Fiction

“Walk the Blue Fields” by Claire Keegan: on the path to something remarkable

Set mostly in rural or coastal Ireland, these stories probably resonate most strongly with those who have first-hand experience of its recent past: the folklore, superstition, dominance of the Catholic Church and close-knit, by turns supportive and judgemental communities, where every individual’s business is known, often in several versions, scarcely before an assumed event has taken place.

Varying a good deal in length, the eight short stories have many common features: a strong sense of place, even if one has never visited it; a quirky or unclear scenario; insensitive or controlling men; unfulfilled women who sometimes summon the strength to break free; the appearance of remarkably prescient healers and fortune-tellers, while priests break their vows and doubt their faith. A drip-feed of explanations lead to the climax, often followed by an inconclusive ending which leads the reader to ponder what might happen next.

Yet reviewers differ widely in how they rate these stories. Despite the hook of its title, “A Long and Painful Death”, I found the opening story quite unengaging with its detailed descriptions of the commonplace and a main character known only as “the woman”. So it took a reader who recognised the location “on the seaward side of a winding road high over the Atlantic ocean on the western edge of the island of Achill, itself perched on the western edge of the island of Ireland” to trigger an appreciation of the descriptions. Only at the end did I grasp that this tale is all about writer’s block. Having arrived at the house of a famous dead author, the woman spends the day doing anything but produce some words, yet her writer’s mind is continuously noting her surroundings as a possible source of material and inspiration. It is not until the last page that the vital idea for a dramatic plot comes to her from an unexpected quarter.

”The Parting Gift”, is a poignant portrayal of a teenage girl who has sold her horse to buy the plane ticket to New York so as to escape from such a restrictive life, with a darker undercurrent, on the family farm, that she is unfamiliar with the security baggage scanner at the airport. It seems like a forerunner of Claire Keegan’s much-admired novels, “Foster” and “Small Things Like These”, with its clear prose, tight structure, ear for dialogue and skill in implying the complex relationships between the family members.

“Dark Horses” is perhaps the least memorable story, perhaps because at barely eight pages, it is too short to do much more than demonstrate Claire Keegan’s ear for the banter of Irish men in a pub.

At the other extreme of thirty-five pages, “Night of the Quicken Trees” was a little too fey and contrived in weaving folklore into the tale of two lonely neighbours, where the exaggeration and humour of turf-cutter Stack frying eel while his pet goat Josephine has the run of his chaotic house, take the edge off the melancholy off a women driven half-mad with grief over the loss of her child. This mixture of comedy and sadness is also evident in what some regard as the finest story. Again at about forty pages, “The Forester’s Daughter “ is long enough to have mini-chapters, to chart the course of an unwise marriage, trapping an ill-matched pair, with the plot revolving round the anthropomorphic dog Judge, which husband Deegan gives his daughter as an unintended birthday present.

These stories are quite thought-provoking if not as moving as they could be, and I shall read the initial set, “Antarctica” which established Claire Keegan as a prize-winning writer. However, her work seems to have evolved over the years, from an over-reliance on folk tales and caricatures to her admired novellas: “Foster” and “Small Things Like These”. Their subtlety stems from some striking original prose employed to create the sense of place, the authentic ring of the dialogue and insight into her more convincing characters’ thoughts and interactions.

Impact by Olivier Norek: jury out on un thriller écolo

A bestselling French author of crime fiction, Olivier Norek was also a scriptwriter for the addictive television series “Engrenages” or “Spiral” in English. In “Impact”, he has chosen to use a thriller as a vehicle for confronting us with the extreme consequences of climatic change, particularly in parts of the world little known to those most responsible for aggravating the problem. His serious purpose, perhaps fed by years spent as an aid worker, is indicated by the references supplied at the end to support every adverse effect described.

His opening chapter sets the tone with a graphic description of the Niger delta, where leaking oil pipes have polluted the land, forcing the evacuation of the local population to a coastal “bidonville” shanty town. The bodies of the many who have already died are burned, presumably to prevent a greater pollution at the price of a lesser one, not to mention the lack of humanity involved. Subsequent digressions transport us to a range of far-flung places under pressure, like northern Siberia, where hungry polar bears forced southwards by the melting of ice caps terrorise the residents.


