A History of Loneliness by John Boyne

With the title “A History of Loneliness” it felt like I had to read John Boyne’s novel for this blog. It also feels like this has been such a strong year for Irish fiction including books that I’ve read from Colin Barrett, Donal Ryan, Liz Nugent, Audrey Magee, Eimear McBride and Colm Toibin. This novel ranks highly amongst these excellent Irish books and a novel can’t get more Irish than this one because of the themes it includes. Told from the perspective of a priest named Odran Yates, the novel moves back and forth between essential periods of his life from his childhood with his troubled aspiring-actor father to his early training/scholarship as an assistant to the Pope to his near retirement in the midst of the Irish church’s crisis over priests brought to trial due to charges of paedophilia. This novel encompasses and explores themes about the country which we’re all familiar with, but it casts such a critical, unsparing eye upon the entire culture that it feels totally fresh and makes for inspiring, compulsive reading.

One of the aspects of Irish life the novel probes is a general culture of intolerance. Prejudice against different religions, races and sexualities abound in many scenes with dialogue which keys into underlying attitudes of hatred. When Odran’s father leaves his job he comments “I never liked working for a Jewman.” In Odran’s childhood women’s life options are severely limited when they become wives and mothers, whereas men are given license to pursue their dreams no matter how impractical (an inequality reinforced by the church): “Dad was given leave to do exactly as he pleased and Mam had no choice but to put up with it.” Odran’s nephew is dismissed by the priest as nothing but a queer despite his status as a world-famous novelist. However, Odran attempts to take steps to correct this. At one point, when a mother brings her son to him in a panic because he’s taken a boyfriend, Odran advises her to respect that this is the way her son is. However, he sees little change in people’s attitudes reflecting that “there was precious little compassion to be found in the hearts of anyone in those days, particularly when it came to the lives and choices of women, and in that way, if not others, Ireland has hardly changed in forty years.”

A monumental change in attitude this novel does record is the transition in general attitudes towards the church. For many years many turned a blind eye to the way priests abused their power to sexually molest children because people were too frightened or blindly faithful or incapable of challenging the church’s authority. When accusations are finally made public and the media openly challenge the religious authorities, the general respect Father Odran received where people on a train would freely offer him food turns to a seething contempt where he can be openly attacked in a café with no one intervening. Far from seeing the accounts of child abuse as isolated incidents, people begin to view it as a conspiracy that maintains a power hold over the population through intimidation and secrecy akin to the mafia and there is a mounting desire to expel the Catholic church from the country altogether. The novel explores this change in attitude from a very personal point of view which calls into question the ways we let the general attitudes of our culture influence our thoughts and actions.

The overwhelming conflicts of the country are all internalized by Odran so that his recollections and reflections show his transition towards accepting uncomfortable truths. He comments that “I am a man for nostalgia; it is a curse on me sometimes.” His memories lock him into believing things were a certain way, yet the truth about his past is called into question when he’s confronted about what he really knew and experienced. This is a man hemmed in by a solitude fortified by religion which is meant to be enlightening, but which conversely shelters him from reality. It’s a long, difficult examination of the soul where a good-intentioned but damaged man must come to understand the degrees to which he’s culpable of perpetuating lies about himself and the institution he represents.

“A History of Loneliness” is a skilfully constructed novel that produces a big emotional impact. The plot gradually builds so that I felt distress and fear for the well-realized characters which compelled me to read on at a pace. The story also incorporates a compelling perspective about the controversial circumstances surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I. It feels like it would have been too easy for Boyne to inhabit the gay novelist character in this novel. Instead, he tells it from the perspective of the well meaning priest. In this way he intelligently sifts through the issues he addresses from the point of view of someone caught in the middle of them. This novel is motivated by a justified anger. It’s a declaration that we should say what needs to be said rather than submitting to those who intimidate us into keeping silent. It’s a statement that we cannot simply accept that things are the way they are or we’ll be caged in solitude. It’s a truly heart-felt and extremely rewarding read.

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

Sometimes it feels like most of life is spent imagining parallel lives in the mind. Whether it’s a brief glimpse of someone you admire and want to be or a longstanding passion for someone or something beyond your reach, there are always alternative choices to contemplate and brood upon. Queenie is a woman late in life suffering from a terminal cancer that has left her disfigured with part of her jaw missing. She is, as she puts it, quite literally “words without a mouth.” She lives in a hospice sifting through memories, remembering Harold, the great love of her life who never even knew she loved him, and waiting for the inevitable. After sending him a short letter informing him of how little time she has left, postcards begin arriving from Harold who tells her to wait for him as he’s walking across all of England to come to see her again. This provokes her to write back to him pages and pages with the assistance of one of the caring attendant nuns. Slowly the past between them is uncovered along with the complicated relationship Queenie had with Harold’s son David. This is not a soft tale of love lost, but a story of raw powerful emotion that realistically captures the things that are most joyful and excruciating about life.  

Author Rachel Joyce has described this novel as a “companion” to her debut novel “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.” I loved this first novel which contained a meditative journey following Harold across England to visit Queenie, but it’s been a couple of years since I read it so the story hovers dimly at the back of my head. However, it was both fascinating and touching to revisit this story from another character’s perspective with certain scenes from the first book being told from a different angle. But this novel stands alone for the sheer power of the hospice scenes portrayed and which are totally separate from Harold’s story. Queenie spends time in the gardens and recreational room of the hospice with an idiosyncratic group of residents all suffering from different terminal illnesses and the caring distinctive nuns who attend to their welfare. These characters are vibrantly drawn with the tragic/comic drama of their circumstances forming some brilliant scenes.

This novel also contains one of the most powerful portrayals of a wayward, difficult child that I can remember reading. David is an eccentric teenager who rebels against mainstream culture and strikes up a strange friendship with Queenie. Since it exists secretly and outside standard social practices, their friendship isn’t subject to normal rules. It’s in some ways an abusive co-dependency where David uses Queenie for money and recognition outside of his parents’ realm and Queenie uses David as a touchstone to Harold, the man she loves and cannot be with. All the angst and pain of adolescence is sharply drawn as David describes his ambivalent feelings towards his parents: “I look at them, Q. And it’s like I don’t belong.” As much as you can feel David’s anguish in his dialogue and erratic behaviour, it is equally intensely felt when Queenie enquires about David’s welfare from Harold. She gets nothing more than muted bland assurances which contain a subtext of tightly contained despair and heartbreak. This parent-child dynamic is realistic and meaningfully played out.

Rachel Joyce has a talented ability for forming vivid descriptions and representing the wavering net of consciousness. At one point when describing the recollection of moments of high emotional tension for Queenie she writes “Everything that happens is caught in aspic in my mind.” What a poignant way of describing memories as if they are locked in a jelly so that they can be seen, but in a way that is slightly distorted and loosely held! At other times she has a sharp informed comedic sense. One of my favourite lines is an aside which states “It’s a shame short men don’t wear heels; it would save the world a lot of trouble.” This is a fantastic slam to all the Napoleons of the world. At another point, referencing T.S. Eliot and describing Queenie’s fondness for purchasing shoes she writes “I have measured out my life in ladies’ shoes.” This is funny but it’s also truly an apt point to play off from as it alludes to Eliot’s poetic examination of a life played out in the mind that alights upon the physical details that fill up existence. Indeed, the title of this book plays off from Eliot’s own title. In this novel those physical obects - whether they be a shoe or suitcase or a Murano glass clown – are represented in drawings which are interspersed throughout the text. This adds a visual aspect to the writing bringing Queenie’s life into sharper focus.

“O Solitude” by Purcell – The song Queenie would like played at her funeral

Queenie herself writes poetry about Harold which she never shows him. However, in an act of horrific betrayal her simple love poems are thrown back in her face and she’s made to feel mocked. There is so much wisdom in this novel about the mechanics of love and how it manifests itself through faulty acts and expressions. It’s observed that “Sometimes you can love something not because you instinctively connect with it but because another person does, and keeping their things in your heart takes you back to them.” This eloquently describes the way we hold certain songs or films or objects dear to us because it connects us with someone we love who was passionate about it. However, as we develop tastes for certain things or bits of culture we’re also building upon our own identities by assimilating, changing and adapting. Queenie is someone who decided early on that there were limitations which meant she could never fully realize the love she feels for Harold. Rather than forming itself in words she lived reclusively in a beach house where she created a garden that represented her life and passions. Yet, her story continues beyond this static existence in a way that is unpredictable. It’s touchingly stated that: “The way forward is not forward, but off to one side, in a place you have not noticed before.”

For all the genuine heartbreak and tragedy of “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy,” this novel is imbued with a tremendous sense of humour which adds a graceful note to the lives it portrays. In Joyce’s first novel Queenie may have come across as simply a muted tragic figure from a man’s past, but, as is observed in this novel “people are rarely the straightforward thing we think they are.” As all of Queenie’s secrets and confessions come bursting out it feels as if this life lived mostly in her mind is more colourfully alive than many lived out in more dramatic circumstances. We learn that Queenie’s life is indeed anything but as she describes it: “small, it has been nothing to speak of.” This novel makes you feel the raw power of the imagination that forms an undercurrent to life which is more forceful and real than anything that can be seen on the surface.

The Vines by Christopher Rice

The Deep South has inspired countless fantastical tales and Christopher Rice is adding to this tradition in his taut fantastical thriller “The Vines.” A former plantation is the setting for a story of betrayal, lust and revenge informed by the region’s rich history of old-fashioned traditions, intolerance and heated passion. Here we’re in the confident hands of an author that understands the sensory experience of such a specific location where there are the “familiar ticking sounds of a great house cooling in the late hours of a night in the Deep South.” The proprietress Miss Caitlin’s birthday party is spoiled when she discovers her husband in flagrante delicto with a conniving female member of staff. The result of her despair and anger over this sets off a chain of events which raise from the earth buried resentment and fury. The grounds of former slave quarters have been smoothed over to make the location suitable as a wedding venue and tourist site. Nova, the daughter of the estate’s gardener, is a feisty intelligent college student who is very aware of the plantation’s tainted history and the nefarious supernatural events that trouble those who inhabit it. When Caitlin’s estranged best friend Blake enters the scene he carries with him his own complicated history of loss due to a homophobic attack that separated him from the love of his life. Revelations cause all the characters understanding of the world to be upturned and “suddenly no one seems knowable, every promise the seed of betrayal.” The truth is rooted out as a paranormal force takes form. The true motivation behind this power and the crime committed against Blake’s boyfriend come as unexpected surprises that had me gripped throughout the many twists in the story.

The author paces his novel well to immerse the reader in the full experience of this creepy Southern landscape. Moreover he introduces a refreshingly complicated sense of morality and the real meaning of revenge in his story: “They are seeking their own twisted form of justice, and this fact leaves her with the despairing realization that all forms of justice are somehow twisted at their core.” This puts forward a concept that justice isn’t necessarily about administering what’s right, but subjectively addressing what’s most pressing for the prosecutors involved. The author overcomes the simplified concept of spirits or ghosts seeking to redress a balance for some wrongdoing by putting forward the challenging inverse notion that “It is not the living who are haunted by the dead – it is the dead who are haunted by the living.” Moreover, for the living, the crimes of the past don’t simply cause despair but haunt the mind in ways which impinge upon any true feelings of contentment. At one point a character realizes “That’s what guilt truly is… a fishhook’s tug on the third or fourth minute of every happy moment.” The dynamic tortured characters in this story add credence to the expressive forms of unwieldy vengeful emotions overflowing from the supernatural powers at play. It’s what makes this novel not only a riveting read, but one that is also heartfelt.

Christopher Rice’s new novel “The Vines” delivers fully in the suspense and charm that you want from a Southern gothic thriller. It combines the edgy fantasy of ‘True Blood’ with a cheeky Tennessee Williams’ wink. A clever, fast-paced, enjoyable read.

Film Review: The Tribe

As if going to see a Ukrainian film that is in sign language isn’t enough of a challenge! As director Miroslav Slobshpitsky’s film ‘The Tribe’ starts there is a notice informing viewers that there will be no subtitles. When I read this I felt a sting of panic wondering what I’d let myself into for the next 130 minutes. Suddenly I was immersed in a world with no sound except the occasional noise of people walking, scuffling or breathing. All communication between the characters is through sign language – not even International Sign but Ukrainian Sign Language so most deaf viewers who go to see this film will only understand a small portion of what is being communicated as well. There are no inter-titles or captions of any kind to indicate place, time or plot. You can only watch the action so that, like most deaf people are made to feel in a society built around audible communication, you must constantly piece together what’s happening around you. Of course, this is an alienating experience but it’s also fascinating because it makes you more attuned to people’s actions and facial expressions. Moreover, the eerie silence adds a layer of tension beneath all the action – and there is a lot that happens in this gritty, thrilling drama. I was immediately hypnotised and riveted throughout the entire film. 

The story focuses on a teenage boy who arrives at a boarding school for the deaf. Arriving at a bus stop, we see him from a distance gesturing to a woman for directions and communicating that he can’t hear. Once he finds the school we’re cut off from the hearing world completely and immersed in an institution where people only sign. The boy is introduced to the school where class times are indicated by flashing lights rather than bells. There is little authority outside the classroom. During recreational time there are no adults present so that fights between the students are unmarshalled. The dorms seem to be organized haphazardly with teenagers grouping themselves into gangs. The boy is quickly drawn into one particular gang where he’s given the duty of working as a pimp to two girls who prostitute themselves at a local truck stop. The shocking ease with which the characters go through these actions indicates how they are routine for them. The money the boy earns from this job is immediately given to one of the girls to hire her for sex as well. What could be viewed as a voyeuristic scene where the pair awkwardly start to have sex, works movingly as an essential part of the plot where blunt lust slowly transforms into deeper passion through their actions. It’s a subtle shift where the boy becomes enamoured with the girl and is motivated only to be with her. However, the girl is ambivalent about her feelings towards him. Her feelings are complicated further by the discovery that she’s pregnant. She terminates the pregnancy by going to a back alley abortionist in a scene which is one of the most startling and traumatizing things I’ve ever seen. Although she continues to see the boy, she wants to continue on as normal working as a prostitute and joining in a larger plan where she is evidently going to get a passport and papers to be trafficked to Italy. When the boy goes against the gang to stop this there are serious consequences. The ending is horrifically surprising and haunting.

The film works on many levels. It’s a gritty drama that shows what people, especially young disadvantaged people, do under desperate and impoverished circumstances. Like “Lord of the Flies” they make a tribe unto themselves with its own savage laws. As the film is silent the intricacies of all conversations are lost on the viewer who can only get the general gist of what’s being communicated. This makes you think harder about what’s happening and the stark reality of the actions take a firmer hold on the viewer’s attention. All the actors in the film are amateurs cast from a general call-out made by the director to people in the Ukrainian deaf community. It’s impressive how natural the performances are and the degree of subtly of feeling some of the main cast display in such a high drama story. The film has won the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes and the First Feature Award at the London Film Festival. The director has orchestrated a story about challenging specific circumstances that have a larger message about humanity. Having dispensed with language completely to say something much more meaningful about the human condition, this is surely a drama that Beckett would have approved of.

‘The Tribe’ is an utterly compelling and original film that will stir strong reactions. It’s not easy to watch, but it’s unlike any other film and a thought-provoking rewarding experience.

The Smoke is Rising by Mahesh Rao

Mahesh Rao has a fascinating and unique approach to narrative. Although “The Smoke is Rising” closely follows several central characters who inhabit the city of Mysore and develop over the course of the novel, the primary character is Mysore itself. This is an Indian city that is in a state of flux where advancement is marked by achievements such as the launch of a lunar probe or the construction of HeritageLand, a theme park dreamed up by an eccentric visionary to be “a world where cutting-edge technology could harness the drama of the ancient epics and transport his compatriots to an alternate reality.” At the same time as the city's elite toast progress, other citizens are being left behind with their lives seeing no improvement from the apparent leaps in prosperity or hindered as is the case of the farmers displaced by developments. Protests form and rioting ensues. Rao's novel circulates amongst Mysore's major institutions such as law courts and libraries as well as points where citizens meet and gossip like coffee houses and sari shops. All the while the author touches upon the lives and perspectives of a number of minor characters who inhabit these spaces as well as the central characters. The cumulative effect of this is to produce a complex portrait of a specific place and makes the reader feel as if they've really experienced Mysore itself.

Of the individual characters that the novel focuses there is Uma, a reserved servant who is the victim of pernicious gossip and whose home is flooded by a monsoon. There is Mala and her husband Girish who at first appeared to be an excellent match, but whose anger and frustration has a dangerous edge. Rao presents a heart-rending picture of domestic abuse where Mala finds that “Living a secret life made innumerable claims. Every day she had to guard against the erosion of her will with a heightened watchfulness, induced at great cost and leaving her winded.” The fear and shame caused from consistent abuse impedes her spirit. On instances where Girish lashes out against his wife: “he viewed them as the unfortunate adjuncts of his zeal, the collateral damage precipitated in trying to bring equilibrium to their relationship.” Although Girish attempts to make his behaviour appear justified and normal, Mala is always aware that it is not and she has quietly been planning a way to escape. Taking into account the psychological gameplay and social pressures at work, the author presents a layered understanding of this difficult subject.

The character I was most drawn to was the widow Susheela. Finding herself alone now that her husband has died and her children have left, she lives (what she considers) a fairly modest existence, but finds she's often lonely. “The intensely irritating thing about being a widow, apart from all the other intensely irritating things, was that she had been rendered void by most of their social set.” Thus isolated, she thinks to dabble with online dating but finds the process repugnant. But gradually she strikes up a companionship with a man named Jaydev who also has an intense sense of solitude formulated out of years of being a widower. This is portrayed through a visit to a new hairdresser who offers him a head massage which makes him burst into tears because this kind of human contact isn't something he's experienced for ten years. Their relationship builds to a beautiful point where “The silences between them were now rich with contentment, the pleasure that could by gained only through an intimate civility.” Yet the natural progression and tenderness of this budding companionship has difficulty in being truly realized when it clashes against the characters' old fashioned morals and sense of social acceptability.

“The Smoke is Rising” is a richly rewarding novel full of descriptive sensory delights, textured drama and wry humour about the human condition. Though some readers may find it jarring being shuttled around a near cacophony of points of view, I was glad to give into the experience because I felt that the many locations, voices and characters were building the overall character of Mysore. It's impressive that a novel can be so thoroughly rooted in its environment and can come across as so fascinatingly idiosyncratic, yet it feels like a familiar home to a reader who has never actually visited it. It's an impressive debut novel that marks Mahesh Rao as a truly distinctive and talented writer.

Film Review: National Gallery

Whatever you think about him, it’s admirable that director Frederick Wiseman has pursued his documentary craft with such a focused and stylistically-consistent vision for over forty-five years. Since moving to London in 2000, I’ve tried to see all of his documentaries that have been included in the London Film Festival (as he produces one almost every year). These have varied in subject matter from the emotionally brutal Domestic Violence and Domestic Violence 2 to the squalid Crazy Horse to the deeply personal (for me) Belfast, Maine. Wiseman explores particular institutions or locations from a variety of viewpoints including spaces such as administrative meetings, rehearsals, people at work or candid personal conversations. His entry in the festival this year explores another high art institution in a way similar to his 2009 film La danse which focused on the Paris Opera Ballet. It’s a location much closer to home for me as it’s his first film shot in England. National Gallery films many aspects of one of the UK’s largest and most well established art museums to produce a dynamic portrait of both the institution and a meditation on our relationship to fine art.

Over the course of this three hour documentary we see the daily functions of the museum from opening to closing to cleaning. Outside shots of the gallery capture the time period this takes place in with the countdown clock to the Olympics standing in Trafalgar Square. At times Wiseman focuses on guided talks where charismatic and informed men and women enthusiastically discuss with a small audience the importance, possible interpretations and relevance of different paintings from Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors to works by Turner. One class at the museum gives a descriptive and tactile presentation of an art work to a group of blind or sight-impaired individuals. A female guide/installation artist informs a tour group of teenagers that we should remain mindful that the National Gallery and many other great British institutions were only made possible because of the financial benefits of slavery and colonial pursuits. Art classes that centre around a live model are led by a chirpy teacher who guides students in methods of representation. Not only do these scenes portray the way the gallery serves as an active learning space, but they focus on the expressions of intrigue, meditation or boredom from the crowds who are looking at the art which is shown in fragments. An old man relates a joke about the Ten Commandments after seeing Moses portrayed in one picture. At another time someone is shown slumped on a bench asleep. These moments capture our active relationship with or indifference to art.

Many other scenes show fascinating behind the scenes elements of the gallery. This includes the careful cleaning processes that go on after hours. Meetings are held between directors of the gallery and marketing teams about how the gallery should be represented, whether it should align itself with charities and considerations over budget cuts. Some of these arguments are essentially over whether the institution should remain an elitist pursuit for the well educated or reach out to encourage the larger community to take part in what the gallery has to offer. The documentary cleverly captures how people thoroughly entrenched in a particular point of view dance around each other in their speech and body language refusing to yield to points which are persistently made. Some of the most exciting scenes show the way restoration work is done to the art. In addition, there are discussions between historians and restoration workers about what the restoration process means. One scene reveals an x-ray of a painting behind a painting and how certain shapes and elements of the original were incorporated into the final visible painting. These accounts show the fascinating methods of conservation and contemplate how art should be preserved for the future.

Wiseman’s style of documentary making presents a (selected and edited) form of reality whereby we come to understand the workings of this institution as unobtrusively and transparently as possible. There is never any interaction with the director or camera crew. No names or job titles are shown on the screen to identify who we are watching. Through the speech and actions of the people captured he reveals the competing ideologies of those involved in the National Gallery. Certainly a lot gets left out. At one point, we see a banner about Shell oil being hung over the front of the gallery’s façade by protestors while people walk by shaking their heads. Another time a man mentions how an artwork in the gallery was once attacked with a can of paint by a protestor and how the restorers worked through the night to return it to the painting’s original condition. We see snippets of these differing points of view, but the film doesn’t fully portray their complexity. This isn’t necessarily a problem as I don’t think the director is trying for total objectivity. Rather, the film succeeds as a subtle meditation on our day to day relationship with art, who gets to see art and how art is managed. There is a beautiful closing scene where two ballet dancers perform around a gallery. This seems a fitting summary of the way the film contemplates how much we allow ourselves to open up to and participate in the meaning of art.

Booker Prize 2014

Tonight I attended the South Bank Centre’s reading from all six Booker shortlisted authors. It was wonderful seeing Ali Smith and Neel Mukherjee coming out to the stage arm in arm like old chums. When each author took their turn to read they all spoke about their high regard for the fellow authors on the shortlist and what a pleasure it's been doing the Booker circuit together. The event was chaired by Kirsty Wark. Thank god they got this wonderful journalist in to interview the authors and ask intelligent questions. In past years the interviews haven't always been conducted by such a fine person. Wark joked at the end of the even that the writers got along so well they would obviously go on to form an authors' commune. Before Ali Smith read she greeted every section of the audience and gave her sympathy to the sign language interpreter on stage as the opening of the artist's section of her novel was no doubt a challenge to interpret. They gave each other a cheeky thumbs up. It was wonderful hearing all authors read and give such thoughtful answers about their writing. 

It’s felt like this year’s Booker has been more awash with controversy and descent than any other year I can remember. After the excitement last year of having a female author majority on the shortlist, this year’s prize received severe criticism by some for only including three women on the long list. The prize was also open to American authors for the first time this year – leading only to two Americans on the shortlist – but the prize was criticised for squeezing out most authors from other Commonwealth countries. I heard one of the directors of the prize counter this argument with the opinion that books from those other countries simply weren’t as strong as most of the British and American contenders. Many readers were frustrated when the long list came out this year that several titles weren’t published yet. Still other bloggers and people on twitter have dismissed the shortlisted titles as books they aren’t that interested in.

Personally, I still feel as excited as ever about the prize and here’s why. Early in the summer a friend recommended that I read Neel Mukherjee’s “The Lives of Others.” I did so and was bowled over by the strength and originality of this author’s writing. Reading about how this complex family network gradually imploded amidst the political strife of the time, I was wrapped in the individual stories of each striking character and the great symbolic weight of the house they inhabited. I wrote about the book here and remember thinking what a shame it was this book would probably pass by largely unnoticed. Given the subject matter, length and complexity of the novel it’s one that I was worried would slip between the cracks and go largely unnoticed. When the book was published I attended Mukherjee’s reading at the South Bank Centre in one of their smaller event spaces. The author spoke eloquently and everyone felt moved, but the audience was only half full. Now here he is on the Booker shortlist and tonight the largest South Bank auditorium was packed full listening to Mukherjee read. It’s the power of this prize to bring a talented literary voice like his to popular attention.

Certainly, plenty of other authors who weren’t long listed or even considered for the prize deserve attention as well. But at least the prize has given an author like Mukherjee a better chance to be heard. Although Ali Smith is an incredibly well-regarded author now, I’m certain her public appeal wouldn’t be as high if it weren’t for her inclusion on the Booker list in past years. That she’s been singled out again as worthy of being on the short list for her fantastically moving “How to Be Both” makes me feel that the well-read judges of the prize do care about quality in literature over public appeal. Although I greatly enjoyed reading Ferris and Fowler’s novels, I am really rooting for Mukherjee or Smith to win. It seems slightly ridiculous comparing the two as stylistically these books couldn’t be further apart from each other. But both are worthy of being read and, if I had to place a bet on who will win tomorrow, I would bet on Neel Mukherjee taking the prize. He is tipped as the favourite, but this time I think the bookies have it right.

Film Review: The Falling

It was exciting to see that director Carol Morley’s first fictional feature film was being included in this year’s BFI London Film Festival. I saw her documentary Dreams of a Life a couple years ago. I was struck, not only by the incredibly sombre tale of a woman who died in her bedsit and whose death wasn’t discovered until three years later, but also by the clever way the story was told. Through interviews with several people who knew the victim we hear competing tales about a life that was ultimately forgotten. No point of view dominates. The viewer is left with a fragmented picture of why this woman withdrew from life and why others drew away from her. In an age of social media where we’re all meant to be better connected it was a painful reminder of how people can be forgotten.

Morley’s new film The Falling seems entirely separate from this previous documentary, but I believe there are still some parallels between the two films. Set in a rural all-girl school in 1969 we follow the close friendship of Abbie (played by newcomer Florence Pugh) and Lydia (played by Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones). Where Abbie is sexually assertive and has a vibrant (if slightly crazed) affability, Lydia is a virgin and has a more surly personality. They are contrasts between light and dark, yet find strength together as a pair. The film comes to focus solely on Lydia whose life abruptly changes one day. She grows increasingly ill, fainting for no reason that doctors can explain, but her sickness spreads to other girls at the school and even to a sensitive art teacher. The domineering headmistress of the school Miss Alvaro (played by Monica Dolan) looks down upon these incidents as a frustrating case of mass hysteria.

What really struck me about this coming of age tale is the sensitive way the camera focuses on the reactions of many girls at the school. When a disruption from the routine occurs like someone entering class late or a girl falling ill, the viewer can clearly see multiple reactions from the girls to this event. These subtle facial expressions are more telling than any dialogue or voice-over can give. Whenever I’ve been out in public and witness some out-of-the-ordinary occurrence like a person acting crazy on public transport what I like to focus on is the reactions of people around me. Through the unguarded looks of disgust or sorrow or fear from people watching you can read so much about someone’s character and thought process.

That’s what I believe connects this new film to Dreams of a Life. It’s in The Falling’s careful attention to the multiplicity of points of view that we come to understand the general social mood of the time and we see an event refracted through the consciousness of many people. Abbie is struggling to understand herself. Given the emotional repression of the school environment and her withdrawn agoraphobic mother, she’s unable to enter into any sort of dialogue to help her grow. In turn, Abbie grows tyrannical and lashes out. She attempts and partially succeeds in rousing an army of sympathy with the twitch of an eye. There is a strange collective psychology going on here where the anguish of one draws out the repressed anguish of all. It makes a powerful and moving story.

The Falling is also a very beautiful looking film with contemplative shots of the surrounding environment making a sharp contrast to the rigid school setting. It will be exciting to see what director Morley produces next. Interestingly, in a Q&A with the director after the screening she says she’s never seen the play The Crucible. But if you want to go for film comparisons think The Crucible meets My Girl meets Mermaids. But really, The Falling is strikingly original and cleverly portrays its difficult subject matter with clever direction and excellent performances. 

Film Review: The Duke of Burgundy

It’s London Film Festival time and, since my boyfriend is a massive movie buff, that means for the next two weeks I’ll be seeing a film every night and sometimes as many as three films in a day. The first film I went to see last night was The Duke of Burgundy starring the imperial looking Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara D’Anna (who was styled like the character Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks). I was interested in seeing this film as it was directed by Peter Strickland whose previous film was the bizarre and atmospheric Berberian Sound Studio. What’s so striking about this director is the way he uses sound and music to trigger the viewer’s imagination and cause submerged emotions to well up out of the darkness.

The Duke of Burgundy is set in a seemingly fantasy world on a rural palatial estate overloaded with dusty books and entomology specimens – illustrations of insects and cabinets filled with pinned moths and butterflies decorate the rooms. The scene opens with Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) arriving at the house and being swiftly told off by the woman who appears to be the mistress, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen). What is established as a strict and formal atmosphere is swiftly turned into something else altogether as the plot twists to show this pair has a very special sort of relationship. What on the surface appears to be a stark ordinary reality is revealed to contain falsehoods. For instance, during a lecture hall session about the characteristics of insects, a slow panning shot records the bland expressions of the attentive audience and reveals this group is partially made of dummies.

It took me a bit of time to get into the mood of this film. I have no doubt some people will find it controversial or might consider it to be just about titillation – although the type of people who go to see art house films like this probably won’t feel this way. At first, I thought it was all a bit of a gimmick and just revelling in being a tale about kinky lesbians. But gradually a subtle sort of humour is introduced and this brought a welcome dimension to the film. It also introduced a complication as I think it’s a little pat to have a story about a sub-dom relationship where it’s all revealed to be strained, a bit ridiculous and unsustainable over any extended length of time. Certainly this is the case in many kinky relationships, but I don’t think it makes a very interesting story line.  

What is interesting, where this film really excels and the thing that makes it a memorable experience is the way it artistically portrays the way desire, the sexual imagination and love function in relationships. It sounds harsh, but any romance is a kind of lie that the people involved are complicit in perpetuating. The truth is that nothing binds two people together no matter how fiercely they declare their love or bond themselves in public displays of matrimony. It’s all just words. And a few words like “I don’t love you anymore” or “I’m leaving you” can blow it all away. Yes, there are sincere emotions and chemistry which keeps people harmoniously together for many years and that’s a beautiful thing. But, beneath it all we remain solitary individuals trapped in our own heads and slaves to our own desires. It’s natural for love to waver over time.

The Duke of Burgundy portrays the way two people grapple towards a sustainable relationship making allowances for each other’s transforming needs. This is portrayed in subtle glances between Evelyn and Cynthia. They voicelessly yield to each other’s whims – sometimes grudgingly and sometimes indulgently. The play for power is the way they establish that one person still cares for the other – that they are willing to make sacrifices when needed and stymie the gluttony of the sexual imagination – or, in fact, pander to it. It’s about the way relationships are bound together through mutual respect and caring. It acknowledges the tension and the essential unknowingness of the other so that this vulnerability turns into a source of strength. Through long shots of seemingly placid expressions and bleakly-coloured sets the seriousness of these women’s exercises in lust is established. Imagery of fluttering moths or slow-moving insects shows the way desire inveigles itself into the texture of the couple’s relationship. The sound of heels clicking on wooden floorboards or the gasp of someone choking on fluid ricochets within the imagination of the characters and the viewer. It not only creates narrative tension but makes us aware of the tension in their relationship.

This is a fascinating, arresting film that left me pondering its meaning long after leaving the cinema. It’s like Jean Genet’s play The Maids crossed with Joyce Carol Oates’ novel “Solstice.” It was a great way to start the film festival for me as it’s the kind of challenging movie which won’t make it into the mainstream.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

I’ve always found Colm Toibin’s writing mesmerizing even though his stories seldom involve high drama. “The Story of the Night” is a novel packed with suppressed emotion about a young man in Argentina who ingratiates himself with a politically-motivated conservative family while hiding his homosexuality - it’s always struck me as strange that no one ever noted the plot resemblance this novel bears to Alan Hollinghurst’s later-published Booker-winning “The Line of Beauty.” Toibin’s novel “The Master” about Henry James’ inner life is a quiet masterpiece. You’d assume his slender book “The Testament of Mary” would be full of biblical action, but it mostly involves the embittered reclusive Mary grumbling about her son and the way his disciples try to put words in her mouth and hound her. As I discussed at the time when I read it here, I didn’t find this last novel as impactful as Toibin’s other books that I’ve read. However, his novel “Brooklyn” left me reeling. This is another beautifully languorous story of a woman who emigrates from Ireland to NYC in the 1950s. Despite this, the crisis of choice that the protagonist Eilis encounters at the end is incredibly gripping. Now, in his new novel “Nora Roberts” which is a sort of sequel to “Brooklyn” – the two have little to link them except mention of Eilis at the beginning of this new novel - Toibin has employed a similar story-telling device but it has an even subtler effect.

“Nora Webster” is set in an Irish town in the late 1960s and early 70s. It’s described as “the town where everybody knew about her and all the years ahead were mapped out for her.” The titular protagonist Nora must readjust to an unexpected new future which is now unmapped and contend with the expectations of the community which both supports and inhibits her. She is a woman in mourning for her husband Maurice, annoyed by the ceaseless parade of good-meaning visitors offering their condolences and trying to adjust to her new identity as a widow. Rather than lingering in regret over what has been lost she has a cavalier attitude about marching into the future: “That was the past, then, she thought as she walked into the living room, and it cannot be rescued.” She is understandably worried about money having two boys at home to raise on her own and two elder daughters who live away but still require her support.

I always admire novels that deal frankly with the financial pressures people experience and how this filters into and informs their choices. Barely asked if she wants the job, Nora is given a position at an established local company she worked at prior to her marriage. The experience is chillingly described: “Returning to work in that office belonged to a dream of being caged.” The scenes of office politics are expertly written with Nora caught between a fearsome matriarchal office manager and the talkative work-shy daughter of the owners. She is subservient to neither and determinedly maintains her independence despite the risk of losing this much-needed source of income.

The novel includes many cleverly observed moments of the struggles of motherhood. Nora is sometimes struck by how she may have been guilty of emotional negligence towards her children – especially during the painful process when Maurice was dying. Yet she is determined not to have her identity inhibited by her role as a mother and is careful not to fall into the nagging attitude she experienced from her own mother. Regardless of what course of action she takes with her children she is aware that “No matter what she did now, she would be playing a role.” It’s a problem people experience frequently when wanting to help someone yet finding themselves defined by their position to them. Whatever stance Nora takes in regards to her troubled son, her identity is inextricably linked to being the mother.

The 1968 march in Derry which ended in violence referred to in the novel

Perhaps the most emotionally compelling aspect of the novel is the way Toibin describes Nora’s new profound sense of aloneness which accompanies the loss of her husband. Being suddenly cut off from him is tantamount to experiencing an existential crisis: “So this was what being alone was like, she thought. It was not the solitude she had been going through, nor the moments when she felt his death like a shock to her system, as though she had been in a car accident, it was this wandering in a sea of people with the anchor lifted, and all of it oddly pointless and confusing.” Yet, it is in this space where she’s unmoored from the obligations of being a wife that she’s able to pursue her own interests in singing and music. Here she tastes what her life could have been if she’d made different choices early on. Her music teacher Laurie describes how “We can all have plenty of lives, but there are limits. You never can tell what they are.” There are endless possibilities in this world and our identities are constantly evolving, but whatever choices we make will necessarily cut us off from following other possibilities. For those who have lost people they love, it’s a tragic and ever-present fact that they are now excluded from this range of potential experience. Nora solemnly observes that whatever decisions she now makes “He would be the one left out.”

“Nora Webster” is an elegiac hymn to everything we could be and everything we’re not. The novel moves at a leisurely pace, but its power accumulates over time as the dynamics of Nora’s character intensifies. I fell hard for this feisty individual who refuses to be defined by her circumstances. It provides an interesting contrast to the protagonist Eilis of Toibin’s novel “Brooklyn” who forges a very different sort of independent path for herself. Amidst the political instability of the time and pressure from those around her, Nora remains an uncompromising fixture in her community. Intelligent, strong and soulful.

The Repercussions by Catherine Hall

Catherine Hall has a skilful power for building a story around people hampered by emotionally turbulent pasts in her novels. She did this with beautiful effect in her novel “The Proof of Love” about a shamed academic who tries to lose and find himself in a remote location. In her new novel “The Repercussions” she takes this a step further providing a double portrait of two women at opposite ends of a century. In the present, award-winning war photographer Jo arrives in Brighton from a recent journey through Afghanistan where she was working on her own self-driven photography project. She's inherited a house from her aunt Elizabeth who recently died and here she holes up writing letters to her ex-lover and reading the diary her aunt left. While waiting for her husband to return from the Western Front, Elizabeth works as a nurse at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton during the 1914-16 time periods when it was used solely for Indian Corps soldiers who had been wounded while battling for Britain. Her plans for the future are challenged when she encounters the difficult effects war has on returning soldiers and the strife over the social conventions of the time. Each woman’s story is told in alternating chapters drawing unique parallels over matters of love, racial prejudice, gender inequality, sexuality and personal integrity.

Read my full review of The Repercussions at http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/fiction03/the-repercussions-by-catherine-hall/

Prison Noir edited by Joyce Carol Oates

Many of Joyce Carol Oates’s works have featured the complexity and malformations of the American legal system, most notably her novels Do With Me What You Will (1973) and The Falls (2004). Moreover, it seems fitting that Oates has taken on the project of editing an anthology of prison fiction as her own writing has been recently engaged with the hidden reality of America’s prison system, particularly in her latest novel Carthage (2014). Here the wayward protagonist Cressida becomes an assistant to a loquacious and idealistic character dubbed the “Investigator” who is assembling material for a journalistic exposé about the prison system. In a particularly vivid scene Cressida enters a prison execution chamber while undercover and experiences a psychological crisis. No doubt Oates’s interest in representing the reality of prison life has, in part, stemmed from her time teaching at San Quentin State Prison in California. Prison Noir marks Oates’s continuing engagement and fictional exploration of such significant American institutions.

Read my full review at the online journal Bearing Witness: http://repository.usfca.edu/jcostudies/vol1/iss1/4/