Emotionally Weird

Title: Emotionally Weird
Author: Kate Atkinson
ISBN: 0 312 20324 1
Published: Picador USA
Date: 2000

Book quote:

“You hadn’t kissed him?” (How hard is seems to be to get a kiss off the man of one’s dreams. Has Nora ever been kissed?)



- No, she says regretfully – as you would if you were thirty-eight and had never been kissed, but then I am nearly twenty-one and have been kissed many times and all of them put together aren’t worth an imaginary kiss with Ferdinand.

__________________________________________


Not so much emotionally weird, as metatextually weird. Oh, enjoyable, without a doubt. One can’t help feeling as one reads, however, that the author is slightly off her rocker. If you want to read something and come away with an aching hairline (due to permanently raised eyebrows) and aching sides (due to intermittent convulsive laughter), this is the one for you.
Story. Hm, let’s see. Effie is a 21-year old, living with her mother in a weather-battered deserted holiday home off the coast of Scotland. Her mother’s inscrutable, busy turning into a geological feature, as Effie puts it, and has seemingly been on the run for decades: what from, Effie has no idea. On their island, they tell each other their stories. Effie tells of her life at Dundee University in the early 1970s, amid the expected shambles and drug-induced students and teachers all steeped in their own scandals and obsessions. Her mother (very unwillingly) contributes some short and unembellished accounts of the falling fortunes and exceptionally strange family life of her ancestors, the Stuart-Murrays.

But that’s not the only way the narrative is broken up. The bulk of the text is Effie’s account, in standard print (Times New Roman). Nora (her mother) and text from their conversations while on the island, is in something like a small, cramped Arial Narrow. Effie’s English Literature colleagues at Dundee all write pieces of something, and they all likewise have their fonts. Kevin (a fat geek obsessed with writing a Dungeons and Dragons type epic) writes in something like Matura MT Script. Effie herself writes mysteries and her eternal essay on George Elliot in a small Courier. One of the teachers’ slovenly wives writes a romance novel in a precise and flowing script. You get the drift. (Unfortunately Blogger doesn't t so fonts, I've just realized.)

The scripts and stories are not necessarily distinguished from the ‘real’ story (if such a thing exists): au contraire. In fact, for the first page or so of the book we’re plunged straight into the detective mystery which Effie is writing: which, if moderately intriguing, is deliberately amateurishly written. I did wonder at this choice of style for the very opening paragraph: it takes a confidence bordering on the suicidal.

After that a seeming solidity sets in for a while, with Effie’s account of her life at university. There’s plenty of humour, in all forms. I was reading the opening chapters in a public place and had to close the book and leave due to eruptions of irrepressible, embarrassing laughter. Then we start getting more of the metatextual element raising its head and slapping up around in a disorientating (but not entirely unpleasant) way.

The ‘plot’ is changed, re-written and re-shaped by the desires and suggestions of the characters themselves. Phrases and situations tumble about impossibly, translated from future narrations into later versions of past events, echoes and mirrors and ghosts of textual allusions jump from behind bushes. Supremely unnervingly, even (or perhaps especially) the readers’ own experiences whilst reading, and their anticipated objections and desires, are woven consciously into the crazy fabric. The readers swim in and out, referred to as the ‘poor confused narratees’ through the waves of text.

Amongst this anarchy, what is the ‘real’ story? Ostensibly the whole narrative swings round the fulcrum of Effie trying to find out who her father was, and the story of her family. The conclusions are reached by such an ambiguous route that although she seems satisfied with final revelations (if ‘satisfied’ is the right word) one hardly knows what to believe. It’s no coincidence that the never-ending and seemingly impossible battle to get her George Elliot essay written is concluded ambiguously when she attempts to hand it in but had no idea how it became the mangled mess she pulls out of her bag. The essay is on ‘Middlemarch’, but George Elliot’s ‘Silas Marner’ looms through the pages as another unspoken ghost: another mirror of dubious parentage and unsuspected treasures lost and found, along with its own semi-orphaned wild-haired child, Eppie.


In short, this was a vastly entertaining and pleasing book, but make sure you’re sober when you read it. Otherwise you’ll just put the trippy factor down to whatever substances you’ve been indulging in. Come here for a bona-fide text-induced buzz.