Already shaken by his experiences in Nigeria, soldier Virgil Solal is devastated by the loss of his infant daughter, only a few moments after her birth. Doctors assure him that despite living in the attractive district of Bercy Village, the foetus must have been fatally damaged by the effects of air pollution from the nearby ring road and cement works. This is the trigger for Solal to assume the role of an ecowarrior, heading up a direct action group, “Greenwar”.


This novel may well stir the emotions, prick the conscience and alter the mindset of readers. It may also prompt discussions which the writer did not intend.

The wildfires raging through the Hollywood Hills as I write, leaving a landscape reminiscent of Gaza, may prove to some that the scale of potential global catastrophe cannot be exaggerated. However, such scenes as the Indian family taking refuge on their kitchen work tops not just from the rising water but the snapping jaws of the crocodile lurking in it appear too far-fetched. Likewise, the rapid rise of a global cult, supporting Solal with his assistants dressed in panda suits with distinctive mock red facial scars seem improbable. We are assured of the effort to minimise the impact on the environment of printing this novel, but what about that of the mass production of the panda suits?

Solal’s murder of a kidnapped oil executive whose company predictably refuses to pay a vast ransom with major concessions is justified by him and legal defence as being nothing compared with the deaths due to climate change caused by fossil fuels. The suggestion that Solal’s actions will be sufficient to arouse mass movements to force change is unconvincing. The issues are oversimplified by the failure to present and adequately demolish where possible the counterarguments. Do the ends justify the means? Are the ends actually achieved sufficient? What about the complicating effects of overpopulation, or the understandable wish of less developed countries to “catch up”?

Do the somewhat two-dimensional, stereotyped characters, neatly divided into “good” and “bad” detract from the novel, together with the excessive contrast between moments of gimmicky horror and sentimentality?

It was good practice to read this in the original French, and although by turns irritating, disjointed and a little tedious in its repetition of calamities, Impact is thought-provoking. However, I would prefer to have read a John Pilger-style set of articles exposing the untrammelled capitalism, short-term approach, greed and lack of vision and strategy, to name only a few of the complex factors driving climate change.

“In a Summer Season” by Elizabeth Taylor: Caught on a cultural watershed

Although still in print, the novelist Elizabeth Taylor seems to be generally overlooked, and perhaps on the brink of being forgotten unless some director is inspired to make a film of one of her books, as was the late Dan Ireland for “Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont” in 2006, establishing this as perhaps her best-known work. Taylor was probably resigned to be eclipsed from the outset by the coincidence of sharing her name with the film star who shot to fame in “National Velvet” in 1944, shortly before the publication of the first of the author’s twelve novels, “At Mrs. Lippincote’s”.

Despite having been described as “her most sex-infused work”, Taylor’s eighth novel, “In a Summer Season”, published in 1961, reminds me of Jane Austen as she might have written if living in the 1930s-1950s. Although the tale switches between arguably too many points of view, Taylor’s heroine is wealthy forty-something Kate Heron, recently widowed after a happy marriage, who has set tongues wagging in the local community by marrying Dermot, handsome and charming, but ten years her junior, and unable to hold down a job.

The main characters are not quite as aristocratic as Austen’s, although some casually count the odd titled friend, and Kate’s former father-in-law, the crusty Sir Alfred, has been knighted for his rags-to-riches success as a factory owner. They tend to fall into two groups: well-heeled and living on unearned income on one hand, on the other, like retired teacher Aunt Ethel, or Kate’s new husband Dermot, ruefully or resentfully aware of being obliged to trade on the good will of richer relatives.

