The Dinner – Hermann Koch

Time once more to focus in on Dutch literature as Iris kicks off Dutch Literature Fortnight. And I’m starting with a book that I fully expect to take my Best of 2013 Black Comedy award … although really I should not be laughing.

Winner Dutch Audience Award 2009
Translated by Sam Garrett (Interviewed here.)

4 adults meet for dinner in a swanky restaurant. Two brothers and their wives. The elder brother is a politician, well-known, used to calling the shots. His younger brother, the narrator, resentful of all that brings with it. It soon becomes clear that this is no recreational appointment – there is something unpleasant that the two families must confront ..

…. a deeply disturbing crime committed by their children. (And one based on a real case.)

The criminals thus far remain unidentified by the police, and, indeed, the narrator isn’t even sure if his wife knows. He is sure, however, that his brother, the politician, does know and has decided that the time is nigh for decisive action.

So, as they take their seats and procrastinate their way through the courses, continually interrupted by the maître d’hôtel and his high-faluting upselling of the dishes served,

These are Greek olives from the Peloponnese, lightly doused in first-pressing, extra-virgin olive oil from Sardinia, and polished off with rosemary ….

undercurrents exert their drag, nerves begin to fray and barely concealed animosities surface. When the politician, supremo of the dramatic public gesture, reveals his intentions, all hell breaks loose.

Interwoven with the conversation at table is the history of what has been happening at home since the awful event – all from the viewpoint of the narrator. Turns out, in his preoccupation to protect his wife, he unwittingingly developed a blind spot and that the wives aren’t attending this dinner to simply provide polite conversation.

And in an another twist on people not being what they seem, the ever-increasing polarised views of the narrator give more than one pause for thought.

I started this review suggesting that its subject is no laughing matter. That’s certainly true but the narrative voice is so superbly jaundiced, outraged and entertaining that it’s impossible not to. Neither have I ever had my moral compass so thoroughly subverted. How far would you go to protect the ones you love? asks the front cover. Think you know? Read this and think again!

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All That I Am – Anna Funder

Spies in the bedroom, spies on the roof,
Spies in the bathroom, we’ve got proof.
Spies on the lawn where the shadows harden,
Spies behind the gooseberries in the kitchen garden,
Spies at the front door, spies at the back,
And hiding in the coat-stand underneath a mac.
Spies in the cupboard under the stairs,
Spies in the cellar, they’ve been there for years.
(Ernst Toller translated by W H Auden)

The amazing thing about this poem is its comedic tone. Admittedly it formed part of Ernst Toller’s 1935 comedy No More Peace, but, by that time Toller was in exile in London, having fled Germany for his life along with other left-wing friends, declared enemies of the state by Nazi Germany. Can I assume that Toller wrote this comedy before the mysterious death of Dora Fabian, his lover and fellow exile and, therefore, before the hopelessness of their unequal fight against the Nazi state became undeniable? Dora’s death, the trigger of a downward spiral into depression that ended in Toller’s suicide in a hotel room in 1939. Not sure if that is a historical fact but it’s certainly portrayed that way in Anna Funder’s 2012 Miles Franklin Award winning novel, All that I am.

The novel recreates the life of the left-wing German exiles, people who were allowed to stay in Britain on the condition that they reneged on further political activity. The British government of the mid-1930′s wanted to keep the peace. It simply did not want any uncomfortable facts uncovering about Hitler’s regime. Even when that implacable regime sent its assassins to foreign lands to rid it of its opponents. The exiles were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. And so with extraordinary courage, they continued their attempts to bring the truth of Nazi Germany to light.

The spy song above is quoted at the start of Part II of Funder’s novel, by which time it is no longer comedic but claustrophobic. Who knew that the Gestapo spread is tentacles so far, so soon? I certainly didn’t. In fact I was completely unacquainted with this period of history and so this novel was a constant surprise to me and as the net tightened around the historical cast, I felt their fear, admired their courage and groaned at the inevitable betrayal(s).

Let me name some of the characters: Ernst Toller, Dora Fabian, Hans and Ruth Wesemann, Mathilde Wurm. Google searches ( I couldn’t resist) revealed the fates of those people but Funder’s re-imagining of their lives put me under their not always admirable skins …

… once I’d got to grips with the structure. What took me some time to work out was the timeline of the dual narratives which both focussed on the figure of Dora Fabian.  Ruth Wesemann is looking back from her death bed in Australia in 1991 while Ernst Toller, in the grip of a deep depression, does the same from the Mayflower Hotel in California in 1939. Once I’d got my bearings, I raced through the pages.