Sliver of Truth

Title: Sliver of Truth
Author: Lisa Unger
ISBN: 978 0 307 33846 4
Published: Crown Publishing
Date: 2007
Book quote:
“The phone number was listed but I couldn’t bring myself to call. What could I say? Hi, I’m Ridley, your second cousin. How’s it going? So, about the night my grandmother was beaten into a coma…”
______________________________________



Having read and adored Unger’s previous book Beautiful Lies, I plunged into this one with considerable zeal. High expectations are never a good thing.


It’s astonishing how the same thing can taste so different when re-hashed. I loved Beautiful Lies for its forward thrust, the clear writing, the unashamed use of cliffhangers and the genuinely good plot. Sliver of Truth carries on where the Beautiful Lies left off: Ridley Jones is in a now-disintegrating relationship with Jake Jacobsen and there’s something fishy emerging about her Uncle Max’s state of demise. Now, there’s nothing wrong with carrying on where you left off. It’s endlessly hearkening back to the earlier narrative that gets annoying. I read the first 50 pages, thinking ‘surely now we’ll leave all that stuff behind’ – nope. Carries on right to the end. In a way it’s the very theme of the book: not being able to move forward.

This is not to say that the volume isn’t stuffed with action, sex and intrigue. Ridley lurches from one crisis to the next, gets involved in international espionage, gets onto the FBI Wanted list, people drop dead like flies and whenever she manages to take a breath she takes the opportunity to plunge into bed with someone. Theoretically it’s all good stuff.

But there are several problems. First the incessant harping back to the previous book. Second, the endless analysing of motives and feelings. If I submitted something with that degree of mumbling introspective discussion, I’d get my wrists slapped for ignoring ‘show not tell’, and sent back empty–handed with nothing more than a flea in my ear.

Third… it’s plain sloppy at points. Overwriting and careless use of words. (I never thought I’d write this of Unger. She must have been distracted at the time.) Frankly the sort of things that an editor should pick up on anyway. I could tell it wasn’t just me that was being irritated by this: my copy as usual came from the library and I found that someone had gone through it with a neat black biro correcting grammatical errors and word misuse… and they didn’t even bother with things like split infinitives and tautologies.

So why did I pelt through it so quickly, then? I read it slightly despairingly, but to the end, and fast. I didn’t feel like giving up on it. Which leads to the conclusion: all those writing rules are good but if you’ve got a good story with pace to it, you’ll drag the reader behind you, kicking and screaming. Will I read it again? No. Will it put me off other Unger books? No. I’ll just be hoping she’ll be on better form next time.

Beautiful Lies

Title: Beautiful Lies

Author: Lisa Unger
ISBN: 978 1 86325 480 9
Published: Bantam
Date: 2006

Book quote:
“It’s a little-known fat, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make problems disappear. But of course the can only do this as long as you’re a child. When you’ve become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they’re not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that’s why so many of us take our time growing up.”


“In the gleaming glass [of trendy East village boutiques] I caught sight of a woman who didn’t know who she was anymore, who didn’t know from where of from whom she came.

I stopped to look at her. She looked real enough, like flesh and blood and bone. But if you reached out to touch her, she faded like a hologram.”
___________________________________________________________

Ridley Jones is an ‘impossibly hip’ freelance writer in New York. She’s recently split up (amicably) from her childhood friend and almost-betrothed Zachary: Mr Squeaky-Clean. Zack’s a paediatrician like Ridley’s father, and his mother Esme works in the clinic: they’re all one big happy family. Supposedly. Even her recently-deceased “Uncle Max” used to be a “happy” alcoholic before he went through the windscreen of his car one night. He was a very rich bachelor, with lots of toy-girls hanging on, endlessly indulgent of his adoptive niece. The only discordant note seems to be Ace, her brother. He’s a drug addict who’s walked out on the family. Ridley has always idolised him and can’t reconcile herself to his current state.


One day, Ridley accidentally steps into fame when a journalist takes a photo of her saving a small child from getting run over by a truck. With her name all over the papers, one morning her postbox reveals a newspaper clipping with a photo of a child and a note that that simply says: “You are my daughter.”

The story follows Ridley’s investigations into this claim, to the person who sent the note, and unravelling of who exactly her “Uncle Max” was, and what some of his “pet projects” really involved.


As she embarks on this process, someone new moves into the apartment block. As she puts it, “He was hot.” Hot but mysterious. She mistrusts his guarded air, and his Spartan furnishing in his apartment. She’s uneasy about it because there’s nothing there that he couldn’t leave in a second, nothing to tie him down. It takes until the next chapter for us to even learn his name. Jake. “Hot” and “mysterious” don’t go together without accumulating the extra noun, “sex.”