While Austen’s focus is on young women’s attempts to find suitable husbands in the confined world of country houses and the Bath Assembly Rooms, Kate occupies a spacious house with a telescope providing a view of Windsor Castle, a live-in cook, daughter at boarding school and son moodily learning the ropes in the factory he is expected to inherit. The main issue is whether everyone is correct in assuming that her marriage to Dermot is doomed to fail, the question being when and how. Combined with sub-plots, this may all sound too trivial and dated to be worth reading. Yet, as with Austen, what raises this novel above unendurable banality is Taylor’s skill in combining comedy, acerbic wit and poignancy, although her acute observations are expressed through the thoughts and dialogues of her characters rather than the explanations of an older-style, sometimes intrusive narrator.

Another difference is that Taylor is more experimental in deliberately playing down plot narration , preferring to focus on particular scenes. So it is that, for instance, the two major events in the plot are only referred to, or inferred – in fact never fully explained – after they occur. Instead, the detail lies in apparently minor scenes, like Kate’s visits to the hairdresser “Elbaire”, the uncharitable atmosphere at the sorting of clothes for the village church jumble sale, or the accepted ritual of “seeing off” the children at Waterloo Station for the autumn term return to boarding school, with the firmly repressed fleeting doubts as to the justification for sending one’s offspring away in this fashion.

From this approach, we learn a good deal about the characters’ thoughts, the degree of self-delusion, and their views on each other – generally, they are more clear-sighted about the latter than themselves. Taylor also conveys the behaviour and outlook of people living in the 1950s very vividly, although she confines herself to a narrow and privileged section of society. Of course, the world has changed so much since then, that it may be difficult for readers under say forty to feel engaged.

I am particularly intrigued by the fact that this book was published in 1961 at a time of sea change, when the author could have gone either way between a “genteel” novel which formed a natural progression on from Jane Austen, and the “kitchen sink realism” of working class drama, with the abandonment of conventions. Elizabeth Taylor chose to “play safe” and stay “in line” with writers like Barbara Pym, rather than join the ranks of the “ground-breaking” works like John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” (1956), Shelagh Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey”, or Lynne Reid Banks’ “The L-shaped Room” (1960). Admittedly, the acute sexual desire which is what attracts Kate to Dermot is described, but she remains essentially conformist, expecting to live as an appendage to a husband, accommodating his wants, rather than seeking independent self-fulfilment. The only somewhat caricatured “modern” touch is provided by Araminta, a neighbour’s uninhibited daughter who is training to be a model in London.

Although she lived into the 1970s, perhaps “The Swinging Sixties”, the pill and certainly the Sexual Discrimination Act, to name a few changes, came a little too late for Taylor to make the adjustment to an edgier style. However, it seems that in fact she was quietly radical in her thinking. It comes as a surprise to learn that, as a young woman, she belonged to the Communist Party, and she remained an atheist and a Labour voter in later life. So, it must have been a conscious choice to omit any evidence of this from the novel, apart from Kate’s atheism which did not prevent her from making wedding “vows before the God she does not believe in, without the slightest hesitation”, to quote Aunt Ethel.

It is a fair observation that a psychological study of privileged people can be as moving and insightful as one about those struggling in poverty, and Taylor does not shy away from displaying a capacity for ruthlessness when it comes to achieving her chosen (if somewhat abrupt and contrived) ending.

What is certain is that, if alive today, Elizabeth Taylor could have written some gripping soap operas.

“Continuer” by Laurent Mauvignier: “Travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us”

Confronted by her teenage son Samuel’s delinquency, Sibylle decides on a drastic solution which she may well have been considering for herself: to uproot him from Bordeaux to a different culture, closer to nature, where he can learn “true” values, by trekking on horseback through the mountains of Kirghizistan. Selling with apparent ease a conveniently inherited house, she is able to finance this scheme, and set off, despite her ex-husband Benoît’s strong objections, and Samuel’ sullen resentment.

The novel proceeds in a series of dramatic incidents, some quite improbable, covered in great detail, often in a “stream of consciousness” style which can become oppressive in its repetition and intensity. Events are punctuated with flashbacks including the rather hackneyed use of dreams, to reveal the past events of Sibylle’s life.

