations but with the mythology and history binding the whole thing together. Some things that are recounted seem to be myth but could be real, some that seem real could just be myth. It is the blurring of the lines that makes it such an interesting read.

I think I must have started reading this before, I kept finding passages that were very familiar, and I'm not sure you could ever read about Ilana's birth and forget it. Here her father opens the door to a gang of bandits while her mother is in labour:

"Then my father stepped full into the light. He stood drenched in sweat, shirt torn, his beard standing up on his face in wild tufts, eyes bulging, and his arms wet to the elbow with blood. My mother's squeals flew about him in a fury, a windstorm of shrieks and venom.
He held his hands out to them. Gentlemen he said softly, as soon as I finish killing my wife, I will be glad to oblige you.
They looked at the blood, his crazed eyes, the scratches my mother's nails had left on his chest. But it was my mother's wrenching, inhuman cries that drove them back out into the storm." (p.3)

Besides Ilana and her family few other characters appear through the book, but most significant are a trio of old village hags who terrify her as a child and then somehow come back to torment her in old age:

"Three old women.
They sat in a row on a single bench in the centre of the village. Three women with the same face. People said they were sisters, or mother and daughters, cousins, no one knew for sure. In winter they huddled in their shawls with snow up to their knees. In summer the flied hung back from them at a respectful distance.
They had the same face, skin delicate with age, soft and threatening to tear like wet paper. The same face three times over, same violet-coloured eyes in purple-veined pouches of skin. People said if you watched closely you'd see them blink and breathe in unison. The pulses beating together in their temples." (p.14)

And then after the village has been destroyed, on the horse Ilana steals from the soldiers:

"I saw it in the distance, rearing and frothing. Three skinny scarecrow figures sat jammed together on the saddle. They raised their arms and shrieked, in terror or delight, as the horse reared again, panicking. Three sets of bony heels stuck out from the sides of the animal, kicking against it impatiently. It began to run, the women clutched each other with their tattered shawls and long unbound skeins of hair streaming out behind them. I thought I could almost see their cries trailing in the cold air like ragged banners." (p.57)

And again she finds them on the streets in America, their appearance being a reminder of her inability to escape her past:

"I saw them a second time; three women, waiting for the bus, shopping bags at their feet. The bags reeked of fish, wetness leaked from them and crept into the pavement making ancient designs. Their mouths, constantly talking. Their hands never still. The roar of the bus drowned out their words. Bit I knew it was them; they did not board the bus when it came, they were waiting there for something else. They held their bench and watched the oblivious people passing by.
I wanted to be sure. I edged close to the back of their bench, I bent low, I sniffed softly and caught their smell, that distinctive smell, the sweetness and rot. No one else in the world had that smell." (p.236-7)

As much as it is about myths, it is also about history, and also to a certain extent about how history almost becomes myth. This a tale related by a young woman who arrives from Europe:

"She spoke of hunger and cold and disease, and these were things we could all understand. The confinement she spoke of, the sudden violence - we all had known that. But she also spoke of a world where logic had gone awry, where babies were taken from mothers, husbands separated from wives, gold teeth drawn from living mouths, bodies piled up like haystacks, hay made into soup, people given numbers because names were an indulgence. A place where great fires burned constantly, black smoke filled the sky yet everyone was dying from cold. A place of dogs and casual bullets meeting the backs of heads, everything as arbitrary as the made-up rules in a child's game." (p.111)

Time moves on in the story and Ilana's story is taken over by her daughter Sashie. The war takes her sons and then news of his family's fate takes her husband. Sashie chooses herself a husband in the hope of escaping her mother's story, to take herself into the modern world but when he turns out to be all surface and no substance between them they find the means to rid themselves of the encumbrance. The sinister 'cleaning company' that begins by removing rubbish and then morphs into something that removed unwanted 'stuff' from your life is obviously a reference to something that was lost on me. But life goes on, and without the income the husband provided they love back to the poor tenement they started in. Her son and daughter, Jonathan and Mara, again appear at first to be taking them into a new future but the gravitational pull of their past is too great, its influence is palpable. They try to resist it but cannot:

"She had always warned me to be sure to wear clean underwear without any tears. You never know when you might get run over by a bus, or fall in the river or something, she said. If the people at the hospital or the morgue discovered torn underpants, it would bring shame down upon the family for generations." (p.187)

Their lives are claustrophobic and insular, lived inside their apartment with little outside contact and no friendships. Jonathan goes to medical school, finds a girlfriend, but his attempts at normality are thwarted by Mara's obsessive jealousy and love for him. Again a means is found to rid them of unwanted elements, but not before Jonathan has disappeared and the young woman in question has left them with a baby to raise. Nomie is the next generation (a corruption of Naomi), the victim of an emotional tug-of-war between her aunt, grandmother and great-grandmother. She choses Ilana, and sits and listens to the lessons she has to tell:

"This girl sits near me sometimes, her face looks so familiar it might be my own. I looked like that once; I still do when I close my eyes. Mirrors are a cruel trick, they show you only one point in time when the truth lies elsewhere.
Talking to her is like talking to myself.
... She reminds me of babies born in the village where I grew up, babies whom people said were born old, babies who did not cry and watched us all with world-weary eyes and died within days.
this girl is like that. She looks as if she might understand if I tried to warn her, tried to explain, tried to tell her about the three of them." (p.235-6)

The three old women take on a symbolic representation of the inevitable and repeated cycles of life, the traps that people fall into and the unreflected lives they live.

"The only way to stave them off is to tell someone.
I needed to beat them at their own game, drown out their story with mine.
I thought suddenly of the girl who listens, that girl with my face, the only one who listens to me now.
I was afraid for you, I feared they would notice you, recognise my features on your face. They will drag you back with them and force you to repeat it all, go through the motions over and over, a treadmill life.
The only way to protect you is to warn you. That is what I am trying to do.
Please, listen. Please do not pat my hand or offer me tea.
If I tell you what I know then perhaps you will be able to evade them. Mara and Sashie have already failed without knowing it, they have fallen into the ruts long ago; they are treading in circles in their in-looking lives, circles within circles, getting smaller and smaller until soon they will be spinning in place. But you, I want to teach you to break away.
It is a paradox, isn't it? To make you learn about history and its patterns in the hope that you will rebel against the lesson, escape those patterns and go your own way." (p.239-40)

But in a way the words of Ilana are more profound than just for her. The story has a simple straightforward narrative, following the family's history, each new voice arrives and struggles for a while to be themselves but then finds herself sucked backwards into the past, and becomes just another layer; Ilana becomes just like her mother and in turn Sashie becomes like Ilana. It is as if their life exists in some kind of time warp, outside of the rest of the world, the power of tradition and superstition and myth is almost too great to resist. Nomie seems to resist, seems to fight, so there is hope. The whole book is just so dense and descriptive and luscious, it feels more like looking at a very large intricate painting where images swirl around each other, linking and circling round to link back to another place. One last one because this is such a beautiful example of the writing:

"The trouble is not with my eyes; my vision is as sharp as ever. It is the world that has become more blurred. 
It is the air here, they talk of pollution, ions, electricity, ozone, something. The air is limp, greasy, it blunts the senses. No one sees clearly anymore." (p.238)

Judy Budnitz also has a collection of short stories called 'Flying Leap', I put them on my library request list. If you like traditional folk stories then this is definitely one for you.

The Tiger's Wife - TBR Pile Challenge

The Tiger'sWife by Téa Obreht was the Orange Prize winner in 2011 (continuing an ad hoc challenge to read all the winners) and is also the sixth book from my TBR pile challenge 2013. What struck me most was the apparent youth of the author and the way the book has such various and tangled threads, something you would expect from someone with more life experience. It's one of those books that makes you think that in reality you have to have lived an interesting life, or at least had a culturally interesting background, in order to write a novel; the author was born on Yugoslavia and moved from there to escape the conflict, ending up in America; her writing is obviously informed very much by the traditional storytelling of her childhood.

So the story is about family, history, mythology and superstition. And war, but not war as in bombs and guns, but in the impact it has on a population and the culture. It takes place against the backdrop of the war that tore apart the country that was Yugoslavia but harks back to the period of World War Two and the childhood of our narrator's grandfather. I was a little confused for a while, because in fact there are two tigers; the one she visits with her grandfather, and the other that escapes from the zoo during the war and comes to find itself living outside her grandfather's village. The story moves back and forth in time, via the stories that he grandfather tells her about the deathless man and the tiger's wife. There are long digressions, like the story about Luca, who's only purpose seems to be to explain the presence of the young girl who becomes the tiger's wife, but I liked that about the book, it gave the whole tale a level of complexity that was very engaging. Further suggested reading in the back listed One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and though I never managed to finish that book I could see the link, both in the themes and the style. This book is similarly about history and dramatic change but also the unchanging nature of communities, about how myths and stories bind people together and create continuity. But it is also about the negative side of mythology and superstition; the men digging in the village for the body of a relative to lift a curse, and how the tiger's wife comes to symbolise the fear that the villagers have of the unknown and their desire to destroy the tiger and her is the only reaction that they can have to the situation.

Alongside the beautifully written story she makes some very interesting and astute observations of the effect of the war on a population (the second one here I found left me quite depressed, there is something hopeless about it):

"When your parents said, get your ass to school, it was alright to say, there's a war on, and go down to the riverbank instead. When they caught you sneaking into the house at three in the morning, your hair reeking of smoke, the fact that there was a war on prevented then from staving your head in. When they heard from neighbours that your friends had been spotted doing a hundred and twenty on the Boulevard with you hanging non too elegantly out the sunroof, they couldn't argue with there's a war on, we might die anyway. They felt responsible, and we took advantage of their guilt because we didn't know any better." (p.34-5)

"When your fight has purpose - to free you from something, to interfere on behalf of an innocent - it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling - when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event - there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it." (p.281)

I always enjoy feeling like I've learned something new when I read. The aforementioned Luka leaves his destiny of butchery (the chopping meat kind not the fighting kind) and goes off to find a new life as a wandering musician, playing the Gusla, which is one of these, a curious single stringed instrument (which you can hear being played here). He has a slightly idealised view of the life that he hopes to find, and it bought back down to earth rather abruptly:
"As to the musicians themselves, they were more complicated than Luca had originally expected, a little more ragtag, disorganised, a little more dishevelled and drunk than he had imagined. They were wanderers, mostly, and had a fast turnover rate because every six months or so someone would fall in love and get married, one would die of syphilis or tuberculosis, and at least one would be arrested for some minor offence and hanged in the town square as an example to the others." (p.195)

Anyway,  having meandered though history for a while we return to the present, and a young woman trying to make sense of her grandfather's death and life, and the strange events going on in the orchard outside the house she is staying in. Really just a quote that I liked because of the image at the end, but on re-reading says something interesting about how dislocating death is:
"The heat of the day, compounded by my early morning in the vineyard, had caught up with me. I felt I'd waited years for the body to be found, though I'd only heard about it that morning - somehow being in Zdrevkov had changed everything, and I didn't know what I was waiting for anymore. My backpack was on my knees, my grandfather's belongings folded up inside. I wondered what they would look like without him: his watch, his wallet, his hat, reduced by his absence to objects you could find at a flea market, in somebody's attic." (p.232)

And another one, about death, because in many ways the story is about death, and what it means. It kind of sums up what went wrong in Yugoslavia:
"I married your grandmother in a church, but I would still have married her if her family had asked me to be married by a hodza. What does it hurt me to say happy Eid to her, once a year - when she is perfectly happy to light a candle for my dead in the church? I was raised Orthodox; on principle, I would have had your mother christened Catholic to spare her a full dunking in that filthy water they kept in the baptismal tureens. In practice, I didn't have her christened at all. My name, your name, her name. In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground." (p.282-3)

All in all a lovely tale, in the traditional sense of the word; it felt as if I was reading something written much much longer ago.

