Amanda Brookfield's Blog, page 4

Muscular tenderness

The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Tim Winton is an earthy, muscular writer. Whether he is writing about the sea ('Breath' is an astonishing book) or about daily life, every sentence has a visceral power. Another reason I am drawn to his novels is because he picks subjects for which I have no natural affinity, or knowledge and renders them dazzlingly real and interesting.

The Shepherd's Hut is no exception: a wild kid on the run from a troubled childhood, picking his way across the hostile, sweltering saltlands of Western Australia is not an outline for a story that would naturally make me reach for a book. What Tim Winton manages to do however, is make you care about the wild kid, Jaxie, from the get-go. He does this by relaying the narrative entirely through Jaxie's eyes, using the boy's own sometimes clumsy, but always raw and powerful language to convey the tale. Here is a child who has had to grow up fast - too fast. He has been through the proverbial hell of an abusive father - we receive tantalising glimpses as the story unfolds - but Jaxie is not complaining about it; instead he is simply trying to get away, to the chance of a better start at life, groping his way across a vast, barren terrain towards the one person in the world in whom he still has some trust.

Indeed, in Jaxie's bid to survive this impossible journey, it is trust - in his own instincts as well as in those he encounters -that remains the key to success or failure, and this is what pulls at our heartstrings. For Jaxie should have no faith in human nature at all, given what he has been through, and yet there is still such goodness in the boy, such innocence, as evinced by the relationship with the strange old hermit of a man with whom he ends up taking shelter. Without a glimmer of easy plot-contrivance or sentimentality, Winton vividly evokes how these two mis-matched bedfellows manage to eke out a living together for the period that each requires in the very different crisis points their lives have reached. At times they are like animals sharing a lair, but gradually something stronger emerges, based on the mutual knowledge of what a brute beast life can be, how death awaits at every turn.

Yes, Tim Winton may be a muscular writer, but he is also full of tenderness. This is what shines through The Shepherd's Hut, making us hold our breath, again and again, desperate for Jaxie's desperate journey to end well.



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Vivid and Harrowing

Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When I heard that various top writers had been asked to tackle the big Shakespeare plays and turn them into prose fiction I really wasn't interested. I mean, quite apart from the small detail of Shakespeare being a genius, he wrote for the theatre; it's called drama, and with good reason. But then someone said Edward St. Aubyn had made a very good fist of 'King Lear', which triggered the happy memory of once, a million years ago, sitting round a small table with Edward himself studying - of all things - King Lear, when we were both students trying to get into university.

The thing about Edward St. Aubyn is that he is extremely clever. Round that small table he did not speak often, but when he did all assembled jaws hit the floor because what he said was so original, so intelligent, so apt. And so it is with his novel 'Dunbar' in which St. Aubyn has proved that the impossible feat of turning Shakespeare into a modern novel is in fact possible.

The novel is set in the high-octane world of money. Henry Dunbar, once the all-powerful head of a global media corporation, has handed over the care of his company to his eldest daughters, Abby and Meghan, only to regret the decision very quickly as they freeze him out. While Florence, his youngest daughter, plays the Cordelia role, of not needing to make declarations about a love that is intrinsic and self-evident and at first suffering for her integrity. What Edward St. Aubyn brings to this chaos is his deep knowledge of dysfunctional individuals - the same knowledge that makes his autobiographical Melrose novels, charting sexual abuse and drug use, at times almost too unbearably painful to read. Henry Dunbar is a man in meltdown. His evil eldest daughters are so far down the road of avarice and cruelty that they are beyond reason or salvation. As the story unfolds Henry's world steadily crumbles, taking his personality with it.

The novel reaches its climax when Dunbar flees from the Lake District care-home in which he has been incarcerated into the wild and hostile cold of the surrounding landscape. Lear in the storm becomes Dunbar disintegrating mentally and physically as he attempts to escape from the clutches of his grasping, sadistic offspring, with only a fellow inmate - a demented alcoholic comedian - as company. Florence alone has the power to save him, but there is no easy path to her doing so.

