Tender by Belinda McKeon

Do you ever think back to the time when you were a young adult and cringe? So much awkwardness, embarrassment and self-consciousness. You tried so hard to instantly become the person you wanted to be. Do you remember meeting someone who seemed so revelatory and exciting you became totally fixated on them? You wanted to be with that person constantly and couldn’t stop thinking about them. I certainly remember experiencing all of this. “Tender” takes you back to that confused passion of youth with the story of Catherine, a young Irish woman at university during the 1990s. She becomes enamoured with a vibrant aspiring artist named James. He is also young and frustrated about life. He struggles with coming out and discovering his place in the world, but he and Catherine become attached to each other. Throughout a tumultuous relationship they slowly discover who they want to become and, more importantly, the kind of people they don’t want to turn into. Belinda McKeon takes you through this crucial transition into adulthood with a beautifully written story about art, friendship and love.

Who can say why we fall so desperately for someone? Perhaps that person has qualities you wish you had yourself or talents you can’t help admiring. Sometimes it’s possessing a boldness for living that you feel you might lack. James is forthright in his approach to the world. “He was saying aloud the stuff that, Catherine now realized, she had always thought you were meant to keep silent.” James challenges the world in a way Catherine never thought she could. This opens her eyes to possibilities she previously thought were closed to her. She finds herself ready to eschew all expectations for her future that her parents hold.

Photo of Ted Hughes by Cartier-Bresson from 1971 that Catherine studies

Catherine is very taken with poetry and Sylvia Plath in particular. She reads her writing and Ted Hughes. Their fateful relationship casts a sombre shadow upon the heated connection that arises between Catherine and James. There is a fascinating point in the book when the narrative suddenly shifts to a much more frantic account which stumbles through Catherine’s consciousness as she deals with the intensity of her own emotions. Cut off from the man who meant so much to her she’s trapped in a vicious kind of solitude: “She felt alone; or she felt, at least, the threat, the spectre, of her own aloneness.” Thwarted by a love which can’t be reciprocated she finds her existence is circumscribed leaving her without any meaningful connection to other people or to the future she thought she might inhabit.

In all of our lives there is a constant tension between becoming the person you want to be and fully inhabiting who you are. Catherine is often caught in the interstices of life where she has a definite heritage and expectations for her future, but she constantly yearns for more. Consequently she’s frequently dissatisfied and struggles to understand her place in the world. She wonders “Was a reality something you arrived at, or something you made? Or something you just forced onto things?” Catherine tries to pack all of her yearnings (especially involving James) into the everyday reality she so dearly wants. But, because he has very different aspirations, she is often frustrated and disappointed with the shape of her current reality.

Inevitably, Catherine finds she can survive because there are other options in life which exist beyond what she can imagine. As we all learn with aging: “this is how it is. Time moves. It takes you with it. Life changes.” The novel “Tender” is a kind of memorial to that time in life when change was painful but necessary. Development isn’t just physical, but it’s a mental process of testing out possible selves and possible futures we want to inhabit. McKeon elegantly captures the joy of discovery, the pain of loss and the long difficult process of self-acceptance.

Girl at War by Sara Nović

Ana is an adolescent girl growing up in the city of Zagreb during a time of tumultuous change. One day the distinction between being Serbian and Croatian makes a big difference although “In school we’d been taught to ignore distinguishing ethnic factors, though it was easy enough to discern someone’s ancestry by their last name.” Narrating the story in her own voice she witnesses a growing edginess as neighbours start to turn on neighbours and friends upon friends. She hears the opinions about certain ethnicities and political allegiances when she goes to shops or school or watches television. For Ana and her close friend Luka, such distinctions are perplexing and absurd however the effects become immediately apparent when food/supply shortages occur and the air raids begin. She will only know in retrospect that she lived through the Croatian War of Independence.

