This is my review of The Evening Road by Laird Hunt.

This is an unusual take on the shocking theme of America’s last public lynching in 1930, immortalised in Billie Holliday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit”. The author explores in turn the experiences of three women whose paths cross fleetingly on the evening of the atrocity. Forming a menacing background theme, the lynching is never explicitly portrayed, often seeming oddly secondary to the preoccupation with the personal lives of the two main characters Ottie and Calla. Both are feisty, damaged by dysfunctional childhoods yet on opposite sides of the racial divide.

Ottie is a sassy young secretary who indulges her lecherous boss to boost her pay cheque and has a troubled relationship with her husband, connected with events from her childhood which gradually become apparent. The trio’s whisky-sodden attempt to join the herd travelling to the misnamed town of “Marvel” for the lynching as a kind of casual spectator sport takes on the quality of a bizarre Odyssey. which seems at times like a nightmarish version of the Coen brothers’ “Oh brother where art thou”. Ottie suppresses her sense of unease over the lynching to the point of encouraging the hijack of a cornflowers’ cart to get there. This is the peculiar, incongruously sweet choice of a name for black Americans as opposed to “cornsilks” for whites, or “cornroots” for American Indians.

Orphaned as a child, taken in by a couple on sufferance, torn between her affection for two men, Calla channels some of her personal violent anger into defiant rage over the lynching to the point of taking action, however futile, to prevent people from attending it. One of the most convincing scenes is her perverse desire to “stamp into the ground”, even shoot, the one white person who shows her kindness. She is enraged by the inadequacy of his statement that the lynching is “just plain wrong”. For her, it is “a thousand miles from what needed saying….what a cornsilk needed to do was just keep his kindly mouth stapled shut”: the honest prejudice of his mother seems preferable. This section reaches the strongest conclusion in the novel.

By contrast, the viewpoint of Sallie, a brain-damaged local white woman with mystical powers provides a short, inconclusive postscript.

“The Evening Road” evokes the sense of 1930s inward-looking small town America where the superficial cosiness of catfish suppers at the church is warped by ordinary people’s unthinking acceptance of slavery’s racist legacy, of sexism and the drowning of guilty sorrows in whisky, a reaction against the unrealistically oppressive prohibition of hard liquor.

Despite its striking metaphors (hell-poker hot) and visual images , this novel comes across as an over-contrived exercise in creative writing. Deliberately surreal and evading the norms of structure, it appears too fragmented and rambling, with details only half-revealed at random, threads allowed to drift away, characters half-developed and unengaging, overall a kind of verbal “modern art”. I read on in the hopes of some resolution or revelation which never came and did not feel any insight gained in the process.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

 

This is my review of Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore.

Set in Bristol against the backdrop of unsettling news about the French Revolution in which idealism turns so quickly to extreme violence, the central character Lizzie Tredevant steers a course between two different worlds. On one hand she has learned to be unconventional, unmaterialistic and free-thinking from Julia Hawkes, her radical blue-stocking mother and a talented pamphleteer on human rights. On the other, she is drawn largely by sexual attraction to John Diner Tredevant, a clever and competent self-made man who has battled his way out of poverty to become a successful property developer. The widower of a French woman, he is much quicker than Julia and her idealistic companions to see the ethical flaws in a revolution which brutally guillotines anyone who happens to be an aristocrat, priest, or sympathiser of the old system. He also appreciates how political and economic uncertainty jeopardise the Bristol housing boom and his debt-laden dream of constructing a grand terrace on the edge of the Clifton gorge, which forms a dramatic backdrop to the story.

Julia, step-father Augustus and family friend Hannah have all advised against her marrying Diner, who in turn does not hide his contempt for what he sees as their naïve theories and practical incompetence: “They tear down the Bastille, but can they build it again? Augustus would not be able to put a roof on a doll’s house…. Can he turn a lathe?…. Can he lay a flagstone floor? No, he depends upon those who can. He is as much a guest in the world as a three-year-old child”. Gradually, her loyalty to Diner is strained by his controlling behaviour, and her curiosity about the French wife she is afraid to ask him about develops into fear over a secret which he may be concealing.

Helen Dunmore knows how to structure a story with a double hook at the beginning: the mystery of a long-dead woman writer who really existed but left no trace of her work, and the reasons why a man is burying a woman’s body in a woodland clearing on the opposite side of the Avon Gorge from Clifton. She develops complex characters and relationships, although the poet Will Forrest is a little too good to be true, with a strong sense of time and place particularly evocative for those who know Bristol – it is intriguing to imagine Clifton as a raw building site surrounded by countryside. The narrative drive drags a little at times, but builds up to a gripping if slightly contrived, borderline melodramatic conclusion. This is a very readable work of popular literary historical fiction.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of Days Without End by Sebastian Barry.

