Speaking of Love by Angela Young

{ May 30, 2008 @ 5:28 pm } · { Popular Fiction }
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           Speaking of Love examines the weave of a complex web of relationships within a family plagued by mental illness. The story bounces between past and present, juxtaposing the history of the characters’ failure to express their love for those closest to them and its future psychological effects. Iris begins the story as a young girl whose mother’s early death leaves her father emotionally stunted and painfully estranged from his daughter. Unable to communicate her grief, Iris retreats into herself and her imaginary world of story-telling. Soon her stories start to take on a literal presence in her life and the book charts her slow descent into schizophrenia. Iris’ relationship with her daughter, Vivie, rapidly deteriorates in tandem with her mental state and Vivie spends her adult life struggling to cope with the unanswered questions and haunting memories of her mother’s mental breakdown and her father’s disappearance; without the reassurance of familial bonds of love, her world gradually falls apart. Their neighbours, Dick and his son Matthew, embark on a journey together, reliving the experience of committing Iris to an institution, whilst Matthew struggles to cope with the consequences of his unspoken love for Vivie.

            The tragedy of this story is that each of Young’s lonely and psychologically isolated characters are immediately surrounded by the people whose bonds will help them to find their feet, yet the very intensity of their feeling for each other prevent them for asking for the help they need. The terrifying and dangerous world of mental illness twists the perceptions of the family so that their love for each other is unrecognisable. At the same time of advocating openness as the solution for developing strong relationships, the story also seems to idealize the idea of self-development, and the internal struggles that only the individual can come to terms with.

            The book is extremely well planned – the details crucial to making up the jigsaw of complicated family history come together at exactly the right points in the story to keep the reader intrigued. It is a very human approach to the causes of mental deterioration and although the overall tone is touching, the eerie and unsettling presence of disease is acute and strongly supports the story’s veracity. Due to the intense emotional content, the chapters are kept short and flit rapidly between characters so that the plot isn’t drowned in self-indulgent psycho-analysis. Despite this, each character draws the reader in to their individual dilemmas and painful experiences and the story connects on a deeply personal level, especially with anyone who has experience with mental illness in the family, or has ever encountered the difficulty of telling someone that you love them.

 

 

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Kevin Brockmeier: The Brief History of the Dead

{ May 17, 2008 @ 5:38 pm } · { Popular Fiction }
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            A story about an interpretation of the after-life, the opening sequence of this book describes “the crossing”: the passage of the dead from the human world to their next existence. Brockmeier conveys beautifully the fantastical element of the transition between life and death. Immediately, the reader is refreshed by Brockmeier’s originality and his light, yet intensely creative, style. Throughout the book, the vivid metaphors and language paint the landscapes, i.e. watching the evening sky “bruise over”. The Brief History is expertly crafted; the reader is able to let the narrative flow over them, confident that it is planned out to the last detail. The chapters are very well constructed, quickly focusing in on the action and finishing with a tight polish. The little clues of the story plop quietly but definitely onto the page, unravelling the mysteries steadily, but without patronizing the reader. For a book discussing the journey towards death, the entire tone of the book is one of calmness and dignity, but inevitably, poignant sadness.

            The after-life, and its relation to the world of the living, is played out through the experience of a woman, Laura, stranded alone in the Antarctic whilst the rest of the world copes with a lethal pandemic. Brockmeier imagines a type of pleasant limbo (holding a suspiciously close resemblance to NYC), a kind of neo-reality in which the living dead carry out their lives until their place in the memories of the living is erased. The story is a clever construction of circular links between Laura’s internal narrative and the individual narratives of her living memories in the city of the dead. What really impresses about Brockmeier is his grasp on internal mental discourse. He has an expert grasp on the subtle fluctuations and eccentricities of the mind in isolation, endearing us to his characters through the touching conversations with their own conscience. Shaping the human consciousness using everyday symbols of urban and natural imagery, he succeeds in the difficult task of making the human mind tangible.

            There is a definite sense of disillusionment in the book. The future of the living is dominated by the merciless Capitalist drive beneath the dark cloud of terrorism. The point seems to be that the only way to elevate the human consciousness above the grip of economic infrastructure is through the destruction of the civilised world. Brockmeier is clearly interested in the relationship between the human consciousness and the external reality, how they permeate each other and where the boundaries of imagination, spirituality and memory begin and end. His narrative flows uninterruptedly between the real and the unreal, death and life. There is a discussion in the book about souls and their connection with the body and this is the crux of Brockmeier’s story. I’m not sure he has a straight answer. The smatterings of irony expose how Brockmeier doesn’t take himself too seriously, but offers an innovative and picturesque idea of how the flesh and the spirit come to a resolution between life and death, or in the words of one of his characters, an “ideal balance of physical and mental locomotion.”

            If you are at all whimsical, indulge in childhood memories, or are interested in the idea of an after-life, I would thoroughly recommend this book. It makes a great talking point for groups of friends or book-lovers – just be prepared for a sad ending.