Perhaps Ana would have lived through the war without feeling its effects so intensely if her parents were able to remain in Zagreb. As children do, Ana and her friends adjust to living in a time of war. They play fight amidst the signs of war and shelters which spring up all over the city. Of course war is made into a game by children who experience it because otherwise they would feel nothing but terrified the entire time. Although she adapts she is conscious this isn’t a standard childhood: “I thought of our war games and generator bike fights and wondered if the things I’d come to consider ordinary were not so normal after all.” She is aware that real danger exists, but she convinces herself it’s something she won’t experience: “I allowed myself into the fantasy I recognized as such even while my mind was still spinning it – that there in the flat, with my family, I was safe.” But Ana’s baby sister Rahela is seriously ill with a kidney problem. The limited medical resources left in Croatia can’t help her so the family must take her further afield and over borders where they run into trouble. Ana is forced into an entirely different kind of life which leaves her damaged and struggling to understand who she is now. After eventually becoming settled in America, Ana travels back to her native country to be able to consciously cope with her past and form a stronger sense of identity.

One of the most touching things in this moving and powerful novel are the ways in which language and literature play an essential part in Ana’s connection with her past. She reads books about war and the history of her country by writers such as W.G. Sebald and Rebecca West especially because “Reading was one of the only ways in which I allowed myself to think about the continent and country I’d left behind.” Dealing with her own experiences and past was too direct, but books give her a framework within which she can better understand how her own sense of national identity connects to the history of her people and individuals who have survived war. She learns that language itself is an essential part of that identity. She observes: “I used to think all languages were ciphers, that once you learned another’s alphabet you could convert foreign words back into your own, something recognizable. But the blood formed a pattern like a map to comprehension and I understood the differences all at once. I understood how one family could end up in the ground and another could be allowed to continue on its way, that the distinction between Serbs and Croats was much vaster than ways of writing letters.”

Cedevita is a sugary lemon Croatian vitamin drink distributed to children during the war as a public health initiative at first before becoming a popular soft drink in itself.

Partway through this novel I grew worried that it might be a book where the author is using a young female victim as a means of exploring a bleak difficult war history that most people don’t want to approach in raw facts. In other words, I thought it might be a case where the story is there to serve the author’s intention rather than the author being there to honour the story. But “Girl at War” proves itself to be a robust, complex novel which thoroughly immerses you in Ana’s journey. I grew to empathize and care for her struggle not just because of the circumstances she lived through, but the inner-conflicts she strives to overcome. Something which is revelatory and startling about this novel is the way in which Ana herself is not just a victim. Amidst her struggles in the war-torn countryside of Croatia she becomes a soldier. The stark reality of this is emphasized in how her experience isn’t symbolic: “When I thought of my own weapon I remembered not its existential power but its weight, heavy against my slight frame.” Such a visceral understanding of war continues throughout the book; the grander question of meaning only comes with her thoughtful reflections when she revisits her past.

The Yugoslavian civil war is a difficult subject to approach in fiction because it took place in parts and lasted for such a long time. “Girl at War” gives you a heartfelt, cleverly-written portrayal of one girl’s experience which shows that although there are horrendous, unquestionable crimes which occur in a layered, complex war such as this “in the end the guilt of one side did not prove the innocence of the other.” When it comes to the personal level survival is the imperative rather than allegiance or morality. Only in the aftermath of her experiences can Ana begin to make sense of what living through war has meant to her own notions of self. It’s a novel which transcends its circumstances to tell a story that has universal meaning. 

