Review by Jayne White
I can’t help feeling I’m a bit late to the party with my review of this book; it was released last January after all. Published by the small independent Galley Beggar Press, it received good reviews and its reputation has been building gradually through the year up until it won the Goldsmiths Prize last November and really got a concentrated dose of media attention. The Goldsmiths Prize has been set up to "recognise published fiction that opens up new possibilities for the novel form". You only have to look at the first chapter of this novel to see why it was a contender, as the style is quite extraordinary. I don’t want to say too much about the storyline in this review; I’d like anyone who reads this book to discover it in the way I did.
The entire book is written in a stream of consciousness narrative which has drawn comparisons with Beckett and Joyce. In the first chapter the narrator is an unborn baby girl who is sharing and relaying her mother’s thoughts and feelings as her young son is operated on and receives treatment for a brain tumour; as her husband leaves her on realising that the child is going to live on damaged rather than die soon: and as she gives birth to the narrator, whereupon her link with her mother is broken. It’s an emotional start and the style of writing communicates emotion directly to the reader in a way that is extremely rare.
“Gethsemane dear Lord hear our prayer our. Please. Intercession. Night in hospital beds. Faces on the candlewick. Lino in the knees. Please don’t God take. Our. Holy Mary mother of all, humbly we beseech thee.”
“There’s good news and bad news. It’s shrunk. He’s saved. He’s not. He’ll never be. So like it lump it a short breath’s what you got. Jesus in her blood that minute. Rejoice sacred heart of Christ. But we’ll never be rid do you understand? he says. Shush now she says shush.”
As you can see from the quotations above, punctuation is non-standard. As an attempt to convey the rhythm and significance of particular words and phrases within thoughts I think it’s effective. The story is set in Ireland and the religiosity of the language where the brain falls back on traditional catholic prayers and biblical phrases continues through the book. In moments of particularly severe pain and confusion, the words themselves begin to disintegrate.
The story spans 20 years and the author places the characters, none of which are named, in settings that will resonate with all of us. There are the early memories of the toddler, classroom stories, playground stories, a family funeral, the first kiss. She tries to stay in keeping with the maturity of the narrator character at each stage and the thoughts are generally uncensored. As far as I could see she broke each of these rules once. Her grandfather visits when she’s very young, but the description of his pious malignancy is in the adult voice, fittingly I think, as it’s important that we understand why this little family unit is so neglected by the wider family.
“Under the thumb of him. Under his hand. Movie star father with his fifteen young. His poor Carole Lombard fucked into the ground. Though we don’t say those words. To each other. Yet.”
On another occasion the story we’re told first is what the character wished had happened: how she was strong and protected herself: before she admits the lie and gives us the awful, painful truth.
The book is rather bleak about human nature. We learn about the characters from seeing the way they hurt or are hurt by others. The only caring is that which the damaged siblings find for each other. If there was light in the darkness for these children, we see very little of it here.
I offered to review this book for the Fop a while ago, some weeks before I found time to sit down and read it. When I mentioned I’d read it, he asked me the standard question, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ I found myself rather stuck for an answer. It’s a dark book, an intense book, and it took me to places I’d never normally go. In fact, it’s a book which should carry one of those ‘If you’ve been affected by any of the issues...’ statements that you get after soap episodes which might be deemed ‘trigger-y’ for abuse victims or the recently bereaved. In the end I had to say that I appreciated the book rather than that I enjoyed it. However, I don’t want to put you off it; I would sincerely urge you to take the time to appreciate this book too. After all, how often, as a well-read adult, do you find a book which is so distinctive and effective that it expands your view of what a writer can achieve?
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