After his immediate family’s death in the Potato Famine, John McNulty joins the wave of Irish immigrants into the US where soldiering seems the only option for him and his lifelong companion and secret lover, John Dole. In the 1850s, this means, of course, “routing out” the Indians to leave the land clear for European settlers. After a brief return to civilian life, inspired by “the true and proper love of country and the call of Mr. Lincoln”, the two men see no irony in joining up again to fight for an end to slavery in the Civil War of the 1860s. Yet McNulty realises that Indian Chief Caught-His-Horse-First and his people have received a raw deal from the Americans whose actions show they are mistaken in thinking themselves morally superior. “Indians ain’t vermin to be burned out of the seams of the coats of the world”.

At first, this novel seems to have a plot so slight it could be summarised in a paragraph, so that what sets it apart is partly the power of Sebastian Barry’s poetical prose – “winter was tightening her noose on the world…then the rains came walking over the land… making the grass seeds drunk with ambition…just before a thunderstorm, when the land draws in its chest and holds a limitless breath…” – layer upon layer of images. There is also his skill in sustaining a distinctive “voice” for his narrator John McNulty in the form of an ungrammatical but expressive stream of consciousness. In fact, when the story gears up to a final dramatic climax, it becomes clear that most of the previous characters and incidents are jigsaw pieces in a carefully constructed plot.

The first of many striking, visceral descriptions is the unexpected encounter with a herd of two or three thousand buffalo, the thrill and danger of catching a few for meat, and the exhilaration of preparing and eating it. “The knives opened the flesh like they were painting paintings of a new country, sheer plains of dark land, with the red rivers bursting their banks everywhere.. The Shawnees ate the lights raw. Their mouths were sinkholes of dark blood”. When this unflinching style is applied to the massacre of Indians, it becomes very hard to read. I can understand Sebastian Barry’s urge to test his creative writing skills to the limit in capturing the reality of brutal events, perhaps he is honouring the victims in the process, yet reading it feels almost obscene. I certainly felt oppressed by unrelenting sequence of violent bloodshed clearly in store.

This sensation is at least partly offset by John McNulty’s wry humour, his sensitive eye for the landscape and weather, his acute observations of the rapid changes in the way of life, all more vivid and evocative than a social history of the period: the experience of a stream train, “Something in perpetual explosion. Huge long muscle body on her and four big men punching coal into her boiler…..Here is new-fangled luxury I guess. We tear on through country would of took long wretched hours by horse, the train traversing it like a spooked buffalo”. Or the freed slaves working confidently by “Vast wharf-houses tall as hills…The boss man is black and the shouting roars out of black lungs. No whips like heretofore. I don’t know but this looks like to be better. Still…(we) don’t see one Indian face”.

In another of McNulty’s flashes of insight: “When that old Cromwell came to Ireland he said he would leave nothing alive. Said the Irish were vermin and devils. Clean out the country for the good people to step into. Make a paradise. Now we make this American paradise, I guess. Guess it be strange so many Irish boys doing this work”.

Although the author manages to convey a good deal about his characters through what often seem like chance comments, and they are in general a realistic mixture of good and evil, apart from the impossibly perfect Indian girl Winona, the fragmented style at times makes them seem distant, two-dimensional, not arousing as much sympathy as they should. It may have been Barry’s intention, to portray people this way in an unstable world. Thus McNulty himself remarks towards the end. “I never think bad of John (Cole), just can’t. I don’t even truly know his nature. He’s a perpetual stranger and I delight in that”.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan.

Having written a fictionalised memoir of her bipolar mother’s life which ended in suicide, the award-winning author Delphine Le Vigan is well–placed to muse on the borders between reality, perceived truth and creative invention. In “Based on a True Story”, this theme is interwoven with the psychological drama of a vulnerable author finding her life being insidiously taken over by a charismatic but probably unstable individual who wants to go beyond being a ghost writer to control the life of a successful author. The inspiration for this comes at least in part from Stephen King’s novels, quotations from which, including “Misery”, at the beginning of each section give broad hints as to where matters are heading.