The Green Road by Anne Enrigh

“The Green Road” begins in what feels like familiar territory for Anne Enright. A girl in rural Ireland experiences the tension in her household as her brother Dan declares he's going to become a priest and her mother Rosaleen retreats to her bedroom in a rage. This and a later scene that follows a world-weary older woman sitting alone in a big house looking out upon the landscape are poignant and beautifully-written characters. However, having read Enright's novels before, it's the kind of Irish character and atmosphere that I'd expect to find in a novel by her. BUT the novel then switches into an entirely different setting and group of characters which surprised and thrilled me. Progressing forward in time the story follows four siblings who take very different paths in life. Enright effectively and meaningfully portrays the lives of a closeted man in New York City when AIDS had a devastating effect upon the gay community in the early 90s, an embittered mother frightened she might have cancer, an aide worker in impoverished Mali and an alcoholic actress/young mother. This is a novel that has an astonishing scope. Using a unique form and range of voices, it comes together to say something brilliantly effective about the resilience of family no matter how dispersed they may become.

Although the family portrayed in this novel are very unique, Enright's special talent as a writer is making you feel as if they are your own or that you've lived alongside them their whole lives. The reader is only given snippets of each of their stories yet they have that familiarity which makes you care about them and understand their point of view. Each has their own faults and hopes and private miseries. Their observations range from the most painfully existential “How long would she have to continue, being like this. Being herself” to humorous observations about beauty and ageing “She never lost it. From a distance, if you keep the hump out of your back, you might be any age at all.” When they finally come together in the later part of the novel you are aware of the gravity of all their individual struggles while they interact with each other. It made me totally gripped to see how their stories would play out because their presence together felt so immediately real.

Gentian flowers which grow amongst the rocks near the family's home. 

“The Green Road” takes an unusual stance on the property crash in Ireland. Rosaleen summons her four children together to spend Christmas in her house in order for the family to say goodbye to the place before she sells it amidst the ridiculous inflation in housing prices. Enright writes that “The truth was that the house they were sitting in was worth a ridiculous amount, and the people sitting in it were worth very little.” Of course, the author doesn't really believe that. What she's suggesting is that each sibling has failed to achieve their ambitions in casting themselves out into the world. Whereas, ironically, the house has sat there all the time in its same semi-dilapidated state and acquired tremendous worth. It makes you wonder if once you find a place where you feel completely content, a known road which feels like the most beautiful in the world, is there any point seeking more in life? This is a stunning and profound novel that I absolutely loved reading. 

Woolf Works: A Triptych production by The Royal Ballet & Direction/Choreography by Wayne McGregor

It's a bold challenge to translate the life and writings of Virginia Woolf into dance. When I was at university I took a course which investigated how prose could be translated into drama. I wanted to take on the challenge of trying to make my favourite novel “The Waves” into a play, but it seemed impossible. Any attempt to convey the vibrancy of Woolf's writing in a physical form felt flat. I was proven wrong several years later when The National Theatre and Katie Mitchell successfully adapted “The Waves” into a play which effectively expressed the progression of life and subconscious speech in this novel through a clever use of sets, staging and mixed media. Wayne McGregor and The Royal Ballet have created an even bigger project which conveys the feeling of Woolf's life and writing through ballet. It's a heartfelt, dramatic and stunningly beautiful production.

The ballet is split into three parts. Each is inspired by a particular text: “Mrs Dalloway,” “Orlando,” and “The Waves” respectively. These three acts all have extremely different tones in their style of dance, lighting and music. But each is suffused with a sensation of Woolf's grappling to find an adequate form of expression for the world around her. The first act 'I Now, I Then' begins with a recording of Woolf's voice speaking about the nature of language, how it is under a continuous process of reinvention and only comes to have meaning when reformed. Through the dancers' movement and use of shape this sense of process comes through. The sounds and projections of photos of London give an atmosphere of Woolf’s life. There is a scene of men at the warfront, but I had the sense that these men were projections of the public’s consciousness at the time with thoughts of war consuming everyone’s thoughts. Throughout much of this and other scenes we see dancer Alessandra Ferri as a kind of Woolf figure wandering through scenes observing and interacting. There is a sense she is a part of this world, but at a remove struggling to find her place within it and find a way to appropriately represent it.