Evil eventually turns in on itself, as Shakespeare knew and as St. Aubyn demonstrates beautifully in his denouement. Greed makes the greedy greedier. The sisters fight like the demons they are and start to implode; while goodness surfaces via Florence, in the form of the love that never needed words to be made true and the elixir of forgiveness that lies at its heart. Dunbar is a powerful story, meticulously and vividly told, offering a fresh and plausible perspective on one of the greatest and most harrowing plays ever written.



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Crusading Warrior

To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Some books give you everything: laughs, insight, heartbreak, historical context, coupled with a strong desire to share several glasses of wine with the author and to talk into the small hours. So it was for me and Viv Albertine's astonishing memoir 'To Throw Away Unopened'. I got to the end, elated from all that she had shared, honoured that she had been bold enough to share it and sad that the last page meant the ride was at an end.

Viv Albertine is best known as one of the pioneering members of a punk band called The Slits. Never having been a fan of punk - tender, conventional teenager that I was, its anarchic spirit terrified me - I had not heard of her. Only now, with that old gem of a gift called hindsight, can I look back and see the job punk was doing - breaking down ancient taboos and barriers, opening up spaces for women like Viv - and me - to run into and start to be ourselves instead of some version of womanhood that the preceding centuries had devised for us. So, thank you Viv Albertine, for that alone, quite apart from this profound and ultimately joyful account of coming to terms with the loss of your mother.

Except 'to Throw Away Unopened' is about so much more than Viv Albertine losing her beloved parent. Her mother dies, yes, but in the process lights a fuse that throws into question Albertine's perception and understanding of her entire life. The book takes us back in time as Albertine chases down this fuse, tackling and unravelling all the muddles and mysteries that fall across her path as she goes. Her love for her mother is huge and rock solid, but as she explores all the difficult memories of immense childhood hardship - lack of money, lack of food, the toxic atmosphere between her parents - even this is thrown into doubt. Was her father in fact the cruel and unloving man she had always been told? Was her mother selfless or selfish? Why and when did the rift start between her and her sister? Was it the product of the circumstances or something more sinister?

Albertine is fearless in the facts she digs out and the way in which she scrutinises them. From her own fragmented recollections to actual boxes of old letters and photographs, no stone, real or conceptual, is left unturned. The book builds towards a shocking crux of a violent showdown between herself and her sister at their dying mother's bedside. Here the core of the truth Albertine has been probing finally erupts, a lanced boil of pain and ugliness, constituting a scene almost as hard to read as it must have been to endure.

Viv Albertine is nothing less than a warrior crusading for the truth - about herself, as much as the rest of the world - and boy, does she find it. The unfaltering precision and openness of her writing ensures that we travel every step of the way with her, and leaves us wanting more.




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Redemption

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sebastian Barry's 'Days Without End' was long listed for the Man Booker last year, but nothing about the plot summary had persuaded me to purchase it: the 1850s, the US army, the Indian Wars, the Civil War. None of it sounded like my bag. But then - and this is one of the many joys of conversations-about-books - I met someone who put it at the top of their Best Reads for 2017 and so I decided to give it a go.

I was gripped from the first word to the last. Yes, the setting is mid nineteenth century America and the gory context of those warring years, but the heart of the tale is the relationship between the two hard-bitten young Irish fighters who find themselves brothers-in-arms on the other side of the Atlantic. Never have I read such devastatingly shocking and compelling war scenes (in War and Peace I skipped all the battle bits, they were so dull!), but more compelling still was how the humanity of the two protagonists, Thomas McNulty - who narrates the story - and John Cole shines through their harrowing experiences.

'Epic, lyrical and constantly surprising,' said one critic, 'humorous, compassionate, true,' said another, and I could not agree more. The narrative voice of Thomas McNulty is a delight. Barry takes us deep inside his main character's head and heart where, somehow, innocence is never quite lost. We are swept along by McNulty's lilting natural prose, caught up in all his humour, hopes and terrors as well as his astonishing and instinctive ability to dig deep into reserves of courage when those whom he loves - John Cole and the dear orphaned Indian girl they take into their care - are threatened. The waging of war by both men is merely to earn a living, not from any blood-lust. Driven from Ireland by the potato famine, fighting has, ironically, become their only option for the struggle to stay alive.