In giving the novel’s narrator her own name of Delphine, the author suggests a degree of autobiography, but although she herself may well have experienced a period of “writer’s block”, it is to be hoped that the bulk of the story is “made up”. Overwhelmed by the success of her novel revealing intimate family details, which has upset some relatives, bombarded at book signing sessions by fans whom she has given the confidence to unburden their own troubles, it is not surprising that the fictional Delphine is finding it impossible to write. With hindsight, she attributes her decline to the malign influence of her enigmatic friend “L” who at first seemed such a kindred spirit, so eager to help manage her life.

The tense, claustrophobic relationship rapidly established between Delphine and “L” is heightened by the absence of other characters. As regards Delphine’ family, this is conveniently explained by her childrens’ absence at college while her lover spends long periods on work projects in the States. While Delphine initially wants to write creative fiction, the ever more dominating “L” is determined that she should focus on real experiences, however painful, arguing that this is what people wish to read about and now expect from her. This seems a somewhat sterile argument over a false dichotomy, since apart from the fact that people see reality very differently, it is inevitably altered through a writer’s descriptions and interpretations into a “form of fiction”. A book may claim to be “a true story”, but even when “inspired by real facts” may in practice be largely invented.

Although this book has been highly praised, for me it falls short of the subtle and mind-bending work it could have been. The decision to present a retrospective explanation of events with indications of what was about to happen may feed a sense of “reality” but combined with the repetition of points “ad nauseum” makes for an often rather dull and tedious read. When the suspense does begin to ramp up, it tends to become rapidly too melodramatic, collapsing all too predictably into disappointingly mundane or even ludicrous anticlimax. Although the novel benefits from a twist towards the end, the author does not seem to know when to stop – the last two chapters in particular seem counterproductive.

I am tempted to see Polanski’s film on this, since I suspect that the director of “Rosemary’s Baby” will know how to create a real sense of menacing suspense, perhaps at the expense of the literary arguments.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

 

This is my review of Commonwealth by Ann Patchett.

When LA cop Fig admits uninvited guest Bert Cousins to his daughter Franny’s christening party, little does he realise that this will trigger the break-up of his marriage to the beautiful blonde Beverley. One cannot know to what extent this is autobiographical, but Ann Patchett’s personal experience of parental divorce and remarriage leading to the sudden acquisition of step-siblings and enforced living with strangers must provide plenty of material to develop this aspect of domestic drama. A further twist is Franny’s eventual marriage to a famous writer who sees the potential of her family story to create a bestselling novel, leading to further reactions of hostility, resentment or guilt over the exploitation of family members.

I was hooked by the kaleidoscopic impressions of the first chapter, as the party begins to spin out of control under the influence of Bert’s inappropriate gift of a large bottle of gin, inevitably prompting the opening of others. I could appreciate the author’s much-praised gift for using small often banal incidents to reveal much about situations and characters, seen from different points of view.

The nine chapters, some quite lengthy, may seem like linked short stories, relying heavily on flashbacks to reveal the chain of events, including a tragedy with the power to destroy the family. I regret that in the second chapter, I felt an abrupt loss of engagement. This is partly due to the grim setting of a cancer ward where Fig is to be found receiving chemotherapy, accompanied by an adult Franny. I was continuously distracted trying to work out how many decades have passed since the christening in 1964. The flitting sequence of reminiscences and thoughts felt quite contrived, a device for filling the reader in, but it is hard to keep track of all the characters mentioned – which of these have we already heard about or met in Chapter 1? It is disconcerting, for instance, to find that Albie, not yet born in Chapter 1, has become a delinquent arsonist, while Bert and Beverley have divorced before one knew for sure they had ever married. It is hard to relate to comments and anecdotes about characters before they have been clearly established in a story.

What seems like a promising theme therefore comes across as a bit of a mess in its execution. I wanted to like the novel, but too often found it boring and “spread too thinly” across an excessive number of largely underdeveloped characters. To be fair, perhaps the fact I had just read the exceptional “The Invention of Nature” made me set the bar too high, meaning I was not in the mood to make the effort to connect with this novel. I certainly admire the author’s desire to broach diverse, complex topics from different angles, having read “Bel Canto” , inspired by the hostage-taking of the President of Peru, where she explores the views of both terrorists and captives, revolving round the charismatic persona of the opera singer who is one of the prisoners. Very different again was “State of Wonder” in which a pharmaceutical researcher braves the remote Amazonian rainforest to discover what happened to her lover who had gone to work there.

In short, this is a book which divides opinion and promotes discussion.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars