Cells by Gavin McCrea

Amidst the anxiety and tumult of the recent lockdown, being restricted indoors for long periods of time inspired many people to seriously reflect about both the past and future. Slightly before the pandemic, novelist Gavin McCrea (author of the excellent “Mrs Engels” and “The Sisters Mao”) had moved back in with his mother in Dublin during a writing residency. While there he worked to complete his second novel and care for his mother who showed signs of early dementia. As the country locked down, he found himself confined in the home and country which he'd previously vowed never to return to. Amidst the relatively peaceful daily routines in the rooms/cells of this small apartment, a tension mounted regarding unresolved issues to do with McCrea's uniquely challenging upbringing and school life where he experienced years of daily homophobic abuse. He deeply felt that “The problem was that I did not feel at home in my own home.” This account is his personal reckoning with that history, a confrontation with the woman who gave birth to him and an account of the formation of his distinct artistic sensibility.

It's a heartrending experience reading about McCrea's strife in his family and community which naturally leads to intense feelings of pain, suffering, anger, frustration and isolation. However, he is not self-pitying. Instead he seeks to articulate and understand his position and the factors which lead to this situation. There's a rare honesty in how he interrogates the past and the human body itself. He examines the light/dark in himself and those around him including his reserved father who committed suicide and the untrustworthy boyfriend who infected him with HIV. Rather than allowing these tragedies to overwhelm him, they add to his fuel for artistic literary expression. The blunt fact of his survival through these tribulations heighten the moments of rare joy in this memoir such as quietly watching his mother enjoy a book or taking tearful pride in seeing a stack of his novels on sale in a bookshop.

While it's admirable that he extends empathy and patient understanding to people who have wounded him (including a gang of homophobic Irish adolescent boys who violently beat him a few months prior to lockdown), I wish McCrea had spent more time recounting the ways in which certain people have enhanced his life. Figures such as a steadfast childhood friend and his supportive literary agent only get brief mentions. If equal weight had been attributed to them in this dissection of his life it may have given more lightness and balance to this largely elucidating account of trauma. Nevertheless, it's an extremely edifying experience reading this inspiring story. By making his life the subject, McCrea shows how the individual spirit is both beautifully fragile and frightfully robust. Not only does the title refer to our biological makeup, but also the emotional/physical state of being a prisoner in one's own home, country and society. McCrea describes the challenges and (sometimes) impossibility of escaping from these circumscribed aspects of being in a deeply relatable and intelligent way.

The Sisters Mao by Gavin McCrea

I was enthralled by debut novel “Mrs Engels” which shone a light on the experiences and insights of Lizzie Burns. She was a historical figure known primarily as the long-term partner of Friedrich Engels but she vibrantly came to life and into her own in McCrea's fictional account. It dramatically gave a personal slant on Marxism which can't be found in any history or philosophy book while telling a beautiful story. “The Sisters Mao” is not related to that first book in its characters or events, but it is a natural follow up in that it traces the effects of Marxism through the mid-20th century and describes personalities at the beating heart of this ideology. In many ways it's a much more ambitious and lengthy novel that spans multiple decades and countries while slipping backwards and forwards in time. The delicious secrets of its story are also deeply encoded in its structure which theatrically opens and closes. Its narrative also includes an “interruption” rather than an intermission. Performance is at the centre of this novel with all its bewitching flair and ability to convey truths that are dramatically revealed. The experience left me reeling in wonder and pondering its deeper meanings. 

The story primarily focuses on the separate stories of sisters Iris and Eva who are central members of a radical performance collective in London. In 1968 their theatre is on the brink of closure since the cat-riddled building which many drifters use as a squat will be condemned and the owner (who is also their mother) wants to take back control of the property. Iris ekes out a living and helps support the collective by selling drugs while drifting through counterculture parties. Meanwhile, Eva leads members of their group to Paris to join in the notorious demonstrations which occurred that year in protest against capitalism and consumerism. When reunited the sisters hatch a shockingly disruptive plan to make a statement and confront their mother Alissa whose once-progressive values have been abandoned as she's become a mainstream West End actress. The narrative also switches for long sections to simultaneously follow the story of Jiang Qing (also known as Madame Mao) in 1974 when she takes control of a directing a ballet which is being presented for a stately visit from Imelda Marcos and which Jiang Qing wants to slyly use to suppress her enemies within the Party. Though the threads of this plot are somewhat complicated to explain the story gives generous space to each of them making it enjoyable and highly intriguing to follow. Together they also present compelling points of view to consider against each other and the ways in which embracing certain political beliefs warp these fascinating women's sense of justice.

While “Mrs Engels” focused on how a loving relationship is intimately transformed by closely-held ideals, this new novel presents multiple mother-daughter relationships which have been deeply complicated by living out longstanding ideological beliefs. The intense bitterness Eva and Iris feel towards their mother revolves around an alarming incident which occurred in 1956 when the girls were still adolescents and the theatre collective run by their parents viewed Maoism as a great red beacon of light since Stalinism had proved itself to be an epic catastrophe. It's ominously stated how “This pain was the kind caused by a mother's hand, and the honey of revenge was the only medicine for it.” Jiang Qing and Chairman Mao's daughter Li Na is tightly controlled by her mother who draws Li Na into her scheme by using her as a translator when Jiang Qing has a tantalizing private meeting with Imelda Marcos. Natural sentiments become skewed by a belief in a larger system of thought: “Family feelings were not always correct. Sometimes they were a cloak for selfishness and counterrevolutionary urgings.” The parental bonds in this novel have been twisted amidst steely power plays and nurturing has been subsumed by hardened expectations of duty. It's both tense and moving how these interactions unfold. 

Subtle points of deep consideration are worked into this sweeping historical narrative and it raises many relevant contemporary questions about the way we live in larger communities. How do our ideals play out in reality? What visible and invisible power structures are at work behind larger events and figureheads? How does capitalism steer our motives? Also, these compelling and richly drawn characters made me wonder: how do we live honestly? To live honestly within society and with those who we are intimate with sometimes conflicts with the truth of who we are. And what happens when we struggle to be truly honest with ourselves about what we desire and want? An intriguing body artist named Doris within the story plainly states “Truth is always the best option, because it's the radical option, because it's true.” So many of the dramatic acts within this novel are gestures which aim to reveal a deeper truth which people can't see. Though they may be desperate and forgotten theatrical performances, it's a meaningful testament to the triumph of art over history. It doesn't matter that the acts or the performers are imperfect because, as Alissa opines, “society doesn't need perfect art. It just needs people who try to make art. Of any kind. Good or bad. People who are willing to fail, that's what helps societies grow and what, in the end, brings about change”. 

This tremendous and thrilling story reveals the hidden drama at the centre of our lives and our society. McCrea has previously stated that these novels will form part of a trilogy about revolutionary wives. If he continues with this project (as I hope he does) it'll be a monumental achievement. I remember in 2017 seeing a picture of the spouses of several NATO leaders at a conference that included a group of wives as well as Gautheir Destenay, husband of Luxembourg's first openly gay Prime Minister. I never want to be a politician or married to a politician, but if I was I'd much rather be Destenay sitting at a table with wives rather than presidents and prime ministers. Surely they have greater insight into what's really happening in their respective countries and the world than the men in power. Similarly, McCrea has cannily chosen to focus on feminine perspectives from these specific historical periods which is far more interesting and gives an entirely unique point of view about a political philosophy which shook our previous century to its core.

Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea

It astounds me when an author can create such a convincing voice for a character based on a real historical figure from an entirely different era - one which pays tribute to the real person, intellectually engages with the social politics of the day and makes that voice so compelling you want to hang upon every word she says. Debut author Gavin McCrea has done that with Lizzie Burns, a working-class woman of Irish descent who moved to London in 1870 with celebrated theorist Friedrich Engels. This was a time when Engels and Marx were engaged with founding a political philosophy which would change the world. McCrea is more concerned with the domestic side of this story. I don’t just mean the household duties and complex emotional bond between Lizzie and Friedrich – although the novel does deal meaningfully with these intricacies. What he’s created is a challenge to how the overarching ideals of this communist movement hold up when viewed through the lens of a woman with little means, bad lungs and a ferocious heart.

Lizzie has quite a complex attitude towards love and relationships. Part of her is highly conscious of the financial ramifications partnerships create. At the beginning of the novel she is vociferous on this point about practicality superseding love. Later she affirms that “I’ve seen enough of this world to know that most of us have to accept men we don’t feel for, and I’m not sure it’s for the worst in the end. A marriage of emotions can’t be lasting. It wouldn’t be healthful if it was.” Lizzie and Friedrich’s relationship is built largely upon an arrangement not entirely based on love. Friedrich is a wealthy heir to an industrial business. Lizzie keeps the house, manages the servants and runs errands for Friedrich. For Lizzie relationships are an exchange: financial and sexual. She states “A love with no interest does not exist. We always expect something for what we give.” Yet, as the novel goes on, her hardness of feeling yields to more intricately-shaded emotions and the desires she holds at bay come forth.