By the end of page one the reader wants that struggle to succeed as much as the characters themselves. For in Barry's capable hands it is the goodness of the hearts of his protagonists that stands out and wins us over. As with all the best literature, this is because the narrative resonates far beyond its ostensible subject matter. 'The Days of Our Lives' may track the stories of two Irish mercenaries fighting battles on foreign soil, but it is about nothing less than the epic fight of good and evil, and the power of love to redeem us when all else has failed.



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No Beating Heart

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I always start on a book with high hopes. Life is short and my to-read pile is selected carefully. I had loved John McGregor's 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' and 'Reservoir 13' sounded equally compelling. The story of a missing girl. A community torn apart. Broadchurch, but in the hands of a mesmeric writer. No wonder it had made it onto the Booker long list.

At first it was fine. Brilliant even. With the distance of a camera lens McGregor hovers over the drama unfolding in the heart of a rural village. A teenager called Rebecca, visiting the area with her parents, has disappeared. Locals, shocked and discombobulated, are gathering to assist in the search. McGregor's voice is poetic. As time passes, it moves like a laser beam back and forth across every aspect of this small patch of the world, from the goings on in burrows of nesting animals to scenes taking place in the kitchens and meeting rooms of the villagers - dozens and dozens of them, protagonists all.

Except, with so many lives mentioned, it started to become a blur. No one and nothing in particular is highlighted, not even the missing girl. As the seasons pass everybody and everything receives equal, fleeting attention, whether it is people, places, or animals. And so it continues. For thirteen chapters and thirteen years. (Thirteen, geddit?). The crime, if that is what it is, barely gets a look-in. Children grow up, teenagers go to university, marriages falter or settle, relationships start up and fall apart. Babies are born, people die. Bats feed their young. Snow falls. Melts. Badgers and foxes prowl. The wheel of nature keeps turning. As do the lives of the villagers. While the water levels in the thirteen nearby reservoirs rise and fall. For thirteen years. Or maybe I already mentioned that.

The genius of the core idea is plain to see. And for a while the reader is kept on tenterhooks, turning the pages because something - SOMETHING - surely, has to happen. John McGregor has famously said that he is "allergic to trying to make points in fiction" and I applaud him for that. However, for me the tenterhooks dissolved. Though poetic, the voice he used began to feel increasingly distant and devoid of energy. Just as the supposed dramas going on in the lives of the villagers grew increasingly remote, almost like events on a check-list. Same for the nesting animals. (Apart from the herons, I was always pleased when one of them got a mention.) But all that other stuff just went on and on and on: more foxes born, more pints poured, someone moves in with someone, someone else moves out. I was soon not so much mesmerised as quite bored.

Generous critics have described the tone of 'Reservoir 13' as 'sinister'. I found it merely cold. There was no hook to make me care properly for any of the characters. Worse, there was no sense that the characters themselves were ever - even during the early days - truly fraught about the missing girl. The teenager who had kissed her should have been scared at the very least, or conflicted about not coming forward, or racked with.....something! Likewise the girl's parents were merely reported visiting the area, together, then separately, then with other people ie their relationship fell apart, but we are never invited deep enough into the narrative to care about that either.

Yes, shock can induce numbness, and even the greatest tragedies are met by the reality of life ploughing on. But for me it was getting to the end of 'Reservoir 13' that took the ploughing. I even started to count the pages - the reader's equivalent of watching the clock. And if that was John McGregor's aim, then bravo. But there is a world of difference between recognising something is clever and being genuinely engaged by that cleverness. A book needs a beating heart and I couldn't find it.



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Humanity shines

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Sometimes a book takes off in popularity not because of clever marketing or big publishing budgets, but because readers fall in love with it and talk about it. Word spreads like fire. Sales sky-rocket.
This has to be the best, most genuine route to commercial success and it is why the title 'Eleanor Oliphant is completely Fine' will be familiar to most people in the reading community, even if they haven't read it. The downside to such hype is that it raises expectations, sometimes to impossible levels.