Half of a Yellow Sun

I am getting to the end of the back catalogue of Orange Prize winners. I felt a little like I cheated with 'Half of a Yellow Sun' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as I have not read it but have been listening to it on audiobook for a couple of months now. In my defence I am not sure I would have stuck it out in print as it was long and took quite some time to get into the story. It is the story of post-colonial Nigeria and the ensuing civil war and the creation and reabsorption of the state of Biafra.

If you look at a map of Africa, and compare it to a map of Europe, the first thing you should notice are all the straight lines. This is because the countries in Africa are a creation of the Scramble for Africa that occurred across the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, and have very little to do with political or tribal divisions of land that might have existed prior to that time. Right up to the present day the impact of imperialism continues to be felt throughout the continent, and the conflict in Nigeria is only the first of many that have blighted Africa's modern history. In addition of course the situation was all wrapped up with the power of oil and the fear of the spread of the Cold War. While the history of colonialism was something I studied at Polytechnic the internal history of Nigeria is something only vaguely aware of. In fact it is the ensuing famine rather than the war that I recall dominating the news at the time, images of starving children graphically portrayed to shame the world. 

The book is written slightly from a distance as the two central women, twins Olanna and Kainene, are from a wealthy, privileged background and, although they are both trying to escape the insidious influence of their parents, the war takes some time to impact on their lives. But the book is told more from the perspective of the two men who idolise them; houseboy Ugwu, who works for Ogdenigbo, Olanna's lover, and Richard, an english writer who falls in love with Kainene. They represent two different aspect of, or ways of viewing the situation; Ugwu arrives at the house of Ogdenigbo, who is a 'revolutionary' thinker, who arranges for him to be educated and inadvertently exposes him to all sorts of new political ideas. Richard on the other hand has a rather romantic idea of Africa and it's culture and ends up caught between, rejecting his britishness, coming to think of himself as african but not really accepted. I think what is interesting about the book is the variety of perspectives that you have, and the way that often the characters continue to be concerned with their personal lives while the political and then military conflict wages around them, until things become too close for comfort. People die 'off screen' as it were, and it is not until Ugwu is conscripted into the Biafran army that we are face to face with the violence. Olanna and Ogdenigbo are forcibly removed from their after dinner political discussions right into the thick of real conflict. The more conservative Kainene abandons her business interests and ends up working in a refugee camp. Chimamanda captures very vividly the fear and distrust that takes over the country as tribal divisions become dominant, how everyone looks at their former neighbours with suspicion, and accusations of disloyalty and subversion abound. The story is about the people, and you become closely attached to their fate, but it is about the country too. The westernised political elite in Nigeria got their political and economic power from the situation that was handed down to them and had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and supported by the western governments they essentially starved the Igbo people into submission. It is a very political book, designed not only to tell a story but to remind the world of the events and what the author feels is their ongoing significance. A very difficult book but important and enlightening. There is a very poignant poem in the book, which I managed to find in full over on a blog entitled Dark Continent:

'Were you silent when we died' 

Did you see photos in sixty-eight 
Of children with their hair becoming rust: 
Sickly patches nestled on those small heads, 
Then falling off, like rotten leaves on dust? 

Imagine children with arms like toothpicks, 
With footballs for bellies and skin stretched thin. 
It was kwashiorkor—difficult word, 
A word that was not quite ugly enough, a sin. 

You needn’t imagine. There were photos 
Displayed in gloss-filled pages of your Life.
Did you see? Did you feel sorry briefly, 
Then turn round to hold your lover or wife? 

Their skin had turned the tawny of weak tea 
And showed cobwebs of vein and brittle bone 
Naked children laughing, as if the man 
Would not take photos and then leave, alone.

August Orange book: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
I have sat and stared at this part-written post for several days not sure how to write about this book. The book has raised a lot of fuss and response since it was published. It is a very good novel. It is very readable and the characters are warm and believable and real ... but it is an essentially superficial and slightly rose-tinted version of the situation at the time it was set. What discomfited me was that it did not discomfit me enough; it was as if it was saying that because these women were brave and strong and resilient that the situation they were in was somehow ok. The story is designed to be uplifting and heart-warming, not to essentially challenge or question the status quo.