The second part ‘Becomings’ begins with a feeling of formality with dancers attired in rich gold metallic Elizabethan dress. Just as the novel “Orlando” leaps through time and gender so do the dancers change moving through segments of the stage created with lasers and the sexes become mixed as performers wear genderless flesh-coloured clothing. This section of the production has a much more celebratory feel as the performers feel liberated from the constrictions of place, time, gender. Smoke swirling in the laser beams creates an eerie mirror-effect with the dancer’s movements. It’s as if both the molecular nature of life is being portrayed alongside a grand view of civilization as a whole.

The final part ‘Tuesday’ begins with Gillian Anderson reading the suicide letter Woolf wrote to Leonard. Looming in the background is a large slow-motion video of waves curling and crashing into themselves. Six young dancers emerge mimicking the six characters in “The Waves” who start as children. Gradually, these six are replaced by older dancers and then six more. They fall into pairs or groups as do the voices in the novel sometimes favouring particular individuals and other times coming together as a whole. There is a feeling of these individuals being tossed and turned through life moving through states of joy and sorrow. Most striking are scenes when the dancers come together to hold a pose and it seems like an ardent wish to capture a perfectly articulated expression or moment of being. A melancholy music pervades this part as the dancing figure of Woolf is eventually portrayed as drowning or sinking. The dancers become like characters hovering in the author’s consciousness as they bob up and down in the background shadows.

While watching this production I had to frequently remind myself not to strictly interpret what I was seeing as a narrative, but rather take it in as an expression of feelings inspired by the texts. I don’t often see dance and have only gone to the ballet a few times in my life, but of course I was drawn to seeing this production because of how passionate I feel about Woolf’s writing. As can be seen from the excellent exhibition on Woolf's life at the National Portrait Gallery last summer, the public is also fascinated by the woman herself and this production shows the same preoccupation with Woolf's life. Once I let go of my impulse to “read” what I was seeing and experience the effect of the overall performance I was tremendously moved by it. A lot of care and passion has gone into this production to honour Woolf’s vision. It was a dazzling experience that will stay with me.

The production is played at the Royal Opera House until May 26th 2015. It's being given its first revival from Jan 21-Feb 14th 2017: http://www.roh.org.uk/productions/woolf-works-by-wayne-mcgregor

The Sailor Who fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima (translated by John Nathan)

Something about reading my first novel by Mishima now at the age of 36 makes me think I would have appreciated him more if I read him in my early 20s. His writing is without a doubt very sophisticated and eloquent, but there is something about the philosophical digressions he goes on which feel much like an ardent university student making fanciful speeches where he’s trying to sound impressive. There are a lot of interesting points and it’s very well crafted, but I don’t think this is a book that flows as gracefully as a novel that is merely showing you what life is made of. I hasten to add that there is a meaningful story here amidst the sometimes fervent tangents. It’s basically a novel about three characters. Noboru is a precocious 13 year-old who discovers a hidden spy-hole into his mother’s bedroom. His mother Fusako is a widow with a successful business with some high profile clients who takes on a sailor lover. This sailor is Ryuji, a solitary man with a strict code of values who breaks from his life at sea after embarking on this affair with Fusako. The novel switches focus between these characters and tells a tale about sexual discovery, aging and becoming disillusioned with idealized notions about life.

Noboru’s complex adolescent state is described beautifully. He’s locked in his bedroom each night by his mother. His discovery of a hole between his bedroom and his mother’s gives him a way to extract revenge on Fusako by invading her privacy. It also yields contemplative thoughts on identity as Fuasako looks at herself in a mirror when she thinks she’s alone. Noboru has a burgeoning understanding of a new kind of world as he witnesses his mother’s love affair with the sailor whom he looked up to when he first met him. Apart from notions about a kind of Oedipus complex that this suggests, it forces Noboru to contemplate his epistemological position on life. Noboru longs to sail on ships himself but he “found himself in the strange predicament all sailors share: essentially he belonged neither to the land nor to the sea. Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.” When presented with a solitary/exploratory life or a domesticated/fixed life, he surmises that the preferable option is the liminal space between the two. Isn’t this typical - for young men particularly? Both Ryuji and Noboru want to have it both ways: the security of having a home and the freedom to pursue limitless other possibilities. 