“Continuer” has been made into a film which apparently focuses on the relationship between mother and son, and the striking landscapes through which they travel, perhaps because these are the strongest aspects of the novel (despite the author reportedly not having set foot in Kirghizistan before writing it). But Mauvignier has sapped his theme with continual references to Sibylle’s underdeveloped backstory, some details of which have to be shoehorned into the somewhat rushed anti-climax of the ending.

“Continuer” seems to have been well-received in France, although I preferred Mauvignier’s earlier novel “Des Hommes” (“The Wound” in translation) which deals with the problems of coming to terms with the past faced by Frenchmen forced to fight in the Algerian war of independence. Both novels share what may be the hallmarks of his writing: distinctive style, unusual structure and inconclusive ending. Both novels convey a strong sense of place with minute descriptions of physical sensations, some of which can be absorbing, but in this case did not engage me fully.

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf: Living in a world where a sense of the presence of those who have gone before is lacking

Written by the internationally admired novelist and poet David Malouf, this is an unusual take on the interactions between the European colonists and the native Aborigines in C19 Queensland.

The central character, Gemmy Fairley, is based on the life of James Morrill, a sailor who was shipwrecked and washed up on the Queensland coast where he lived for sixteen years with the Aborigines, before returning to the settlers’ “civilisation”. Both men announce themselves with the same words, “Don’t shoot! I am a British object!”, but the Gemmy of Malouf’s imagination seems to be a more poignant and touching character who seems to have adapted quite easily to Aborigine life, after an even harder childhood as an orphan exploited by a London rat-catcher.

At first, Gemmy is a source of curiosity and amusement, but in an isolated, insecure white immigrant community, he soon arouses suspicion mingled with a repulsion which is heightened by the nature of his difference – physically damaged by adversity, he is between two cultures, a white man who looks and behaves like a native. In a community which lives in a constant sense of fear of the unknown, uneasily aware of the presence of elusive, possibly menacing strangers, they dare not trust him, particularly when he is reported to have received a visit from a couple of Aborigines.

In this subtle psychological drama, Malouf tends to portray the Aborigines in a more sympathetic light, as more sensitive and empathic than the white settlers, although they remain more two-dimensional than the latter. The Aborigine couple “were concerned that in coming here, among these ghostly white creatures, he might have slipped back into the thinner world of wraiths and demons he had escaped, though never completely in his days with them. They had come to reclaim him; but lightly, bringing what would feed his spirit”. As tensions rise in the colonial village, those who have supported Gemmy feel rejected by the community, but disillusioned with their former friends in return.

The Minister, Mr Frazer, makes use of Gemmy’s local knowledge and labour to dig up the unfamiliar local plants he wishes to study. This gives him the idea of developing a market for local fruit and vegetables, but the plan is bound to wither in the face of a Governor who thinks only of imposing his own British culture.

By turns disturbing and beautiful, carefully crafted, Malouf’s prose needs to be read slowly, like a poem, to appreciate more fully the vivid pictures created of Queensland, to note the small details which may prove relevant later and to understand fully the thoughts he wishes to convey.

From the outset, I felt that the novel which focuses on small insights was building up slowly to a powerful climax but this drifted away in the last three chapters which seem disjointed, rushed and too disconnected from what has gone before, featuring insufficiently developed relationships, or characters who have not even appeared previously. Perhaps the author is simply most interested in showing how , for instance, a single incident may have particular significance in one’s memory; a person may have a lasting influence which may be hard to grasp, perhaps only when it is too late.

This novel is worth reading for the quality of the writing and observation, and the issues it addresses, although I would rate “The Conversations at Curlew Creek” more highly from the viewpoint of structure. ”Remembering Babylon” could be a good choice for a book group, since it could spark discussion over the experience of being a colonial settler, the relationships with indigenous groups, and the psychology of individuals in groups under pressure, or living in a world where they need, but do not have, “a sense of the presence of those who have gone before”.

“My Friends” by Hisham Matar: ambitious and moving, but with something missing which is perhaps the point

Hisham Matar has drawn much of the material for his novels from his Libyan heritage: a childhood experience of exile, with the need to conceal even his own identity, at times his very name, because of his father’s criticisms of Colonel Gaddafi’s dictatorship, or his father’s sudden arrest and abduction to Libya, never to be seen again.

