The Bass Rock - Whole Book (spoilers welcome)

[Hugh]

This topic is for free discussion of the book, so beware there may be spoilers here.

[Hugh]

I have now finished the book and reviewed it, but I don't want to preempt the discussion too much at this stage. My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Beverly]

I am about 1/3 through The Bass Rock.

Some initial thoughts:
- despite the gothic vibe I am quite enjoying (I am not a big fan of gothic tales)
- I have the hang of the separate storylines - actually I like how different timeframes are keep to the same title heading, I,II, or III
- usually in books with different timeframes I like the most contemporary timeframe the least - When first introduced to Maggie, I thought I want to know more about her. Also I laughed out loud at the conversation between Viv and Vincent at the grocery store.

[Mark]

Beverly, likewise early in the story. It seems like a mix of Ali Smith and Cloud Atlas, without Ms Smith's private punctuation system, making it more approachable. I found Google Maps a big help; Bass Rock itself is quite distinctive.

[Mark]

I've gotten to St. Baldred's-II-b, with Ruth dealing with the town's beach picnic. I'm getting definite "Wicker Man" vibes, though the writing is better. I liked her phrase; ".[she]...watched the child walk towards the others with the manner of a person entering cold water." Perhaps Shirley Jackson vibes instead.

[Beverly]

Mark wrote: "I've gotten to St. Baldred's-II-b, with Ruth dealing with the town's beach picnic. I'm getting definite "Wicker Man" vibes, though the writing is better. I liked her phrase; ".[she]...watched the c..."

Yes, that was such a creepy situation!!

[Mark]

Whew! Well, this IS the spoiler thread, and so...


The finishing box score is about Abusers- 5 and victims - 3. Betty's attack was the most satisfying , followed closely by Maggie's skill in defusing Dom and Christopher's decision NOT to take revenge on his headmaster.

The gothic touches actually lightened the tone, helped by Wyld's vivid phrasing. My head is still spinning with the time jumping. While the I, II, III structure helped, the foreward jumps even within a division left me a bit unsettled. I did a fair amount of jumping back to check my understanding, but it didn't help much.

[Beverly]

I have finished and overall this was an intriguing read for me.
Before this book I had not heard of Bass Rock and the atmosphere of the this part of coastal Scotland was a draw for me.

I liked that the chapters were short and the last line was usually a cliff-hanger and since the chapters were short I could keep the different threads straight.

Also, the author would often or at least felt like purposely left out information. But I thought that felt natural as the memory recall by the characters was not necessarily that reliable or at least they tried would try to have their own reasoning on what happened and why.

I saw it as a story of survival despite the curve balls thrown at the characters and the aggression/violence experienced by the women whether it was directed at as individuals or it just seemed to be the norm accepted.

The Ruth storyline was the most interesting to me.

[Hugh]

Thanks for all of these interesting contributions.

I had no problems following threads I and II, but did get a little confused by the other two shorter parts and how they related to the main family story. Obviously all our share the theme of women struggling to assert their own lives and fulfilment against the often violent coercion from the men in the story, and the ghosts play a part in the linkage. Overall I rather enjoyed the book.

The setting is in a part of Scotland I have never seen apart from what can be seen from the London to Edinburgh train, which passes through and sometimes stops at Dunbar - I was vaguely aware of the Bass Rock and the Fidra lighthouse, but not the location of Tantallon castle.

[Jenna]

I am only in the early days still of this book, so i dont have too much to say yet about the main issues, but boy oh boy am I wishing there had been a better editor involved. Things like the fact that it was "too cold to out without a hat" and then she stops by the outdoor swimming pool which is full, and then after she has tea she isnt even wearing a hat but ties a scarf around her head, and then "cant bear" to put on her coat (in order for it to get stolen so we can be shown her character) but then when she gets home her hands are frozen "despite her gloves." What?! Same thing with the shark being tail first up the beach (several times the waves wash its jaw), which seems awkward anyway, but then the priest goes into a sermon about the shark swimming on to the beach as a sacrifice. Tail first?!

Such things totally break the spell of a book for me and really mar my experience.

[Jenna]

Hugh wrote: I had no problems following threads I and II, but did get a little confused by the other two shorter parts and how they related to the main fami..."

I think that every un-numbered part is a unique woman, one of the crosses on Maggie's map, in the landscape of death that the characters are walking through.

[Hugh]

Jenna wrote: "Hugh wrote: I had no problems following threads I and II, but did get a little confused by the other two shorter parts and how they related to the main fami..."

I think that every un-numbered part..."