Set in Jackson Mississippi in 1962 the book is narrated by three women, Aibileeen and Minny, black maids, and Miss Skeeter, an affluent young white woman with journalistic aspirations. Sparked by the unexplained disappearance of her much loved maid Constantine, Skeeter decides to try and write about the lives and experiences of the black 'help' who run the homes and raise the children of the middle class white families. The story follows the three of them as they learn to trust each other and attempt to break down the social barriers that keep them apart. While Stockett says in her postscript how "there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I have the ink or the time to portray" I ended up feeling that the book was too cosy and brushed too superficially over the potential harm that could befall the women who help Skeeter with her project. She is presented as a much more sympathetic character than the odious Miss Hilly, who we are encouraged to despise, but for all her rising awareness of the social and political iniquity she is not interested in doing anything to change the way things are. The civil rights movement is really beginning to gain momentum but the people of Mississippi want to keep their heads in the sand and pretend it is never going to affect them. In reality the book is a character book, about the women and their friendship and is quite self-consciously not political.

That's it really. I can't think of a good way to articulate what I thought about it, so I will give you this long quote. It is from a chapter by Minnie. It seems to sum up the situation and expresses the catch 22 situation that they are all in. She is talking initially about her employer, Miss Celia, a 'white trash' woman who has married above her social status and is struggling to understand her position and gain acceptance:

" 'She just don't see em. The lines. Not between her and me, not between her and Hilly.'
Aibileen takes a long sip of her tea. Finally I look at her. 'What you so quiet for? I know you got a opinion bout this.'
'You gone accuse me a philosophising.'
'Go ahead,' I say. 'I ain't afraid a no philosophy.'
'It ain't true.'
'Say what?'
'You talking about something that don't exist.'
I shake my head at my friend. 'Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.'
Aibileen shakes her head. 'I used to believe in em. I don't anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain't.'
'I know they there cause you get punished for crossing em,' I say. 'Least I do.'
'Lot a folks think if you talk back to you husband, you crossed the line. And that justifies punishment. You believe in that line?'
I scowl down at the table. 'You know I ain't studying no line like that.'
'Cause that line ain't there. Except in Leroy's head. Lines between black and white ain't there neither. Some folks made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.' " (p.311-12)

An interesting read, but you can see why it has also been widely criticised. I am going to move the film to the top of the Lovefilm list as I am very curious to watch it now.

Fourth Orange book: 26a

26a by Diana Evans won the first Orange Prize for New Writers back in 2005.  I have reviewed a couple of others from the New Writers lists: The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam from 2008 and The Personal History of Rachel Dupree from 2009. I also have it in mind to reread How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (also from 2005) since she reports on her blog that they have just begun filming in deepest Wales and it is a film that the girls and I will definitely be going to see.


26a has been a curious read since I have also been listening on CD to 'Half a Yellow Sun' by Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie, and a chunk of 26a is set in Nigeria so there was an interesting juxtaposition of cultural images and experiences. While I really enjoyed this book I kept feeling that I was not sure what kind of book the writer intended it to be. Is it a coming of age/loss of innocence story; there is an element of childlike naivety in Georgia and Bessi, the main protagonists, that persists throughout the book as we follow them in their growing up. It had the whole family saga thing going on, with the back story of Ida and how she ended up in Neasden, and the reassuring presence of their home at number 26 that they keep coming back to. And then there is this magical realist thing going on, with the rich imaginary life that the girls live, and share, dreams being significant and often foreboding, but this seems to lurch later in the book into an examination of mental illness. When they go off to live in Nigeria the book turns into a bit of a culture clash tale, examining where the children feel they belong. Yet in some ways it manages to successfully be all of these things without feeling too cluttered. While there are extended family and friends and so on the story keeps it's focus on the twins and it is their progress that you are engaged with.


What I really liked about it was the relationship between all four of the girls, the cohesion and loyalty between them in the face of a mother who withdraws and a father who becomes an alcoholic. The writing has a very chatty style, somewhat reminiscent of the way pre-teen girls talk to each other. It is very in the moment, from the perspective of youth, not of adults looking back to their childhood, and held in place historically by the parallel story of the marriage of Charles and Diana (there is a failed attempt to reignite the love between their parents by insisting they all watch the ceremony together). 


"Late in the summer of 1980, Kemy knocked on the door (that was the rule) when the twins were tring to decide whether Ida and Aubrey should get a divorce or not. Georgia had put a jar of roses on the windowsill so that she could picture them while she was deciding, and sliced a nectarine for them to share afterwards - the nectarine was their favourite fruit, because it's flesh was the colour of sunset. Bessi had wrapped her special duvet round her because she couldn't think when she was cold. Sky-blue slippers on their feet, they sat down in the strawberry corner and shut their eyes. They thought long and hard about it, drifting through possibilities. Five minutes past and ten minutes. Then into the silence, Georgia said, 'Mummy can't drive.' Bessi had not thought of this. It was definitely important because they needed a car for shopping and getting Ham to the vet next week to see to his cold. A cold could kill a hamster." (p.6)


It is just a wonderful portrait of family dynamics and the special relationship between twins, that is both a blessing and a burden. Am just going to put this other quote in because it made me smile, because Creature is the only baby I know who never ate bananas, and still hates them. Bessi has left home and gone to do voluntary work in the Carribean, this is in a letter to Georgia:


"Mrs John thinks I'm a rhinoceros. She gives me tons of rice and peas, and chicken, she even tried to give me the bum but i wasn't having that. I've told her I can't eat eggs or spinach and I don't like bananas. She's fine with the eggs and spinach, but she doesn't get the bananas bit. Her son Mervin is a banana farmer. In fact, most of the men in Trinity are banana farmers because it's a banana village. There's a plantation not far away up the mountain where they all go in the mornings with their knives. Mrs John keeps putting sliced bananas on the table at breakfast. She sits down and watched me not eat them, then she says to me, 'Why not try the banana, it's good for you?' She's arranged for Mervin to take me up to the plantation because she thinks it will cure me. I don't want to go, I don't want to go, if I must go I'll have to hold my breath to hide from the smell." (p.137)


Anyway, we're off in the morning (that me and Julie and some of our offspring) so I hope everyone has a great week and that the sun arrives for you too wherever you might be, since it seems that it is going to be shining down on us in deepest Suffolk.

Third Orange Book: Home

Home by Marilynne Robinson won the Orange Prize back in 2009. I have read 'Housekeeping', her first novel from 1980, twice and love it. By coincidence the film adaptation was on the other night and I watched it, but it was sorely disappointing, not really capturing anything for the true atmosphere of the book or even the characters. I started reading 'Home', and in the first few pages it mentions Gilead (the place) so I looked it up to check it wasn't a sequel to 'Gilead' the novel, but found that it is set in the same place, the stories running concurrently. 'Home' follows the Boughton family, and the return of the prodigal son, Jack. It is about the troubled relationship between Jack and his father, though it is narrated from the point of view of Glory, the youngest daughter, also returned home to care for her dying father.


Set in very small town America, in the 1950's, with it's very small town attitudes mixed with a religious and social conservatism that is very confining Jack seems to have lived his whole life somewhat on the outside of everything, even his own family, never quite feeling like he belonged. After an absence of twenty years he seems to have come home to try and make peace with his father. Glory has returned following a lengthy failed engagement, during which it appears she has been swindled out of quite a bit of money, and a marriage that never happened, but which she keeps secret from her father and the local community. Jack has hit rock bottom, having been an alcoholic for many years and then in prison, but he too is hiding from a collapsed relationship, hoping the woman in question might forgive whatever depths he has fallen to. Her writing is just wonderful, so good that it allows me to skate over the continuous references to god, faith, souls, prayer, heaven and belief on general. It allows me too to skate over the imponderables of a morality and values that I find meaningless. They spend so much time and effort being concerned about things that don't really matter, mainly what other people think of them. And they all seem so desperate for the approval of the Reverend Ames (the subject of 'Gilead') but who I came to dislike intensely for his moral judgments on them. Don't read the book expecting anything dramatic to happen. Their days unfold quietly, between eating and sleeping and caring for their father and domestic chores they talk a little bit, but rarely about the important things. They both are determined to shoulder their separate burdens alone and not share them with their sibling. 


Lovely quotes, to show you that the book is worth reading after making it sound very dull:


"Not that they had been especially presentable even while the house was in its prime. Hide-and-seek had seen to that, and croquet and badminton and baseball. "Such times you had!" her father said, as if the present slight desolation were confetti and candy wrappers left after the passing of some glorious parade." (p.4)


"Again the starter and the engine, and after a minute or two the rattle and pop of gravel as the DeSoto eased backwards out of the barn. It gleamed darkly and demurely, like a ripe plum." (p.168)


"Glory went to look in on her father. He lay on his right side, his face composed, intent on sleep. His hair had been brushed into a soft white cloud, like harmless aspiration, like a mist given off by the endless work of dreaming. (p.317)


I like this about Jack; it sums up quite why he didn't fit in. He didn't share the sense that the family had of being a unit, of thinking and believing the same thing, of a sight sense of moral superiority:


"He was himself. That is what their father had always said, and by it he had meant that Jack was jostled along in the stream of their vigour and purpose and their good intentions, their habits and certitudes, and was never really a part of any of it. He had eaten their food and slept beneath their roof, wearing their clothes and speaking the dialect of their slightly self-enamoured and distinctly clerical family and, for all they knew, intending no parody even when he was old enough to have been capable of it, and to have been suspected of it. (p.259)


Jack alienates himself completely when he has a child with a local girl, who he then abandons. What I found alienated me from the Boughtons was that their attempts to help the girl and her baby were not inspired by anything genuine but by a sense of moral duty and  being seen to be 'doing the right thing', of trying to make amends, and their attempts were duly rejected by the girl and her family as patronising and morally judgemental. Jack's return is sparked partly by a need for forgiveness and redemption, but that is just never going to happen. Part of his nature rejects his family and community and their values, but part is still desperate to be accepted and acknowledged, so he feels he is a bad person and then has lived his life according to their expectations. He rejects them but can't help but define himself in their terms. It is all very twisted in my opinion.


And then there is sad little Glory, another one living out her life for other people, dreaming, but trying not to, of what her life might have been. Her own definition of what home is:


"She had dreamed of a real home for herself and the babies, and the fiancé, a home very different from this good and blessed and fustian and oppressive tabernacle of Boughton probity and good intent. She knew, she had known for years, that she would never open a door on that home, never cross the threshold, never scoop up a pretty child and set it on her hip and feel it lean into her breast and eye the world from her arms with the complacency of utter trust. Ah well." (p.107)


Just reading that bit  - "fustian and oppressive tabernacle of Boughton probity"- I like to think tells you what she really thinks. She is the good dutiful daughter, still getting down on her knees to pray, but deep down is desperate to escape everything that her upbringing was, but resigned to her fate of living in the house that her father announces he is leaving to her, and maintaining it as 'Home', as an unchanging symbol for her siblings to come back to, of their upbringing and where they really belong.


I liked the book because of it's conflating to the two notions of home; on the one hand that it is a place that you belong, can always come back to for sanctuary, but on the other it can be a malign influence, creating something that dominates how you view your future life and how you are supposed to live it. When the book started I thought it was going to be the first idea, with the group of siblings coming together, to appreciate and celebrate their shared childhood, but it turned out to be the other, with Jack still on the outside and Glory trapped in Gilead hell. It is one of those want-what-you-haven't-got moments for me. My family moved house a lot when I was a child. My parents live now in a house that was never my home. I always wished that we had a family home that was 'where I grew up', a place to go back to. I have wished I could have created just that for my own children. Instead I have lived my entire adult life in private rentals and will never own my own home. Mostly I have come to feel that it is not so much the place that matters but the people you are with. So spending time with my family feels like home and I hope it is the same for them. So, a subtle clever book, much thought provoking, if you don't mind the claustrophobia and can let the characters do their thing without getting too frustrated.