Ryuji finds himself at a challenging cross-road in his life. He’s prided himself at working hard on his own, separate from the other sailors on his ship and building up substantial savings by not spending his money on frivolous things. However, he does spend money to lose his virginity with a prostitute in one scene where he hilariously images the thick mast of a ship while having sex with her. This suggests latent homosexual impulses which I can’t help reading into the story considering Mishima’s own homosexuality. But this isn’t something the author pursues because he remarks somewhat dismissively that “His sexual desires too, the more so because they were physical, he apprehended as pure abstraction; lusts which time had relegated to memory remained only as glistening essences, like salt crystallized at the surface of a compound.” I’m guessing the question of whether sexual desire is driven more towards men or women is too specific to fit into the grander statements about life that Mishima wants to make in this novel. Because Ryuji reflects that “I’ve never done much, but I’ve lived my whole life thinking of myself as the only real man” he sees himself separate from the human race or as a kind of embodiment of pure existence. The real challenge comes when he finds he wants to change course and that now “The things he had rejected were now rejecting him.”

It’s interesting the path Fusako’s journey takes, but she doesn’t feel as well developed as the boy and man. I was struck by a hilarious observation by Yoriko, one of  Fusako’s famous female clients, where she considers “A prerequisite of any marriage… was an investigation by a private detective agency.” Rather than this spying presenting a complication in the relationship it’s affirmed as a great idea and carried out in a way that leaves everyone satisfied. This is a curious plot point which feels like it could have yielded a different kind of dramatic story, but it doesn’t go down that route. Overall, it seemed to me that the course of the story leaves Fusako behind. Although she’s a successful independent business woman she doesn't develop as a character. She simply comes to represent an anchor for Ryuji’s unmoored existence.

One of the most fascinating things about this novel is the adolescent gang that Noboru hangs out with. They are like something out of a Donna Tartt novel waxing philosophically about the sacred way life should be lived and methods for dangerously putting the world right when irregularities occur. They take the story down a dramatic path. Their actions inspire notions about the cyclical savage nature of life and how earnest passions can be ultimately squandered. I’m sure many of the subtler symbolic meanings of this novel were lost on me. I did enjoy the story and many of the thought-provoking statements the author makes. In the future I intend to read more of Mishima's work - especially with the beautiful red & white covers that Vintage came out with for all his novels. I was entertained and engaged by this novel, but not totally swept away by Mishima’s sea-faring notions about existence.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder)

During the long flight from London to Tokyo, I was grateful to have a novel that was fairly simply written but emotionally engaging. ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ has an easily digestible style of writing and structure. However, it has a meaning which subtly builds over the course of the story. Narrated from the point of view of a single mother and professional cleaner, the Housekeeper tells her story of working for a man she only refers to as the Professor. She and her son (who the Professor dubs Root because his head is shaped like the square root symbol) develop a close bond with the Professor. He is an ingenious mathematician but suffers from an illness where he loses all recent memory every eighty minutes. This developed after he received a head injury in a car accident at the age of forty seven. As such he wears a suit every day which is covered in notes to remind him about his condition and who the Housekeeper and her son are. He gives this mother and son an appreciation for the beauty of mathematics. In turn, the Housekeeper develops a deeper engagement/relationship with other people and the world around her.

I really appreciate fiction which sensitively depicts working class life. The Housekeeper has worked diligently her whole life because she needs to make ends meet. She’s a single mother who gets no assistance from the boy’s father or her mother who rejected her. The fact that she doesn’t use her own name and lets herself only be referred to as the Housekeeper is a clue to what little importance she attributes to herself. Nevertheless, she takes pride in what she does and through engaging with mathematics finds a value in how she fits into the equation of the world. Where most people of humble origin might find connection with a higher existence through religion, she uses the guidance of the Professor to see how mathematics connects her with something greater: “I felt no fear, certain in the knowledge that the Professor would guide me toward eternal, unchangeable truths.”