The story revolves round three rather different men, thrown together by chance and linked by the sense of being cast adrift as exiles. It begins at what proves to be the end, as the narrator Khaled has an emotional parting from his old friend Hosam Zowa, about to start yet another new life in California where his father had acquired a house. As Khaled wanders back from King’s Cross Station to the small flat he has rented for decades, the subsequent chapters form a series of flashbacks and reminiscences, set against the background of a people ground down by a repressive regime, energised by the Arab Spring to rise up in rebellion, only to become embroiled in a new round of “coups, counter-coups, chaos and confusion”.

Surprisingly few very dramatic events are recorded, notably the demonstration in London outside the Libyan Embassy in 1984, when policewoman Yvonne Fletcher was shot and died. Now studying in Edinburgh, Khaled is persuaded by his friend Mustafa to take part in the event, but the balaclavas they purchase to conceal their identities are no protection against the unexpected volley of bullets from an Embassy window. Although badly injured, both survive, but with lives irrevocably changed: doomed to be branded disloyal troublemakers. With the real risk of physical arrest and torture combined with the psychological games set up by the Gaddafi regime, the two young men are unsure whether their close relatives in Libya are aware of their plight but are afraid to contact them in case they suffer reprisals as a result. Khaled’s caution proves justified when he eventually risks phoning his parents: while his father goes away for a minute, the inevitable eavesdropper on the line coughs twice, just to make his presence known.

The novel conveys well the surreal aspect of crises, and the continual fear involved in exile. There is the constant need to be on guard, even against fellow students thought to be “spies” being paid to inform on Khaled and Mustafa. To protect himself from the long arm of Gaddafi’s regime, Khaled sacrifices much to keep a low profile. This involves becoming a habitual liar, even to his closest relatives back home. So incredibly, for years, he maintains the fiction that he is still studying at university and having a great time, when in fact he is living in poverty in London, doing dead-end jobs when he can.

Some of the most engaging passages are the dialogues involving conversations too detailed to be memories, as when Khaled, as a boy, hears his liberal-minded parents discussing the daring story read on the radio, written by Hosam, whom he has yet to meet. Or, years later there is a domestic scene set in Libya, which has to be relayed to Khaled in the form of a letter, in which Hosam describes his growing attraction to a much younger relative called Malak, who is goaded by Hosam’s brother into describing the kind of man she would choose to marry – it’s like being a fly on the wall observing another culture and adjusting one’s view of it in a positive way.

At other times, the author digresses into some topic which interests him and could easily be an essay in its own right: as in “a survey of London’s inherent instability” which involves Khaled and Hosam in visiting the houses where a range of famous writers lived in passing. Another example is a discussion of Arab words which have no English counterpart, like “heart” in the metaphysical sense: “How can the English language do without such a word?” Malak asks.

For the most part, the novel is slow-paced, and probably a hundred pages or more too long. Not much happens in Khaled’s life, restricted partly by his exiled status, partly the limits he imposes on himself, the implied inability to commit to a permanent relationship which may be the result of trauma. The author’s focus on small incidents and passing impressions, could become very tedious. Matar largely succeeds in avoiding this with the acute observations and insights which he weaves into Khaled’s stream of consciousness. Matar is interested in psychology, why people behave as they do, rather than in tight plotting and the power of a “less is more” style. He portrays Khaled as being in the middle of the trio : behaving like the impulsive Mustafa when he is with Hosam, or the cautious Hosam when with Mustafa.

Inevitably, the urge to return to Libya to fight for an end to tyranny proves irresistible for two of the trio, with Khaled apparently stuck in the safe inertia of his constrained haven in London – but this enables the dynamics of the relationship between the three to change again. On one level, the situation is often painfully poignant or sad, but on another it is simply a realistic portrayal of how life turns out.