There is definitely some continuity between them, and they are not all different. Not sure whether the fruit symbol has any significance. And I thought some of these parts were set much deeper into history than the recent cases on Maggie's map.

[Jenna]

Hugh wrote: "Jenna wrote: "Hugh wrote: I had no problems following threads I and II, but did get a little confused by the other two shorter parts and how they related to the main fami..."

I think that every un..."

I agree that they are scattered in history - I was using "Maggie's map" loosely. I was also not including part III in this comment - the one narrated by Joseph which gives us the back story of the ghost, who, with the red hair as a clue, may be an ancestor. She designates some sections with wavy lines, and those read to me like "isolated" incidence - the decomposing body, the girl raped and drowned, etc - showing us as Maggie shows Viv with her map that there is a continuity, a "serial killer" of violence against women, with the evidence everywhere.

[Hugh]

Yes, i had forgotten that the Joseph sections were marked III, so that makes sense.

[Mark]

Jenna, frankly, I didn't notice any of those continuity issues, but I know how maddening they can be once they appear. I found my feeling for A Gentleman in Moscow changed sharply when the grand hotel of the 30's that was the setting was provided with automatic elevators instead of the liveried operators that were a point of pride for hotels into the '60s.

[Lesley]

Jenna wrote: "I am only in the early days still of this book, so i dont have too much to say yet about the main issues, but boy oh boy am I wishing there had been a better editor involved. Things like the fact t..."
I gave up for the same irritations. How dare they disrespect us like this?

[Jenna]

Lol, Lesley, I finished it because I usually feel I have to, but in the end each of the threads had major failures that leave me giving this book about a 2. I wont list the minor continuity things that continued to bug me.

I: Did it bother any one else that Maggie gets Dom to go away by saying "now is not the time or the place"? Like there is a time a place to a take a hammer to your wife?! Maggie is the magical ministering angel, healing Viv's wounds (literally and figuratively), suffering for all the murdered women, and she has nothing real to say to an abuser to turn him aside?

II: The bashing in of a skull by Betty, the most steady of all the characters, loosing it at random over the injury to her sister, initiated 12 years ago, just when she had started to have hope to get her out with the help of Ruth who helped her rescue Bernadette was just totally out of character and not believable. And wasn't Christopher on the beach?

III: I found this least satisfying. Killing Sara in the middle of the woods at some random location and before she gives birth so that she cant be the ancestor after all was a disappointment. In a book with such a strong gothic element, I expect the metaphors to play out. Also Sara's transformation from scared child (which she is back to as a ghost) into a powerful woman who kills off half the party and tries to use sex to get the protection she needs was kind of unexpected, but I thought okay, the abused fight back as they can (except Cook seems pretty harmless and she was already being protected by the men). But then why turn her back into the child as the ghost? Shouldn't her ghost be the powerful woman trying to help her future generations tap into that same strength? The ghost just seemed so under-utilized, all she does is scare off poor Deborah and lend a melancholic mood.

I did think that Vivian's depression was well done, especially the day she is supposed to have dinner with Katherine. And her being in love with Dom and thinking he was looking for her instead of Katherine on the train gave her some complexity and moral ambiguity that I liked, but it happened after the metaphorical wound had healed, so again from a plot point of view didn't match my expectations from an text that otherwise seemed to want to be an allegory.

In some ways I think the author is torn between wanting to have her individual characters save themselves and wanting the reader to remain acutely aware of the current on-going unresolved problem of violence again women. I get this, but the result is a lack of faith in any character growth.

I would also be interested in what everyone thinks about the only really strong love these women feel being for a sibling (Anthony and Ruth) or a parent (Michael and Viv). Was this believable? Since so much abuse starts in families, the idea that there were these pure male relatives seemed a bit out of keeping with the rest of it to me.

[James]

I feel I have to defend the author here. The weather in Scotland is often quite unpredictable. Even yesterday I woke up to see frost on the front lawn but with the sun shining on a beautiful day, I was walking about the garden in short sleeves by the end of the morning.

I focus on the main theme of the novel – the violence and oppression done to women by men. I read this novel against the background of more UK news of the case of Sarah Everard. And then there’s the background from my home town where four women have been murdered by men in the last 4/5 years. We know it’s happening in every part of the world. (Cue a rant by Maggie)

In the novel, Dom and Victor both were capable of doing harm and then they were halted only by women taking action themselves.

I think the novel is really effective in covering this issue, managing to pack in so many different and varied cases in a single book without the narrative being dire and dreary – the writing was wholly engaging and the dialogue excellent throughout.

The Bass Rock is that dark symbol that keeps revealing itself through the mist and even the repeating pattern within the novel seems relevant to the theme.