Beautiful Lies concerns itself overwhelmingly with the issue of loss of identity and the need to define oneself. How does one really know “who” one is if all the premises of background and origin are washed away? How much of a character is intrinsic, and how much is defined by those who observe the character? Once again, it’s the Little Lost Girl, only this time it’s identity and sense of self that’s lost, not a body. Ridley passes through a sort of Limbo before she can wear her new identity and learn to trust again.


As ever, there’s the omni-present character of New York in the fabric of the novel. Unger can’t seem to leave it alone, as if it’s an essential part of clothing for words. “Long before I married New York City, I had a passionate love affair with the place. I don’t remember ever wanting to live anywhere else.” Throughout her works, the city itself seems to be an identity: its streets and cafes, the apartment blocks and stairwells act almost like personal moods or thoughts. Venturing outside the city is nothing less than a detachment from self – yet the city, like a personality, conceals its own terrors and dark corners.


The book is a fast, memorable read, stuffed with action, intrigue and suspense – not to mention plenty of spice along the way. Recommended. 

Purple Hibiscus by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie

Book Quote:

“I sat at my bedroom window after I changed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-coloured crisscross of mosquito netting. The bell-shaped yellow fruits hung lazily, drawing buzzing bees that bumped against my window’s netting.”

Book Review first published in Mostly Fiction Book Reviews, August 2010

From the first few pages this novel leaves no room for doubt as to how the narrative will unfold: the struggle of the “outside” and more natural world against that of domestic oppression and enforced sterility. As the book opens with a domestic crisis which overwhelms the narrator in its almost silent enormity, she retreats to her room.

The netting in the above quote is the perfect simile for the walls and boundaries, real and invisible, which surround the narrator. Whom do they keep out, and whom do they keep in? In an instant, we know from this passage alone that although they may keep the mosquitoes out, they also enforce a separation between the narrator and the leaves and bees: a separation decidedly unwelcome.

I found it extraordinary that the message was so clarion, as both the novel’s physical setting (post-coup Nigeria) and spiritual setting (stringently Catholic) are subjects I am personally completely unfamiliar with. I felt I ought to be reading the book with a full-scale guidebook to Africa, so laden is it with unknown phrases and concepts, scents, sounds and sights. It is proof of the superb writing that the unfamiliar and the unknown are in no way alienating, but entirely tantalising in a heady, spicy, dusty mix, making the uninitiated want to touch, taste and feel what the words set before us.

The narrator is Kambili Achike, a girl born to a wealthy family headed by her despotic and sadistic father, Eugene. Her fellow sufferers within the house walls are her mother Beatrice and her brother Jaja. Eugene is well respected within the community: he donates money to churches and the poor, he runs a politically subversive newspaper at tangible physical danger to himself and is seen as no less than a hero. At home he enforces his will on the inmates of the house without a chink of mercy, and with the help of torture and battery at regular intervals.

When the two children manage to escape from the immediate clutches of the household for a short while to Eugene’s sister, Aunty Ifeoma’s residence, the wheels of change start to turn. Ifeoma’s household is an almost pantomime foil to Eugene’s; they are poor but liberated, they have fun. Once they have put the initial chips into the glass coating that keeps the children from admitting their abuse to anyone (including themselves, mostly), there is no return and Eugene’s family starts to disintegrate.

While the physical world and settings may be unfamiliar to many readers, the central core of sadistic domestic abuse and subjugation transcends all cultural boundaries in its immediacy and intimacy. The psychological bullying from her father produces palpable physical effects on the narrator – she develops a fever in response to a crisis, or her legs feel “loose-jointed.”  When she gleans some approval, the joy and relief are also physically palpable: her mouth feels “full of melting sugar;” the abused’s gratitude for sops of “kindness’ shown to them by their abusers. The problems of the nuclear family are mirrored in the larger world, with the omnipotent bullies in power invading every waking and sleeping moment of their subjects, exerting almost complete control.

There is no doubt that in reaching an international audience, Adichie is acutely aware that many of her readers will be as unfamiliar with the Nigerian element (which is the core of the book) as I am. By an impasto technique with the symbolism and parallels, Adichie counters this problem by explaining the state within the country with reference to the domestic situation.