The reliance on memories leads to fragmented, disjointed impressions, particularly in the final chapters which felt like a condensed bolt-on to reach a rather limp ending. Yet overall, the novel increased my awareness and understanding of Libya and the trauma of exile, although I felt that there was something in Khaled’s personality which made his life more constrained and limited than perhaps was necessary, and that humans being by their nature capable of adapting, he was in his own way oddly content.

“A Rising Man” by Abir Mukherjee – a cut above.

Having survived the shelling of the World War 1 trenches and lost his wife to Spanish flu, there is little to keep Captain Sam Wyndham in England. Invited to join the Imperial Police Force in Bengal, only a week after his arrival in Calcutta, he has to deal with the perplexing murder of a senior British official outside a brothel in the native quarter.

At times, Wyndham may seem like yet another of the cynical, somewhat dysfunctional detectives who encounter a succession of red herrings, blind alleys and setbacks, but with the occasional far-fetched act of derring-do or flash of insight manage to solve the mystery – or at least have it explained by the arch villain, possibly in some tense cliff-hanger.

For a first novel, this is quite impressive. What sets it apart is that the author, brought up in the UK as the child of Indian immigrants, succeeds in getting inside the mind of an Englishman of a century ago. Sometimes the dialogue and Wyndham’s view of his world seem too modern, but the setting is an interesting one – Calcutta in 1919, with a population beginning to question British rule, and Wyndham’s investigation disrupted by the unrest following the Amritsar massacre.

The author’s in-depth research of the buildings, ambience and history of Calcutta creates a strong sense of place. His identification with the native people does not deter him from showing them honestly, as well as how they are viewed by the British expats, whose unconscious prejudice, sense of superiority and general tendency to underestimate them is often shown.

Sergeant Bannerjee Surrender-not, who puts up with being known by this name since British people cannot be bothered to learn it accurately, appears to do most of the legwork as regards the investigation. Although the ending seems a little rushed, some of the scenes on the way seem rather long and repetitive, but perhaps that reflects the nature of detective work. There is realism in the way that essentially honest people, like Wyndham, may be sucked into a system of compromise, even acceptance of corruption on the basis of “the end justifies the means”.

Some “loose ends” of unfinished business point to a sequel, or series as it has turned out, so I shall probably read the next novel in due course – it being no doubt advisable to do this in the right order.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng- when each door opens into a different theme………..

It is common practice for a successful writer to fictionalise the life of some celebrated author from the past. In this case, Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng, three times long- or shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has focused on Somerset Maugham, the acerbic, acute observer of human failings, who became a bestselling novelist and famous playwright in the first half of the C20, but is now in the process of being forgotten – unless “The House of Doors” revives interest in him, especially if it is made into a film.

Born in Penang, qualified in law in London, Tan Twan Eng is well-placed  to recreate the meeting of east and west in early C20 Malaya, against the backdrop of the Chinese mainland in turmoil. The focus is on a fortnight in 1921, when Maugham and his secretary/lover, the flamboyant Gerald Haxton, are the house guests of  expat barrister Robert Hamlyn and his wife Lesley, who is unusual in having been brought up in Penang. Initially underestimating Lesley, Willie Maugham finds her to be the source of intriguing local stories, like the scandalous murder trial from the recent past, which will provide the material for him to restore his finances after a disastrous investment, and hopefully retain Gerald’s affections in the process.

This bald summary does not do justice to a complex tale with perhaps too many threads, quite skilfully interwoven, although the reader may find it hard to categorise.  On the face of it, this is a book in which not much happens: at a deeper level, there are continual dramas at an international to personal level.

Lesley’s friendship with the visiting exiled political leader Sun Yat-Sen sometimes reads like a potted history of China on the brink of a Communist revolution, but at least I was made aware of his significance for the first time.

With his sham marriage, Willie portrays the stress of leading a double life, behind a mask, forever fearful of being exposed and disgraced like Oscar Wilde. Lesley represents the other side of the coin: a women who has to find a way of coming to terms with her husband’s infidelity with another man, in an era when divorce was not an option socially. Ironically, this situation leads to her discovering a greater degree of personal fulfilment than might otherwise have been possible.