Perhaps that is why I took a little while to fall for Gail Honeyman's bestseller. At first, getting to know Eleanor and her weird, tightly controlled, fiercely unemotional life, a part of me kept thinking, is this it? I suppose I was expecting something more 'out there', more startling, more knock-you-sideways. In fact the power of this novel lies in its adherence to precisely the opposite of such story-telling weaponery. It is not a book that shouts at you. It is a book that draws you in steadily, warmly, until you are deep in the heart of Eleanor Oliphant's tight little world, a world that lets no one in, but which is decent to its core. Eleanor works, she pays her bills, she eats, she sleeps. Gradually, we realise that she has developed this system of living as a coping mechanism, to keep herself safe. Discovering exactly why that is - what she is protecting herself from and how it came into being - lies at the heart both of the story and our continuing interest in its quirky protagonist.

The most important thing to say about 'Eleanor Oliphant' however is that, despite the darker elements of its subject matter, it is often hilarious. This is quite a trick for any author to pull off - being funny when there are tragic themes at stake is the hardest of paths to sustain, but Gail Honeyman appears to manage it effortlessly. I laughed out loud more times than I could count, all the while rooting for Eleanor to find the happiness she so evidently deserves and dreading what horrors might yet be exposed in the course of her doing so.

By the closing pages I found myself feeling great affection as well as admiration for Eleanor's creator. I have never met Gail Honeyman or heard her talk, but it would be impossible for the author of such a tale to be anything but a lovely person. Writers strive to be invisible, but sometimes the best of their humanity cannot but shine through.



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A Broken World

Elmet by Fiona Mozley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


'Elmet' by Fiona Mozley is, as all the hype around it suggests, a dark book. Generally, I do not read in order to be terrorised and avoid scary films for the same reason. I detest the notion of horror as 'entertainment', just as I bristle at being manipulated by plot twists with no motive behind them other than their creator's desire to instil fear in an audience. But 'Elmet' was pressed into my hands with words of high praise by someone whose opinion I value and so... I read it.

To be completely honest, I sort of wish I hadn't. The nightmare qualities it contains are so intense and now all those images are in my head for good. Just as a glimpse of a scene of carnage can haunt you, once seen, never forgotten, I now have to contend with flashbacks to the most harrowing passages in 'Elmet', a couple of which I literally could not bring myself to read at night, (my habitual time for the treat of fiction), having to proceed during the reassuring hours of daylight instead.

Part of the potency of Elmet's nightmare world is that it is timeless. We are taken into the heart of a harsh and broken society - a shredded family, father and two children, eking out a life in a forest. The sense of danger is everywhere. Money is scarce, as is food and security. Humankind has been through some sort of apocalypse, but we know not what form it took. We want the family to survive, but the father has to win at brutal bare-knuckle fights in order to earn a living, and a beast of a landlord, Mr Price, is trying to move them out of their self-built woodland home.

Jeopardy is infused in every leaf-rustle, every unguarded moment and Fiona Mozley never lets you forget it. The children, a girl and a boy, are young and fragile of heart, but have learnt, thanks to their father, how to stand up for themselves. The boy is the gentler one, least suited to their rough physical life; the girl is a natural fighter like her father, but one who courts trouble rather than avoiding it. As we read, we worry, desperately, for the plight of both these young people. The baddies are coming and if anything were to happen to their fighting-machine of a father they would be done for....aaaaaagh. It is like Hansel and Gretel meets 'The Road' - the last apocalyptic novel I read and more than enough for a lifetime, thank you very much Mr Cormac McCarthy.

If you love horror you are probably reaching for your Buy buttons, and you won't be disappointed. Personally, I got to the end of the last page with relief. Fiona Mozley is a clever writer. She knows how to build tension; how to give you just enough information but no more, leaving you at the mercy of your own imagination. My final out-take however, was of having been played. There was too little good to come out of the story, barely a glimmer of hope for us to hang on to. Whereas, in life there is always a smidgen of hope, or the possibility at least of redemption. That is one of the fundamental joys of being human. There is darkness, but there are flashes of light too. And that's what keeps us going.





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A Lot at Stake

Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Katherine Heiny's 'Standard Deviation' is one of those books I enjoyed so much that I had to make a conscious effort to read it slowly. Indeed, I found it a work of such subtle but dense intelligence (the emotional as well as the brainy kind) that I am baffled anyone could give it less than five stars!

To describe it is hard, because it sounds so straightforward, so potentially non-eventful. Graham and Audra are both on their second marriage, to each other. Graham is considerably older than Audra who is strikingly good-looking and magnetically effective in social situations. They have a young son called Matthew and live in New York. They are well-educated, comfortably off, and have a healthy circle of friends. They do all the things you would expect a New York couple to do - from eating out, to taking their son to the park.

The story is told through the points of view of both Graham and Audra, who love each other but who are as different as two people can be. Heiny does this with a steady, forensic insight into the workings of her protagonists' respective inner lives which is as acute as it is funny. They are two deeply flawed but lovable human beings and we feel the author's own tender understanding of them. Never does it seem as if Heiny is putting her characters through the mill. She is merely shining a light on who they are and why. As a couple Audra and Graham have the usual differences of opinion - Audra is over-friendly to all and regularly invites people they barely know into their home, while Graham, being older, is over-fussy, especially about matters culinary, in which he plays a dominant role; but overall they seem to be bobbing along okay, with no regrets either about being with each other or the respective spouses they have left behind in order to make their coupling possible.

Only gradually, without it ever being spelled out - because Graham and Audra never spell it out, to others or to each other - does it become apparent that their son, Matthew, though highly functioning, is autistic. His passion in life is origami and one of the many funny, moving threads of the story is the discovery of an origami club where Matthew starts to thrive. It is run and attended by people with whom Audra and Graham have nothing in common, people who are far more on the wavelength of Matthew than themselves, and to entrust the care of their treasured but tricky son to such a group leaves them deeply torn.

With equal subtlety Heiny starts to reveal that the marriage itself is coming under strain. On the surface nothing alters - Audra and Graham do not address the problem for the simple reason that they have not acknowledged it themselves. And when matters do start to come to a head (no spoilers) there are none of the obvious fireworks or show-downs, just a painfully realistic implosion of events, the fall-out of which focuses not on the blame-game so much as the much bigger more critical issue of whether - and how - Audra and Graham can go on together.

In 'Standard Deviation' Heiny is tackling the heftiest of subjects: how love can survive all the imperfections of being human; how parents regroup from a potentially devastating diagnosis of a beloved only child. Yet somehow Heiny allows all the ramifications of what she is exploring to float, with no fuss whatsoever, and often with great humour, out of her story. As a reader you are carried along, effortlessly entertained even as the enormity of what is at stake begins to dawn.



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The Importance of Trust

The Only Story by Julian Barnes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The title of Julian Barnes' 'The Only Story' derives from the fact that every couple on the planet, regardless of gender, age or anything else, have their 'story' of how they got together, whether it led to better or worse or both. For the best illustration of this, think about the wonderful opening of the film 'When Harry Met Sally' - all those real life couples on sofas telling their how-we-met tales, each as funny as it is poignant, and with the glitches in their relationships shining through.

'The Only Story' has its fair share of poignant moments as well as comedic ones, especially during its early stages. At the heart of it is the central narrator, Paul, now an old man, looking back on and endeavouring to make sense of the Big Relationship of his life. This relationship began when he was just nineteen and he met and fell for a forty eight year old woman called Susan. It is back in the sixties and so much about their respective middle class worlds, from the tennis club to the stifling nature of their family lives made me smile, as well as encouraging my whole-hearted support for their relationship, despite it being both ill-advised and illicit. One of the qualities of the book is that Barnes retains this lightness of touch - his writing is so precise, so deft, so blazingly intelligent - even as the story darkens, gently taking the reader down avenues that should not make for such easy reading.

Much has been made of the age-gap between the lovers, but if you are looking for a 'racy' read then you will have to search elsewhere. For one of the things Barnes does brilliantly is show the matter-of-fact-ness of Love - how it happens TO people rather than being something they actively seek out. Paul and Susan fall for each other. Fact. Step by inevitable step, they fall deeper into each other's lives and have to face the consequences. Fact. Those consequences are both unforeseeable and utterly unavoidable. Fact. Only hindsight - Paul's as an old man - grants the wisdom of understanding.

'The Only Story' has received mixed reviews, unfairly so in my view. Critics love to pan a book for what it is NOT, which is a cheap ploy and makes me mad. They should focus instead on what a story is trying to achieve; which, in this case I would say was is exactly what the author was aiming for. Namely, a long hard look at where Love (the real deal) can take you, particularly if you are as sincere and determined a person as the young Paul. Nor does Barnes pull any punches when things start to get tough for the lovers. He pushes on, as committed to the integrity of his characters as they are to the situation in which they find themselves. There is no contrivance, no authorial trickery. Barnes, from the first word to the last, takes hold of his story by the scruff of the neck and sees it through to the end. When writers do that, you can trust them.




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A Literary Magician

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The year Penelope Fitzgerald won the Booker Prize for her novel 'Offshore' she happened to be a tutor at a crammer where I and a few other hopefuls were working for exams to get into Oxford University. We studied E M Forster with her, one of my favourite novelists anyway, and the classes were a complete pleasure. The reason I mention this ancient historical fact is because never, in all those twelve weeks of being our teacher, did Penelope Fitzgerald think to mention that, not only was she a novelist, but that she had JUST WON THE BOOKER PRIZE. And being a bunch of idiotic seventeen year olds, too busy swotting for exams to glance at newspapers or read contemporary fiction, we did not make the connection ourselves. It wasn't until many years later that I found out.

Reading Fitzgerald's deeply moving final novel 'The Blue Flower', I kept thinking not just of my youthful ignorance, but of the level of humility of its remarkable author, a humility which somehow radiates through her writing. Every sentence is so simple, so accessible, but at the same time takes you to the most complex places. Fitzgerald's extraordinary intelligence permeates every page, both in the intellectual ideas she so deftly interweaves into her telling of the story and the levels of empathy she shows in her portrayal of the ordeals faced by her characters. And they go through a lot - love, anger, terror, hate, betrayal, not to mention sheer dumbness and the comedy of human clumsiness - Fitzgerald shines a light on it all.

'The Blue Flower' is in many ways a 'historical novel' since it is set in 1794 and is based on the early adult life of the poet and philosopher Friederich von Hardenberg. However, even putting that into words implies a heaviness that the book simply does not possess. There may be facts galore in 'The Blue Flower', but so vivid are the characters, so engaging Fitzgerald's delivery of their story, that it reads as the purest most free-flying fiction. I believed in all the protagonists utterly, and never lost that wonderful feeling that they might surprise me - or even themselves.

The novel begins by introducing us to the passionate, idealistic and brilliant young Friederich just as he is falling in love, instantaneously and ardently, with a twelve-year old girl called Sophie. It is not an ideal match, for many reasons, her very young age being the least of them, and the youthful philosopher has to work hard to seek his father's permission for the engagement. Once this obstacle is overcome a waiting game ensues, since Sophie cannot marry until she is sixteen. During the course of this delay, while Friederich's love grows, Sophie's health starts to deteriorate.
The story darkens and yet Fitzgerald's lightness of touch does not. Sophie remains the most believable of adolescent girls, grappling to understand her rapidly changing world, just as Friederich is completely endearing and convincing as a smitten, gauche egg-head of a suitor.
As the crisis between the couple deepens, their families and friends get drawn in to the gruelling and traumatic business both of trying to stop Freiderich's heart from breaking and keeping young Sophie alive.

Some reviews can easily do justice to the ingenuity of a book. With 'The Blue Flower' it is hard, not just because the story is so unusual, but because Fitzgerald's literary skills are as elusive as they are powerful. She works like a magician, pulling you in without you understanding how or why. Another reason why I was blown away.



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