I’m wondering if the novel helps us to respond.

[Jenna]

James wrote: "I feel I have to defend the author here. The weather in Scotland is often quite unpredictable. Even yesterday I woke up to see frost on the front lawn but with the sun shining on a beautiful day, I..."

Thanks James, it wasn't really the weather that was a problem, more leaving the house with a hat but then having a scarf, and having your overcoat off and stolen but then apparently having had gloves on the whole time. And that wasn't even the worst, just the first example I came across. The fact that the girl in III is killed before giving birth and thus is not the ancestor after all was maybe the most bizarre of the discontinuities. I agree that telling so many individual stories gives you a very overwhelming feeling of the problem, but unlike you I find it quite bleak.

[James]

Jenna wrote: "The fact that the girl in III is killed before giving birth and thus is not the ancestor after all was maybe the most bizarre of the discontinuities."

I agree there were many 'discontinuities' in the book. I found that that didn't bother me, I just felt that the plot left spaces that I could imagine how they were linked, or was happy to decide that I simply didn't need to know. I didn't think the girl in III was an ancestor. I did think it was the same girl in the house but was unclear how she got there, but as I say I was happy to accept she was there.

The killing of Sarah was perhaps the point that did rankle me. I sort of put that down to Joseph being an unreliable narrator. I noted the guys who were after her at the start were convinced she was a witch. Joseph was happy to think of her as a victim but when she showed her abilities and her power over men, Joseph came round to thinking that she really was a witch.

Why the ghost is a girl, I don't know. But I didn't rule out that it might be a different girl entirely - maybe it would just satisfy us readers if she was, to tie in all three stories together. I can't remember if there was a direct statement to indicate it was the same girl.

[Jenna]

James wrote: "Jenna wrote: "The fact that the girl in III is killed before giving birth and thus is not the ancestor after all was maybe the most bizarre of the discontinuities."

Great point about Joseph deciding she is a witch when she starts to show expertise and confidence. It was a bit simplified perhaps, but she was limited with space for that story. I do think that Sarah was the ghost - red hair specifically mentioned and the rabbit teeth in the box are the same - so at least Joseph makes it to the coast and maybe ghost Sarah followed him. What disappointed me was that she was back to being a victim as a ghost (that is what I meant by "girl"), instead of channeling the agency she had started to show, and therefore be able to boost the modern women. The trope of the ghost and the witches is generally about women's power and connection and I thought Wyde brought that in to the story without actually using it that much (the chanting scene only serves to scare off Deborah). She seemed to want to have a redemptive women-rescuing-themselves story but also show how pervasive and terrible the violence is and how impossible to escape, and so the gothic element that would have supported a satisfying first version fizzled, in which case, why include it? Without it, the lack of resolution in the part 1 characters , which I thought was the strength of the book, would have been more to the fore, with Viv still kind of in love with Dom and so vulnerable to his violence and victimizing her sister, but able to stand up against the violation of the tickling, the threat of the men not really gone, and everyone still drinking and traumatized, muddling through. It wouldn't have been Milkman or The woman who walked into doors or Bastard out of Carolina, but I think I would have given her more slack without the gratuitous genre element.

The resolution in part II seemed a violation of Betty's character and so I didn't believe it, should have been Ruth pushed over the edge by Peter's gaslighting maybe taking it out on a weaker person if she wanted the reverend to be killed. Also most of the discontinuities occurred here - she would never have let the boys be scolded for the missing dog when she broke it, not clear how a delivery a few weeks early resulted in the infant's death, Christopher was on the beach when Ruth started down, where did he go?

[Lesley]

Jenna wrote: "James wrote: "Jenna wrote: "The fact that the girl in III is killed before giving birth and thus is not the ancestor after all was maybe the most bizarre of the discontinuities."

Great point about..."
SOOO glad I got the irrits with the shocking edit!! DNF with pleasure..hehehe

[James]

Jenna wrote: "I do think that Sarah was the ghost - red hair specifically mentioned and the rabbit teeth in the box are the same"
"

The teeth in the box is a strong implication - right. I'm noticing that Mary also had red hair (as does Bernadette) - and then I start thinking about the wardrobe. At one point a ghost is in the wardrobe. Mary was hidden in the wardrobe as a girl and also one of the horrific vignettes concerns a girl made to stay in a wardrobe. It's puzzling but I find it doesn't matter who the ghost is, as long as I recognise that it is a previous victim.

As for Betty's actions on the beach, I found myself filling in the story here - that Betty likely overheard the Rev. Brown's proposal to send Ruth to the sanatorium and that's what triggered her act.

I appreciate this might not be so.