Apart from the meticulous plotting, with the habit of dropping clues which only become clear much later on, so one has to keep concentrating, it is the written style which sets this novel apart.  I sense that the author has aimed to write in the style of Maugham, inevitably using the type of incident which he would have found intriguing and likely to appeal to his readers.

The  unusual choice of verbs, original metaphors and similes, although occasionally overdone,  are generally very effective, particularly in creating through the mind’s eye scenes of places one has never visited. Even small incidents are described with care. Take the simple action of unwrapping a book: “I cut the twine with my fruit knife, inserted its tip into a fold of the wrapping and with two or three brisk strokes filleted the package open”…. “The blackened kettle was brooding on a charcoal stove, steam whispering from its spout”.

When “Willie pressed his palm to the hard, crocodilian bark” of the  three hundred years old raintree in Robert’s garden,  “the intricate filigree of branches and leaves reminded him of the network of bronchiole and alveoli in a set of lungs”, a clear reference to his previous career as a doctor.

Tan Twan Eng’s own legal training gives the cross-examination in the murder trial an authentic ring, and may also account for  his close attention to detail, for example when introducing us to Malaysian cultures. The precision of his descriptions of the traditional c18 shophouses in Penang with their distinctive “five foot way” paved with brightly patterned terracotta tiles at ground level,  and the timber louvred shutters above can be confirmed by countless photos on the internet.  The ink and watercolour drawings of particular streets, also viewable online, are a model for the paintings Lesley drew in her youth. Even the “kerongsang”, set of three brooches used to fasten the “kebaya” is described fully, when Lesley’s new mood of assertiveness leads her to wear traditional dress.

It may have been a combination of deep reflection over the “the right word” and the structure of the story, not to mention the need for a suitably rich and  inspiring theme that have led Tan Twan Eng to produce “only” three novels in a span of sixteen years. Yet the resulting combination of quality of writing, insights into human nature and thought-provoking themes makes “The House of Doors” worth reading.

“Red Sky in Morning” by Paul Lynch: brutal brilliance

Set in C19 rural Ireland and America, this is the tale of Coyle, a poor, uneducated man who does not baulk at acts of violence when faced with injustice, or the need to survive, but is also gentle in his love for his wife and his little daughter. After accidentally causing the death of the landowner’s malicious son Hamilton, responsible for serving him notice to quit for no apparent reason, Coyle is forced to go on the run, with the foreman Faller and a couple of henchman in hot pursuit. It is unclear why Faller has such an implacable desire to avenge the death of such an unworthy character, nor what may have moulded the wily, vindictive +Faller into a personification of evil. So as Coyle endures the rigour of an Atlantic crossing, and the hardships of life in a gang of exploited Irish immigrants constructing an American railroad, based on real events at “Duffy’s Cut” in 1832, we know that the two men’s paths will ultimately cross again.

What may sound like a familiar, even hackneyed plot, is transformed by the power of Paul Lynch’s prose, remarkable in its original and lyrical stream of consciousness. Like poetry, almost every paragraph repays reading twice or more to absorb and reflect upon it. This often runs counter to the urge to turn the page not only to discover how events will turn out, but perhaps also to escape exposure to their too frequent gratuitous violence and bleakness. The latter are sometimes eased by gentle moments, when Coyle recalls his wife, or fingers the ribbon which is his only keepsake of his daughter. Yet overall, the acute observations and insights tend to be overwhelmed by scenes of brutality or acute suffering.

Quotations out of context are unlikely to do justice the writing, but here are brief descriptions of a storm and its aftermath.

“The world that was all sky was leaded and sinking fast and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Around noon came the sound that many dreaded, the snapping shut of the hatches and the ventilators to keep watertight the boat, the scuffle of tarpaulin on the deck and the dull thud of the pitched weights. Nothing to suck on now but the air tombed beneath.

The master watched the sky swirl and he bellowed commands in a broad voice that was torn up and scattered by the wind. The ship scudded headlong into the squall. Mountains rose out of the sea, reached up towards the sky as if it wanted to take the smudged remnants of the heavens into its quickening mouth, a sea of jagged teeth.”…………………………………….