Both nature and the social structure join forces in elucidation. The sadistic “Papa” is the drying, dust-covering Harmattan wind, the (typically female) positive forces have moisture-laden imagery – again, juxtaposing sterility and fertility. This is a central theme both in the family life and at the State level. The narrator’s mother faces possible divorce and destitution for producing insufficient children, but the fault of this lies with her husband Eugene and his physical battering of his ever-pregnant wife.

One aspect that has been noted to be omni-present in this book is the prevalence of food. Its smells, textures, preparation, effect, quality, quantity, power, implications; some readers find it overwhelming. This insistence is directly tied to the sterility/fertility male/female theme. In Eugene’s wealthy household, food is plentiful and good, but there is no contact with the preparation of it, no knowledge of where it comes from. By contrast in the poor household of Aunt Ifeoma, food is scarce and takes a lot of time and effort both to procure and prepare, but appears to be relished more. (No prizes for guessing which is portrayed as the happier state). Most importantly, the enforced separation which the narrator has endured at home from the “womanly” dealing with food is shown as a type of disabling, a condition that debilitates, a sort of castration of abilities. Learning about food empowers the narrator much more than merely to the extent of being handy in the kitchen. It is as if her whole outlook on life changes (albeit incrementally) by learning how to peel a vegetable properly. In peeling it, she learns how to peel herself, to remove the casing to just the right degree.

This brings us back to the walls and boundaries we started off with. The uncrossable boundaries of the family life are admitting to the tyranny and abuse that is being inflicted. The narrator and her brother “speak with their eyes” to each other, as they dare not speak otherwise. As the status quo in the household starts to dissolve under the influence of external forces like Aunty Ifoema and Father Amadi, this method of communication becomes jammed, blocked. The change that heralds this blockage is one for the positive, but it involves great pain. The implication is that this pain cannot be avoided, nor will it ever be eradicated.

Here, we are taken back to the implied view on Nigerian politics Adichie is making. Kambili is not the only protagonist forced to embrace change. When the inspirational Aunty Ifeoma herself is targeted as a trouble-maker by the University authorities, she is extremely reluctant to leave the country which she loves but which tortures her, in favour of an alien one that will offer relative sanctuary from persecution. The argument is mooted in the household: if all the brains leave, who’s going to pick up the pieces? For this, there is no answer.

It perfectly mirrors the escape from tyranny on the domestic level. From the conclusions drawn there, one can only assume that the author sees this situation as inevitable. In the aftermath of the ultimate domestic collapse, the erstwhile victimised members of the family attempt to rebuild a life. They have however been permanently “expelled” from the state they had known hereto, and their efforts are uncoordinated and wandering. The lasting blame which lands on all of them, but particularly the mother (who has possibly been shown to have suffered the most) is drawn with such absolute precision that it is impossible to sidestep the implication that the wronged commoners will nevertheless carry the burden of their oppressors with them wherever they go. Through the telescope of the immediate and intimate, Adichie elucidates the political and cultural situation for outsiders.

But it seems that she has portrayed the abuser only too convincingly for some readers. Many reviewers opine that Eugene is “not all bad” and that the family’s love for him is “genuine.” In fact, the overwhelming majority of reviewers suggest that poor Eugene, he’s got terrible faults but he means well, bless him. This is both a frightening testament to how household bullies get away with what they do, and a homage to Adichie’s skill in portraying the process. Perhaps also it is a more reassuring reflection that the average reader is thankfully shielded from acute domestic violence, physical and psychological. Any “love” the abuser appears to show to his victims is self-directed, his good deeds in political and economic circles are all salves to his own background of abused childhood and repressed impulses. The abuser cannot see his family (and by extension, anyone who comes within his field of power) as anything but reflections and facets of himself. They have no rights or individual standing in his view, and as he forces his own view onto his victims, his view becomes theirs. This is not to say that Eugene does not suffer for his misdeeds: the disfiguring rash that keeps coming up is like a reflection of the myriad wrongs he has inflicted, which no amount of dabbing away with money will erase – and his body knows it, even if he doesn’t.

But by the very process that she has created to explain the Nigerian situation, is seems Adichie might have overdone herself. The excuses which so many readers see in Eugene’s behaviour make the politicians by implication less culpable, and the love of their subjects less conditional. I am sure Adichie’s message is that patriotic love should be conditional, and if the relationship between state and citizen turns abusive then those conditions should be enforced, even if the citizens feel pain and regret at the process.

In a final reinforcement of the parallel, Kambili’s hidden talent which emerges towards the end of the narrative turns out to be:  running. The symbolism is not veiled. From a domestic situation like hers, the best one can do is run, as fast as possible. Perhaps this is what the writer feels is the ultimate fate of the Nigerian people.

(First published in Mostly Fiction Book Reviews, August 2010)

Corrag

Title: Corrag
Author: Susan Fletcher
ISBN: 978-2-00-732159-9
Published: Fourth Estate (HarperCollins)
Date: 2010

Book quote:


“I walked. I made my way further down into the dusky glen. My skirts dragged their branches, which dragged their own branches now. It was a noisy load to pull which grew louder with each step as it gathered more leaves, more peat and stones. I looked back on my trail. It was tatters and cow muck, and I turned to rid myself of it but by turning so did my skirts, and I turned like a dog that seeks its own tail. I could not reach the branches. I stretched, but they moved away as I stretched. For a moment or two I turned, and turned.

I stopped, considered this.

A spider hung down from my hair on its thread.”
___________________________________________________________


Corrag, having been condemned as a witch, is in prison awaiting her execution. The setting is Scotland, 1692. Charles Leslie, a clergyman from Ireland, interviews her regarding the events at the historical Glencoe massacre of 38 members of the McDonald clan just prior to this. Charles has Jacobite sympathies and is gathering information to incriminate the reigning Dutch king, William of Orange, with an aim of re-instating James 2nd exiled in France (William is thought to be ultimately behind the massacre). Corrag agrees to tell him of the event, with the proviso that he listen to the story of her life as well – which he consents to. For about two weeks he visits her daily to listen to her story, the transcript of which forms the bulk of the text. Interspersed amongst these are his own letters to his wife back in Ireland, which describe his own, increasingly sympathetic, reactions to Corrag’s narration.


Corrag describes her own life as being in four parts – her early life with her mother, (Cora), her ‘running life’ with her mare as she travelled north, her life in Glencoe and her life in the prison. While the description of life on the margins of village life in England is engaging enough, the second chunk describing the journey north is the point at which the novel starts to become tedious. It is in severe need of editing. Just how many times do we need to be told how her hair flies out behind her, or how her skirts billow out, or how her mare gallops on? An originally effective passage is rendered dull by the time it’s been recycled so many times. Even the exchanges and interactions that occur are more noted for their (much-discussed) emotional impact on the narrator than being simply laid out and described adequately.


Luckily, there’s a marked change in the quality of writing as Corrag settles down in Glencoe, and Fletcher feels free to do what she seems to be best at – minute observation of sensory input: olfactory, auditory and visual. It’s noticeable that tactile and gustatory senses are barely represented, and indeed this can be seen as appropriate for a character who lives on the very remotest margins of society and whose interaction with others is a strictly non-contact sport. The stillness of the life in the glen seems to allow for some very good passages, which are mercifully free of reflection on emotional effects they induce in the narrator. The colour of a buttercup, if described well enough, is more than sufficient to keep the reader engaged. The passage I picked for the book quote almost marks the start of this phase.


Unfortunately, just as we’re being lulled into appreciation, in pops Charles Leslie with his letters to his wife. They would be a fine (indeed much-needed) alternative perspective, were it not that so much of their bulk is filled with his appreciation of ‘how well she speaks’. In effect, how well the passage preceding was written. One gets a terrible image of the author jumping up and down every now and then saying ‘look, didn’t I do that well, did you like that bit, are you sure you saw it?’ which is annoying, to say the least.


The other major problem I had with it was the anachronistic diction. 17th century diction verbatim would be hard on the modern reader for the duration of a novel, so I understand the need to update and simplify. However, certain very modern usages should really be eschewed. For example the use of ‘like’ as a conjunction in the place of ‘as’ (a modern American import to British English) leaped off the page and slapped me at some point. On a different level, the word ‘hag’ (much-repeated in the book) had, even by Spencer’s time, aligned itself with the connotation of ‘old’ and ‘ugly’ as well as Devil-inspired, so to imply that it was applied frequently to both Corrag and her mother (a child and an apparently very attractive woman) is not convincing.


There are also gross anachronisms in concepts. Corrag says of herself settling down in the highlands:


“I think, also that I healed. (…) I felt myself soften and tend to myself. I don’t think I had grieved, till Glencoe, or been kind to myself. I don’t think I had sat down and thought of Cora, and truly allowed myself to be sad.”


While the spiritually restorative virtues of the admission of grief were without doubt evident to people in the 17th century, they would never have phrased it like that, much less an unlettered herbalist. This is straight out of a 21st century self-help manual.


Which leads on to the lack of differentiation between the characters’ reported speech. Corrag has a vocabulary that far exceeds what might reasonably be expected. (What 17th century peasant would have a lexicon including Latin-derived ‘mucus’ and ‘grandeur’?) Mostly it’s not noticeable, but when she sits down with the McDonald woman Sarah and we have a rare moment of sustained dialogue, they more resemble a couple of college girls discussing ‘life n’ stuff’ than a witch who is so uncivilised she laps water from the lake like a cat, and a wild Highland lass. Discussing ‘politics?’ the term ‘politic’ might have been in relatively common usage (though as its meaning was different it wouldn’t have featured much in the oeuvre of the two women concerned) but ‘polyticks’ in its roughly modern sense had only really been around for about 30 years prior to this - and that in lettered circles. (There are mentions as far back as 1529 but very rare). This is not just quibbling on the use of a single word – it’s the concept, and the appropriateness of the subject’s consideration by the characters, which is disturbing.


All this is sounding like a very negative review, and indeed this was not a book I enjoyed myself. It does however have its good points, and I know that a lot of readers will like it and want more of the same. The sensory descriptive passages are genuinely effective and well-rendered. Overall, the tension is kept up more or less via the ever-present question of whether Corrag will really be burned at the stake – you can always tell whether you’re really intrigued by whether you’re tempted to flick forward (which I was). Sympathy for the character is created, we do care. I also found the images from the novel lingering in my imagination after closing the book, which is always a good sign.


I think this novel would in particular appeal to young females, who enjoy a good romantic read. If, however, you tend to be a bit of a nit-picker with semantics, or have much knowledge of realistic 17th century prose, or are much given to textual analysis, or indeed if you’re an editor, this book might well annoy you. Susan Fletcher won the Whitbread 2004 First Novel Award for her first novel Eva Green, as well as the 2005 Betty Trask Prize. Alas, I don’t think there will be many awards for Corrag, but the potential is definitely there for future works.

Burning Bright

Title: Burning Bright
Author: Tracy Chevalier
ISBN: 978-0-452-28907-9
Published: First Plume Printing
Date: 2008
Book quote:

“My songs and pictures do not become memories – they are always there to be looked at. And they are not illusions, but physical manifestations of worlds that do exist.”
_________________________________________________________________________

Burning Bright is a pleasant, enjoyable read. It’s a good story that follows the fortunes of the Kellaway family from Dorsetshire: chairmakers come to Lambeth in 1792 London at the invitation of flamboyant Philip Astley, the great circus owner. The friendship and interactions of the son Jem, and Maggie, the London girl who lives nearby, form the emotional backbone of the plot.

Unfortunately, their reason for existence is their peculiar friendship with William Blake. “Unfortunately”, not because Blake is an unsuitable subject for a historical novel, and certainly not because the novel is underresearched. Quite the opposite.


For me, this book falls between several seats. The primary impression it gives is that the author is fascinated by Blake and his works. The main motivation behind the novel seems to be to paint scenes from his life, and to bring our understanding closer to the nuances and feelings, the sights and sounds, of his London. It feels like a Blake student writing a heavily-disguised essay on Blake's life and works, while being ceaselessly interrupted by the very lively characters that have almost inconveniently sprung into life to illustrate it.

The long walks that take up a great deal of space within the novel are typical of this. A good example is Jem and Maggie following the funeral procession for Blake’s mother, all the way from Lambeth, through Soho, Smithfields and on to Bunhill Fields. The section takes up 20 pages of the total 308, and its purpose is almost entirely to describe different areas of London – by extension, areas that Blake wrote about directly or indirectly. Now, there is a wealth of first-hand descriptive material on London life from this period, as well as almost endless commentaries in the social, political and literary contexts. Were I studying Blake, I would rather refer to these than to a historical novel, and were I simply reading a novel, I would prefer it not to meander about into places it has no need to. Again, if one knows the references the book alludes to, the narrative merely appears strained – and if one doesn’t then the references are simply lost.