I’ve made a note to return to this one day to pay more attention to Ruth’s philosophising on her own mortality; a strand of the novel subsumed on first reading by the sensational events of the past.

I read this for Caroline’s Literature and War Readalong.

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An Englishman In Madrid – Eduardo Mendoza

Winner of the 2010 Planeta Prize

Translated by Nick Caistor

The Planeta Prize is the richest prize for a single work of fiction in the world. The prize is worth EU 601,000!!! And I cheered mightily hard when Eduardo Mendoza won it 3 years ago. Mendoza was the first Spanish novelist to be added to my completist reading list and that was due to my guffawing my way through No Word from Gurb. So it’s no surprise that I dropped everything when this little beauty dropped through the letter box.

Anthony Whitelands is the eponymous Englishman, an art historian who is looking to make a name for himself. The discovery of a lost master would do it. So when he is invited to value a Spanish aristocrat’s private collection, he accepts the assignment with more hope than certainty. Actually that’s a bit unfair. Anthony loves Spain; the Prado is his second home; Velazquez, possibly the love of his life, and with Spain on the brink of Civil War, this may be his last chance to visit for some time.

A few weeks later: Anthony had come to Madrid to value a paintng, but without knowing how seemed to have become a collision point for all the forces in the history of Spain. He has unwittingly marked himself as a Falangist sympathiser, the Spanish authorities are keeping a close eye on his movements, as indeed is his own embassy. The Communists have, for some reason, marked him for assassination.

This would be funny, if it weren’t so serious. And it would be serious, if I cared about Whitelands as a character. But I’m afraid not. He is a libertine, an opportunist and a bit slow on the uptake. He’d love to be a player, but he is played, well and truly, by all and sundry.

It’s funny how a title can change the focus of a read. The English title, legitimate given the content, is obviously designed to appeal to the English readership. The Spanish title, Riña de gatos, is literally translated Cat Fight, and places the emphasis firmly on the political shenanigans of 1936. The book is populated by historical figures of the time amongst them Antonio Primer de Rivera, leader of the Falange and, of course, Francisco Franco. If the naive Anthony Whiteland thinks he can herd these cats, then more fool him.

The tone remains ironic and good-humoured throughout what may, on the surface, appear to be a rattling good adventure. Those seeking the darker seams of history will find them, albeit hidden in the analysis of the art works that are central to the plot. For instance, there is a recurring motif of Whitelands confronted with Titian’s Death of Acteon. Never a favourite of his but as time goes by, it unsettles him more and more.

This is the moment when Diana, taking revenge on Actaeon for surprising her as she bathed naked in the woods, transforms him into a stag. Thereafter his own hounds attack and kill him. In the painting Actaeon is still visibly human but the transformation is in progress. It is the moment of no return. As a metaphor, this may apply to Whitelands, who may have observed something that is too dangerous for him to know. It also applies to Spain herself, depicted moments before she begins to rip herself to shreds. It’s just a question of which political dog is going to take the first bite.

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70% Acrylic, 30% Wool – Viola di Grado

Translated by Michael Reynolds

What are the chances of following a German novel set in Scarborough with an Italian novel set in Leeds? What is the fascination with Yorkshire? Certainly not the weather.

Welcome to Leeds, says Camelia, a purulent freckle …..where the sky is as grey as a chicken thigh. It’s always winter in Leeds, anything else is a warm-up band that screams itself hoarse for two minutes and dies. The story may or may not – actually it probably does – begin in December, psychologically speaking the month most attuned to Camelia’s mood.

She is in the grip of grief for her father, who has died in a car accident with his mistress. The shock has turned Camelia’s mother into a catatonic mute and Camelia has sacrificed her place at college to return to the slum called home to care for her. It’s an isolating sacrifice because her mother communicates only in the language of looks. No words are exchanged but entire conversations take place …. I suspect that at times Camelia is really talking to herself here … and we all know in that road madness lies.

Both women are eccentric at the start. Camelia’s mother expends her brief moments of activity taking photographs in the house – she never leaves it. Camelia rescues clothes from a bin and remodels them, into highly original, actually grotesque and ugly, creations. Ironically both habits lead to new relationships with the potential to thaw the metaphorical winter ….

Unfortunately lIfe has more disappointments in store. (A bit like many warm-up bands.) Camelia is ill-equipped to cope. There are times when she appears quite lucid. As a language student of Chinese and an Italian to English translator, she is intelligent but she is not rational. It doesn’t take much for other people to unhinge her and provoke an overreaction. Oh yes, she’s happy to judge others adversely without applying some moral framework to her own behaviour. The clues are there throughout and even though I knew it could not end well, I did not foresee that ending.  A bleak winter turns nuclear.

There is a preoccupation with language in these pages with symbolic undertones and foreshadowing in the Chinese lessons. This which works even those I know nothing about Chinese. For those who do, there are even greater depths to appreciate.

And all this from an author in her early twenties – a worthy winner of Italy’s Campiello First Novel Prize.

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A Peireneathon: The Series of the Small Epic

From the moment Peirene announced the series of the small epic, I was worried. Not that I doubted the quality of the offerings for a moment. The nymph does have impeccable taste. My concern stemmed from the fact that my least favourite Peirene Press title is the novella-sized Stone in A Landslide. What did I write in that review: “Too short for its scope ….. so much to tell, so little space ….. I always felt like an observer looking in, never absorbed”. For this reader the 2012 series was fraught with danger and I held off and held off some more – despite rave reviews for all 3 in the blogosphere. Then I decided this read had to be done, particularly if I was to be up-to-date before the really promising 2013 Turning Point series hits the shelves. Deep breathe – here we go – in reverse order of publication, for reasons that will become clear …..

Peirene No 9 Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe (Translated from the German by Jaimie Bulloch)

Winner of the Prix des Auditeurs de La Radio Suisse Romande

As an object, this is undoubtedly the most beautiful book that Peirene has produced. It tells of the life of the influential Chinese painter, Bada Shanren, and contains a number of his paintings. Bada Shanren began life as Zhu Da, a prince of the Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing dynasty. Turbulent times and he had to flee for his life to a Buddhist monastery, leaving behind his wife and young son – without it appears a second thought as to their safety. 40 years later, when the Qing dynasty is no longer as insecure and having learned that his wife and son have died (no details are given) he leaves the monastery to take a second wife because he feels the need to preserve his line. The second marriage is not a happy one (scant detail is given) but it is at this time that he begins to live the life of an artist using the skills taught him in the monastery.

You can tell from the above that I wasn’t concentrating of the focus of Weihe’s work – i.e the development of Bada Shanren’s career and almost philosophical relationship with his brushes and ink. This story is told in beautiful lyrical prose, I admit, but I was more interested in his failed human relationships and his alleged madness. These gaps were bound to frustrate me. I accept that condensing the 80 year life of Bada Shanren into 107 pages requires a strict scoping exercise. Weihe, for instance, does not even mention Bada Shanren’s poetry. The result, however, is an episodic structure in 51 small chapters and a work that makes me want to repeat my review of Peirene No 2.

Peirene No 8 The Murder of Halland – Pia Juul (Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken)

Winner of the 2009 Danske Banks Litteraturpris

Having established that I don’t like narrative gaps, Pia Juul’s book was bound to drive me demented, wasn’t it? And yet ….

Right at the start – page 3 to be exact – Halland’s corpse is found in the street. He has been shot and his partner of 10 years, Bess, is initially accused by a neighbour of the crime. The story is narrated by Bess, who behaves very strangely. But then she always has – leaving her husband for Halland, after a 5-minute meeting in a bookshop. Her relationship with Halland never seeming to be worth the price of the resulting estrangement from her teenage daughter. After Halland’s death Bess’s grief for her daughter blends seemlessly into her grief for Halland – or does it? People and details from Halland’s past begin to emerge which could lead to a revision of the 10 years she has spent with him.  Bess seems to be in denial. Then, people from her past reappear, seemingly out of nowhere, with motivations that appear flimsy – at least to me.

The question is how far can we believe Bess. She’s as unreliable as unreliable goes. She even tells us so and it’s a supreme irony that I believe her ….

Actually there’s a great deal that I haven’t mentioned. How could I possibly include everything? Nonetheless there is something that I haven’t mentioned that I must have left out on purpose.

The job of the reader is to work out what that something is and let’s say that because the gaps in Bess’s story are huge there’s plenty of room for manoeuver. This could be very frustrating, particularly if you wanted an answer to the whodunnit, which the author refuses to supply.  Despite this, I’m pretty clear about what I think happened, though not so clear about why I think that way.

I’d quite happily re-read this with my book group. I reckon the discussion would be never-ending. 

Peirene No 7 The Brothers – Asko Sahlberg (Translated from the Finnish by Emily and Fleur Jeremiah)

Nothing like sibling rivalry to conjure up a good old-fashioned family feud. Cherchez la femme and even more originally, cherchez le cheval! Add the Swedish-Russian war during which the brothers fought on opposing sides to create a plethora of unresolved grievance, festering and lying in ambush of some future time.

That time appears to be 1809 when, following the war, both brothers return to the farmstead on which they were raised. It is winter. The landscape is frozen and the atmosphere is just as icy.

The war has been waged, but here we may yet have corpses, so speaks the first of 7 first-person narrators. 7 narrators in a 115 page novella – it could get confusing but it doesn’t. Firstly there are signifiers whenever the narrator changes and secondly, each narrator has a distinct voice and point of view. Revelation upon revelation follows until it is clear that the problems I outlined above are the least of this family’s problems. There are further secrets hidden in the past and even greater betrayals to come. The question is from which direction? I’ll be honest, it took me by surprise, even though as I skim through the text again, the clues are there.

The moody, dark, brooding, and sometimes earthy language brings the drama right off the page. Twists and turns aplenty and yet it never feels rushed. Sahlberg even has time to weave in some wonderful symbolism – the decrepit house, a visual representation of the state of the family for instance. The Brothers has been described as Shakespearian and I heartily agree. More importantly there are no narrative gaps, and that makes this the most absorbing and satisfying read of the series. 

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The Scent of Lemon Leaves – Clara Sánchez

Winner Premio Nadal 2010

Translated by Julie Wark

Published by Alma Books

When Julian receives a request from Salvador, his long time friend,  to visit him in Alicante, he decides to go even though he knows there is a strong possibililty that he will never return to his home in Buenos Aires.  For Julian is in his mid-eighties and Salvador has requested his help in capturing two former Nazis, a man and wife who oversaw the extermination of the Jews in Mauthausen, the very concentration camp where Julian and his friend were incarcerated.  When Julian arrives at his friend’s nursing home, he finds Salvador has died. Julian, who wished only to return to the normality of humanity following his escape from the Nazis, finds himself inheriting the dead man’s mission  for justice.

At the same time Sandra, a thirty-year old pregnant woman who is alienated from her family and has left the father of her child, is suffering from morning sickness on the beach.  An elderly couple comes to her aid.  They befriend her, employ her as a companion to the woman and establish themselves as a surrogate family.  Not until Sandra’s path crosses with Julian and she becomes aware that she is working for the only foreigner to be awarded the Gold Cross (and therefore extremely cruel) is there any sense of menance.  Will she be able to extract herself from the situation without giving away that she knows who the couple really are?

Clara Sánchez’s novel is based on the fact that after the Second World War, many Nazis found refuge in Spain, where they managed to live to a ripe old age without anyone bothering them.  In her novel they have formed a protective community, complete with new recruits.  Now in old age and dying off, though still ruthless when necessary, they are aware that they may yet be called to account for the crimes of the past.

This is an intelligent  novel exploring the moral legacy of the past.  Is there any point pursuing Nazi war criminals when those still alive are now old and feeble?  Is there still a threat in leaving them in peace?  As for their victims, can their wounds heal without justice?  Absorbing too, the juxtaposition of the outlooks of old age and youth.  Julian, an old man on the cusp of death, reflects on his life and his attempts to establish normality and meaning after being reduced to a piece of flesh with no rights to exist on the earth.  Sandra, a young woman on the cusp of life, lost in contemporary doubt as to the meaning and purpose of her own.  And, of course, those old Nazis, going underground to survive in an world order they lost;  the Aryans, prey to the devastations of old age just like everyone else, ready to be exploited in a thoroughly modern way  …..

After all, what goes around, comes around.