……………………………………. “They emerged red-eyed and silent into the rinsed air, their clothes ragged and their bodies bent and their faces creased with dirt. They stared in disbelief at the great waters silent, smoothed with a benevolent repose, and they looked with distrust toward the sun that glittered warmly in the pale blue sky, moved awkward through its gift of pure air.”

These words evoke vivid images and authentic emotions, drawing on the author’s experience as a film critic.

Although I have yet to read “Prophet Song”, Paul Lynch seems to be a worthy winner of the Booker Prize for a quality of writing fed by his copious reading since early childhood, and very much in the vein of Cormac McCarthy, but with his own twist, the articulacy and skilful way with words found in so many Irish writers. “Red Sky at Morning” contains these ingredients, although being his first published novel, it may not be the best. Perhaps at times, the verbal pyrotechnics are a little too contrived, but this may be inevitable if a writer is prepared to take risks, pushing the limits of what words can convey.

It’s interesting to compare his style with that of Graham Greene, who aimed to achieve in his writing “a kind of verbal transparency which refuses to allow language to become a character in its own right” – hence the sentences which have been described as “lean and lucid”. In “Red Sky at Morning”, the words seem almost an end in themselves. The conclusion to be drawn seems to be simply, as Coyle’s wife reluctantly observes, that “all you can do in this life is to learn to accept loss”. Combined with the ambiguous, incongruously upbeat “Epilogue”, this left me dissatisfied. In view of the current state of the world, perhaps the author is justified in what he himself has called his “tragic world view”, but while having huge admiration for his talent, this is hard to take in large doses.

“Le Chien jaune” (The Yellow Dog) by Georges Simenon – promising but Simenon not at his best

Maigret needs no introduction, and the choice of “Le Chien jaune”, popular enough to be made into a film only a year after its publication in 1931, seemed a promising choice for a French book group.
It began well, with a customs officer observing the murder by an invisible assassin of a well-liked wine merchant shortly after he leaves a hotel bar. Summoned to investigate, as Maigret sits in the bar, he witnesses an attempt to poison the dead man’s colleagues. Meanwhile, a yellow dog, origin and owner unknown, has begun to lie by the till.

There was general agreement that Simenon shows once again his gift for capturing the ambience of a place, in this case the Brittany fishing port of Concarneau, which in the early 1930s may well have been the kind of provincial, inward-looking community where fear and prejudice could easily be aroused and manipulated. The impact of the journalists, descending en masse from national newspapers and bent on sensationalising events, is well portrayed.

However, there is something lacking. Most of the characters seem quite wooden, stereotypes or caricatures, while the plot plods through a disjointed series of events, with some of the most dramatic scenes described by third parties.

There is too much reliance on implausible scenes, as when Maigret and Leroy just happen to be sitting on the hotel roof when an intriguing meeting between two characters is visible through a nearby window. Maigret’s public admission of a criminal act for which he is never charged, and turns out to have made to protect a suspect for whom he feels sympathy, is also ludicrous.

Maybe this is unfair, in that Simenon, arguably the French (he was actually Belgian) equivalent of Agatha Christie, was a pioneer in making detective fiction highly popular. By creating Maigret as such a flawed character, needlessly brusque, uncommunicative and high-handed, perhaps he set the trend for dysfunctional but talented detectives. In this case, Maigret’s talent seems hard to justify: while informing his hapless sidekick Leroy that he is acting on intuition rather than following procedures, the fact that he could in no way have deduced so accurately and then explained the details of the complex crime so clearly in the usual “denouement” scene leaves the reader feeling a bit cheated.

If detective novels have become so much more sophisticated and dramatic in recent decades, do we still want to read about Maigret? Credited with having written more than 400 novels, Simenon’s many “romans durs” (hard novels) like “Le Train” or “Le Chat” seem to have more merit: psychological novels with tight structures and clear, spare prose, a wide range of themes and contexts and “real” characters.

Simenon’s extraordinary life is also more gripping than this encounter with Maigret.