McCrea skilfully brings Lizzie to life through a sympathetic portrayal of her tightly-contained emotions and also through her physicality. Although feisty, she is not all hardness. She contemplates “I sometimes think that because my shoulders are wide and my waist doesn’t go in, that because my speaking holds its share of Irish, I’m taken for solid, when it’s tender I really am in broad light and with sober senses.” She is emotional and sensual. As well as enjoying pleasure with Friedrich, she also longs for other men. She has a glancing but powerful sexual attraction for a black musician she sees performing during an enforced retreat in Ramsgate. There is also a former lover that she shares a tumultuous past with and whose presence in her mind threatens to undo the order of her current arrangement. It’s with a jaded heart that she observes “Love buys cheap and seeks to sell at a higher price; our greed is for gain that lies outside our reach. We desire those who don’t desire us in return.” It’s tremendously moving the way Lizzie pays tribute to those desires which stir her the most while remaining loyal to the household she’s made.

There is a terrible insecurity overshadowing Lizzie’s relationship with Friedrich. The novel moves back and forth between their time in London and their past life in Manchester where Friedrich had a long relationship with Mary, a woman very close to both of them. Lizzie also suspects Friedrich of being a philanderer. With her wry awareness of the ways of men she accepts this but melancholically notes when she suspects him of keeping secrets “Is there a loneliness more lonely than mistrust?” Surely this is a sentiment anyone who mulls over their own suspicions while in a relationship can relate to. As the story shows, sometimes it’s these stormy thoughts which can be binding as well as damaging. McCrea presents the complicated motivations and variances of desire astonishingly well in this rich, engrossing story.

What I appreciated most in this novel are the astute observations about our human compulsion to envision multiple paths in life. Journeying into an established life in London with Friedrich at the novel’s beginning, Lizzie states “My heart feels faint, which can happen when you make the acquaintance of a real future to replace the what-might-be.” In this statement you can feel what alternatives in life Lizzie has sacrificed having taken decisive action and stuck with Friedrich. Yet she also acknowledges the element of chance in coming to certain places in life: “An animal, that’s what chance makes of me.” Although she lives in a highly civilized way, it gradually becomes clear how emotionally debased she feels because of the way fate has closed around her. As the novel progresses you learn how very different things might have been for her and Friedrich in Manchester if the wheel had spun another way.

Lizzie comes across a now-extinct quagga (half zebra, half donkey) in the zoo. Like this animal she is two halves of different things.

Friedrich Engels looms large in the history books as a thinker whose ideas went on to reshape much of our civilization in ways very different from how he and Karl Marx intended. This novel considers him from another angle because as Lizzie states “They call him a genius… Me, I can only know what I know, and that’s the man, the meat and bones of him.” In fact, we’re informed quite a lot about this man’s meat! There are also some stupendous descriptions of Marx: “whiskers like bramble on my face, his lips like dried-out sausage.” It’s in the flesh we’re made to really feel these men’s devotion to a cause which supersedes their own circumstances whilst being aware that these are men with faults and foibles which are all too human. In addition, we find out that Friedrich is someone that Lizzie underestimates in some crucial ways. Eleanor Marx, nicknamed Tussy, is also fascinatingly portrayed as an emotionally-fraught teenager – a somewhat sad foreshadowing of the tumultuous route her life would eventually take.

Before I started this novel I was entirely unaware of who Lizzie Burns was and after reading a few chapters I couldn’t resist looking on Wikipedia to get the outline of her life. In a way this spoiled part of the plot as McCrea is naturally faithful to following the thread of her real life. Several realizations are made as Lizzie’s past is gradually recounted. It obviously didn’t spoil the experience, but part of me wishes I had experienced it all knowing nothing and then read up more afterwards. This is just a small caution to any readers saying you might want to resist this impulse.

‘Mrs Engels’ is an absolutely engrossing read which has left a lasting impression with me. Taking a punt on new authors is a risky business, but Gavin McCrea’s story is so confidently told with humour and sympathy he’s clearly a masterful storyteller. I hope everyone reads this new author who has unearthed and given a voice to a fascinating woman from history.