The order and structure to the world which mathematics gives is a lifeline for the Professor whose immediate world is so insubstantial because he can’t remember and hold onto it. The personal truth of his daily existence must be maddeningly tragic as he can form no connection with what he’s experienced day to day since he was forty seven. Rather than taking faith in anything transitory he places it in what he refers to as the eternal as he says to the Housekeeper here: “Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression – in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.” There is a power found in numerical equations which is fixed in a way our own fleeting existence is not. The Professor’s condition highlights how everyone’s experience of reality is subjective, but there is an underlying structure which is comfortingly constant.

Baseball card for a player that has a deep significance for the Professor

What really struck me was the meaningful way Ogawa presents how we relate to memories. The Professor is kept by his Sister-in-law who wants virtually nothing to do with him. She lives in another part of the property and hires an endless stream of housekeepers to see to the professor’s daily needs. The Housekeeper finds it difficult to emotionally deal with the fact that the close bond she feels for the Professor can’t be reciprocated because she must be reintroduced to him every eighty minutes. But conversely the Sister-in-law is suspended in the Professor’s immediate memory. She states: “You see, my brother-in-law can never remember you, but he can never forget me.” Both women are complexly trapped in their relationship with the Professor because of their place or lack of place in his memories.

This is a very sophisticated and beautifully executed story which made me care about mathematical equations more than I ever thought I could. I didn’t find it completely satisfying as there were some strands of the narrative and mysteries about the Professor’s behaviour which weren’t resolved. But perhaps it is better that my questions about his back story and relationship with the Sister-in-law go unanswered so I can imaginatively fill it in. It’s a novel of subtle power and a touching tribute to kinds of beauty which aren't immediately apparent.

Trip to Japan

I’ve been somewhat quiet lately as I’ve been in Japan for the past two weeks. A big thank you to everyone on Twitter who gave me suggestions for Japanese authors to read. Based on these I went armed with a stack of appropriate literature. I only managed to read a few books as the jet lag didn’t hit me as badly as I expected it to do so didn’t have sleepless reading nights and I was too busy out having fun during the day to relax with a book. I had an amazing time and don’t want to annoyingly go on about everything I did and saw while there. But I will mention an interesting bookish observation:

Examples of some beautiful Japanese book covers

In Japanese subways people do a lot of reading, but almost all of their books have stylish protective book covers. I would normally find this annoying as it meant I couldn’t peek at the title someone sitting opposite me was reading, but since I can’t read the language it didn’t matter anyway. These covers were so beautiful and chic I sort of wish this custom would travel to the West. It reminded me of when I was a teenager and we were required to cover our school textbooks with covers to protect them for future years. We used ugly brown paper bags from the grocery store to cut up and cover our books, but the ones I saw in subways were gorgeous.

Reading Shūsaku Endō's 'Silence'

There are a zillion things to do in Japan and I’m sure I only scraped the surface. But I do want to point out one of the highlights for me which was visiting the island of Naoshima. This is an island which was rejuvenated when it became the location for a number of contemporary art museums. It is stunningly beautiful. We stayed at the Benesse House which has its own museums with lots of outdoor art. One of these sculptures is Yayoi Kusama’s iconic ‘Yellow Pumpkin.’ There are galleries which play upon your perceptions, a Monet room that you have to take your shoes off for and a museum which is campaigning to get a James Bond movie set on the island. It’s fascinating and beautiful and I’d really recommend visiting if you ever get to Japan.

Here I am running around and hugging the pumpkin at 5am.

When I have time I’ll get back with reviews on books I read including ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ by Yoko Ogawa, ‘The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea’ by Yukio Mishima, and ‘The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories.’

In the mean time, what have you been reading?