 Brief History of the Dead

Lloyd Jones: Mister Pip

{ May 10, 2008 @ 9:49 am } · { Popular Fiction }
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           If you’ve come across One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding, the plot of Lloyd’s Jones’ Mister Pip may seem familiar: the introduction of a classic text of English literature to a remote Pacific island civilisation that exposes the chasms between ‘civilised’ and primitive culture. However where Harding dramatises the damage wrought on a preliterate society by the invasion of Western Capitalism, Jones explores the consequences of how, in the midst of a brutal civil war, literature has the power to displace – to teach a person to inhabit their imagination.

            Matilda is our narrator, growing up 1990’s Bougainville: an island in the South Pacific. As her village quakes nervously amid the conflict between rebel forces and the Papa New Guinea government army, Matilda is distracted by the intervention of Mr. Watts – a white immigrant who takes it upon himself to rekindle the Bougainville children’s neglected education. The source of the curriculum is Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations; Matilda learns to escape the sense of inevitability that haunts her village by following Mr Pip in his journey through 19th century England.

            Jones structures his story around the tensions that arise from the collection and cultivation of knowledge in an infrastructure focused on survival. He demonstrates how the social fabric of a community relies on communication. Matilda struggles to explain the power of literature to her fundamentalist mother who despises Mr Watt’s as a heathen. The children collectively use their education about an alien world to escape the terror of their everyday life. The secrets held by Matilda, her mother and Mr Watts seal the fate of the village as the government forces approach. Great Expectations succeeds in distancing the innocent from the military conflict, but it is their very naivety that endangers them. The question for the reader is whether their imaginative escapism provides a protective shield for the children or a dangerous delusion distant from grim reality.

            Matilda’s testimony is touchingly acute in its innocence, honesty and frank language. Her persistent interrogation of Mr. Watts about the distant realm of white society, puzzling over words like ‘frost’ and ‘beneficiary’, is extremely endearing. The narrative is strikingly creative coming as it does from the pen of a white, male, middle-aged New Zealander.

            At the beginning of the book the threat of violence paroles the perimeter of Matilda’s story but, like the creeping vegetation that left un-maintained ‘would march down the steep hillside and bury our villages in flower and vine’, the war suddenly emerges from the jungle, wreaking devastating consequences for Matilda and her community. Simultaneously tragic and comic, heart-warming and politically profound, Mister Pip expertly reveals the frightening expanse of human character; its weaknesses and its strengths.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Ian Rankin: Exit Music

{ May 9, 2008 @ 9:33 pm } · { Popular Fiction }
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            The impressive blurb of simpering compliments for this, Ian Rankin’s latest and last offering from the Detective Inspector Rebus series, was very encouraging. Unfortunately this final product seems to churn out the tried and tired clique of the boozing, renegade detective kept in line by his curt and alert younger female sidekick. Exit Music sees DI Rebus approaching retirement and, unsurprisingly, stumbling across a particularly tricky murder case and winding up as a prime suspect. There follows the usual dance of his being ostracised from the force and burning the rule book by traipsing back alleys and stalking suspects to simultaneously clear his name and solve the murder in a few tidy chapters.

            The huge success of the book is probably due to the rather more colourful TV tie-in series Rebus, though it is telling that the drama is ‘loosely based’ on Ian Rankin’s novels as, if Exit Music is any demonstration of his previous work (which I admit I have not read), the stories lack the suspense usually imperative in detective fiction. Nothing much actually happens in this book except a long and repetitive roll-call of suspects and lots of stuttering interviews to disguise the glaringly obvious guilty party who are (shock!) masquerading as one of the good guys.

            Rankin’s attempt to re-create the gritty and thankless battle against the criminal underworld relies on cliques like crooks with snake tattoos and Russians suspects with ‘steely grey eyes’ wearing big fur coats and hats. Detailed descriptions of Edinburgh’s city setting fail to compensate for the general naivety of the narrative, especially in the simplistic language designed to lead the reader’s comprehension by the hand.

            After a long, monotonous trudge through the mire of disillusioned CID, peppered with sarcastic interchanges between disgruntled detectives and members of the public, the gripping climax occurs within two pages and consists of Rebus’ triumphantly hauling his bulky mass into the guilty party and slamming him into a broken nose. This is clearly a characterisation book and its popularity lies in the portrayal of Rebus and his eccentricities – a successful but well-wrung formula. As a newcomer to the series I wasn’t expecting literature – ‘The duty doctor duly declared death’ rings off as more of a morbid nursery rhyme than evocative alliteration – but I was looking for something more compelling and much more original. This is a good example of a very self-conscious genre; if you’re a Rebus fan no doubt you will enjoy this book, if only to witness the conclusion to a well-trodden journey through the fame of cop-pop fiction, the expectation of which clearly allowed Rankin to rest on his laurels and shrug off any suggestions of creativity.

 

Exit Music by Ian Rankin