The Last Kings of Sark - Rosa Rankin-Gee

It all begins with a case of mistaken identity. Mr Defoe hires Jude, fresh from St Andrews, to come to Sark and spend the summer tutoring his son Pip, under the impression that she is male, and will hopefully prove to be a good influence, helping to draw her rather diffident charge out of himself. With the help of their young Polish-English cook, Sofi, this is exactly what Jude proceeds to do, but not necessarily in the direction her employer envisaged.

It quickly becomes apparent that the pupil outshines the teacher. Instead of focussing on science and maths, as Mr Defore desired, Pip and Jude decamp to the kitchen, Sofi’s domain, where their real learning begins: ‘we asked one another questions. What ifs, and would you rathers. What we were scared of, and where we wanted to be in ten years’. They are a curious bunch; Pip is clearly intelligent, but terribly shy. He is awkward among the boisterous males of his extended family, drawn instead to his mother Esme, an almost unseen figure whose presence nevertheless inflects the whole narrative, like a character from Pinter. Sofi is less educated (when Jude mentions something about the road to Manderlay, she replies ‘I don’t like Robbie Williams’), and doesn’t have the privileged social background of Jude or Pip, but is a dynamic, vital figure, teaching Pip that ‘when you’re beautiful, and do what you do with the confidence of the sun, no-one seems to mind’.

It is hard to see exactly what Jude brings to this party. She lags behind Pip intellectually (struggling through Hemingway while he reads Proust), and lacks Sofi’s force of personality. She is always acting against instinct, repressing her urges and avoiding the natural expression of her desires: ‘I wanted to touch, because that’s instinct, isn’t it, but I asked what time the others would be back, and went to lay the table in the dining room’. In terms of class, though, she bridges the gap between Sofi and Pip; in the strange atmosphere of Sark, the last outcrop of Feudalism in Europe, the three form a close bond. Rankin-Gee subtly demonstrates the growing intimacy between them, evoking the glorious self-sufficiency of teenage relationships: ‘it was as if the light was shining in us, and only on us’.

As in Bonjour Tristesse, to which the novel has been compared, the apparently idyllic atmosphere has a sense of loss at its core. Although nothing is made explicit, Esme appears to have an eating disorder, and her withdrawal from the everyday business of the household generates a sense of anxiety amongst the others. Jude alludes to self-harm in her narrative, baring herself to Sofi in the confines of their shared bed and breakfast room: ‘I came back from the bathroom in a thin tank top and pants, rather than pyjamas. I stood in the narrow alley between our beds, taking longer than necessary to set the alarm on my phone, not wanting her to look, but not wanting her not to see’…’your legs,’ she said’.

In the sheltered world of Sark the three are able to act on impulse, and with relative impunity. As the group moves apart, and the three begin to negotiate the adult world, it is Jude’s insecurity and inability to act that becomes the dominant theme; their actions seem to be a pale reflection of their aspirations. The second part of the novel takes on a cinematic structure; the narrative splits, becoming episodic, a similar technique to the one employed by Eleanor Catton in the closing stages of The Luminaries, though that was on a grander scale. Rankin-Gee gives a sense of how depression can blur the edges of memory – there is very little detail of what Sofi and Jude, in particular, actually do as adults. The impression is that contrary to received wisdom, the characters were fully formed, operating at their greatest potential, during that summer in Sark. After that, they fragmented, became shadows of their former selves.

Although the most obvious comparison in terms of tone would be the previously mentioned Bonjour Tristesse, it is also worth mentioning The Last King of Scotland. The title clearly brings Giles Foden’s novel to mind, and there is a similarity in the idea of a young character arriving in a strange new environment and acting witjout regard to consequences, before the realities of the adult world catch up with them. There are also hints of Poliakoff in the interactions between Pip’s real family and the surrogate relatives who enter his home. It would have been interesting to see Rankin-Gee explore the unique characteristics of Sark further; we are given a sense of the island's otherworldliness, but we are never really shown how its feudal legacy is manifested, which feels like a missed opportunity. The sections based on Sark are the strongest parts of the novel, and would actually have worked perfectly well as a self-contained novella, without the slightly perfunctory adult chapters. Later, Jude’s narrative becomes frustrating, as the character’s listlessness begins to seep into the prose. There are occasional gothic intimations of death, which are well-handled by the author, but it is hard to remain connected to the character.

Ultimately, The Last Kings of Sark is a failry promising debut; Rankin-Gee skilfully mixes the youthful exuberance of the early stages with a hint of something darker underneath, and there is a cinematic feel to much of the novel, though a big screen audience might demand more closure than the author is willing to provide. The novel is let down slightly by an unevenness to the prose. There are sentences which demonstrate a poetic turn of phrase, but these are often followed by more pedestrian passages. Maybe some extra drafting could have bought more depth to the overall experience; the talent is definitely there, but isn't yet fully expressed. If you’re keen on bittersweet coming-of-age novels though, this is definitely worth a look.