Fair enough, the central theme of the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are linked throughout the novel with Jem and Maggie’s struggles to reconcile themselves to the ‘grey’ areas between black and white, good or bad. Likewise, the topics the Blake works deal with are fundamental to the process of growing up, both for individuals and for countries, and as such are appropriate for a central core to a book featuring adolescents and the French Revolution. The plot is woven carefully, the details painstakingly accurate. But the overall impression is of someone dancing round the central maypole of the themes, not really looking where they’re going because they’ve got their nose stuck into a reference book.


That not only Jem and Maggie, but even the peripheral characters are in Technicolor 3D and empathy (or antipathy) for them is created seemingly effortlessly, despite the obsession with the literary subject, bears witness to Chevalier’s prodigious talent as a writer. The briefest mention of any personae who step through the book is believable, the lightest touch brushing in a coachman, a passing button salesman.


Compared to this virtuoso technique in creation of unseen worlds, the sticky-tape-and-superglue attitude to combining the Blakes with the Kellaways and Butterfields appears even clunkier than it is. I was wondering whether the infamous Blake couplings in the garden would crop up, and sure enough there they were, right at the forefront to grab the reader’s attention. Although in a sense this could be used perfectly to illustrate differences (fitting in within the Innocence and Experience theme) between this and other sexual encounters, it is abandoned with only the lightest of references, which anyone unfamiliar with Blake’s philosophy will probably not pick up on.


On the whole, I’d say if you’re not overly familiar with Blake and want a good read, I’d recommend the book. It slips by pleasingly and is a delight to the imagination. If you’re an avid Blake fan you’ll probably enjoy it, too, as you’ll pick up on all the little pieces and not mind the children running through it making a noise. It’s only if you like your historical novels to be woven into place with some security of perspective that you might run into a bit of trouble.

The Murder Room

Title: The Murder Room

Author: PD James

ISBN: 0 141 01553 5

Published: Penguin Books

Date: 2003

The reviews snippets on the cover-jacket of this book promise that its:

“Genuinely chilling, a delight”
“Wholly engrossing, scintillates from the start”
“A totally absorbing read, a detective thriller of superb quality.”

Don’t be fooled.

I can’t remember a more soporific read. By comparison my school geography textbook was thrilling. I did make it though to the zimmer-frame supported end, but only after a limp of a read during which Hubby exclaimed many times he’d never seen me take so long over a book.


This was the first honest-to-goodness plain murder mystery I’d read, and I was expecting… well, a few murders, and a bit of detection. Was that wrong? The first victim doesn’t even come along until page 151. Almost the whole bulk of the book is made up of characterisation. There is some slight movement, but really the barest minimum possible. Some would say, far less than would be sensible. Particularly under the circumstances – that is, that of it being a supposed thriller.

There’s nothing wrong with characterisation. I’m all for it. It’s when its characterisation at the exclusion of absolutely everything else that it may be a problem. The plot… well as there’s precious little of it I won’t give anything away but suffice it to say it’s an investigation around murders connected to the Dupayne Museum, an establishment dedicated to the history of the inter-war years in the UK.


To give it its due, the book was extremely useful to me at the time, as I had to write a piece on the theme of “creating a detective” - and indeed it’s a great model of construction and well worth studying in that context. However, I don’t expect this particular aspect will be of much use to most readers.

While reading the novel, I couldn’t help reflecting how much of it is geared towards the television series. I may be mistaken but it felt more like a background character guide for the actors than anything else. Indeed, were the action sliced down to that which is actually there, it could make for a reasonably choppy bit of text. Sieved down to a screenplay of less than a quarter of the length, with the novel as background reading, it might start to make sense. I’ve never read a PD James before (outlook’s pretty bleak for future readings, too) and barely glanced at the TV series but even so it all strikes me as the only reason anyone would want to tackle ‘thriller’ writing in this way. Some passages in particular ring little alarm bells. When the pathologist enters the scene, there’s an in-depth passage about how he’s aged, looking different. Different from what? He’s only just appeared. Of course, the novels too are part of a series, but even so it reaches out like a slap in the face. Was it geared towards the actor’s changing characteristics, or perhaps a change of cast?

Also surprising was the fact that some of the descriptive passages are very evocative, not to mention almost lyric. Once again I don’t know the background, but in the absence of such knowledge I’d guess the writer was primarily a poet, who’s had to change tack for practical reasons. Again, not something I was expecting, but at least a pleasurable surprise this time.

If you’re a PD James fan, you’ll probably think this review is heresy, utter a few exclamations of disgust and move on. If however you’re not, and are looking for a thrilling read, this is not a book I’d recommend.