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Little Indiscretions – Carmen Posadas

Winner of the Planeta Prize 1998

Translated by Christopher Andrews

Nestor Chaffino, pastry chef to the rich and famous, makes a fatal mistake.  At 4:00 in the morning, following a successful dinner party, he walks into the Westinghouse cool room to store the left-over chocolate truffles.  However, he fails to employ the safety mechanism that would prevent the door from closing behind him.  Which it does.  The question is though did it swing to of its own accord?

During the first chapter we are trapped with the chef as he struggles unsuccessfully to survive in minus 20 degrees.   Thereafter, we move from the corpse in the cool room to the skeletons in the closet.  Each of the house-guests it seems has adequate motive for closing the door on Chaffino.  Following a life-time in service, he was privy to their most intimate and dirty secrets.  It was also known that he was planning to publish a book of “Little Indiscretions”, although what the house guests don’t realise is that he was planning to divulge the secrets of his trade, not their nefarious pasts or, in some cases, presents.

While the setup is very closed-house Agatha Christie, Posadas novel breaks free from that traditional detective form.  For a start, it dispenses with the detective entirely!  The mystery is resolved through the character studies of the distinguished guests and Chaffino’s staff.  This allows Posadas to create her own confection which, like those of the sadly-demised chef, includes unexpected ingredients.  A satirical pen flows freely delivering a magnificent set piece when one of the suspects, art dealer Ernesto Teldi, is interviewed on television.  Miss Ramos, the young ambitious television journalist, is determined to hold him to account for his suspected collaboration with the Argentine military.  She is, however, no match for Teldi’s eyes.

“There is no secret”, Teldi replied (his gaze sliding down from Miss Ramos’s ankles to her shoes, which she suddenly wanted to hide, lest those gallant eyes discover that her seemingly expensive looking footwear was fake)

However, complex recipes may contain ingredients that don’t always blend and, indeed, that was true here.  I wasn’t convinced by the love affair with the woman in the painting, nor by the ultimate resolution to Chaffino’s death.  It reminded me of a disappointing piece of chocolate cake.  One which is simply not worth the calories.  Not that I’m saying Posadas novel isn’t worth reading – just that the resolution had something missing.  The ginger in Chauffino’s chocolate truffles perhaps?

Never have nuances of flavour been so masterfully blended, if I (Chauffino) say so myself:  vanilla, bitter chocolate , liqueur, a touch of ginger. That’s the trick.  The ginger is the secret ingredient that makes a really good chocolate truffle.

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Memory of the Abyss – Marcello Fois

Winner Grizane-Cavour Literary Prize, the Volponi Prize and the Alessi Prize

Published by MacLehose Press

Translated by Patrick Creagh

A couple of years ago I took part in a take-a-picture-a-day competition. Almost half the pictures I took were of trees – I love them. Thus the cover on this unsolicited review copy sparked my interest.  To find then that the novel is set in Sardinia when I’m busy island-hopping around the world of fiction explains why this book climbed swiftly to the top of Mount TBR.

Not only is the cover beautiful but the impressionistic tree with its Pan-like figure at the base is an perfect fit to the tone of this fable-like history of Samuele Stocchino.  Nicknamed The Tiger of Ogliastra, Stocchino was one of Sardinia’s most notorious bandits, fierce and unrelenting in his vendetta against his personal enemies, the seeds of which are sown when one man refused to offer Stocchino and his father a drink of water.

It could be argued that Stocchino is nothing but a ruthless, merciless terrorist.  But he is a legend with it.  Scattered throughout the mainly chronological retelling of his life are allusions to his invincibility; a legend spawned by incidents such as the day he fell into a deep abyss and survived, and by the way he cheated death during the Great War.  Seminal moments both: the former, as in the abyss, the futility of existence, haunts him throughout life; the latter teaches him how to kill.

He was a mere foot soldier who had found a meaning in life.  He did not stand out in a crowd, he was simply an enterprising butcher’s boy in the Award-winning Italian Butchery.  He was the agent on earth of Death & Co.  Now, there was something he knew, but had no name for.  The wolf pulsing in his heart had grown its fangs. 

An unsanctioned killing spree begins when he returns home from war to find his family have been swindled and his girlfriend stolen by the richest family in the neighbourhood.  Like all good legends, he nails a notice to the church door.

By this time you all know that certain persons have persecuted me and others of my family … And I have started and will continue to be a butcher to these scroundrels.  From now on all those who do us harm will be repaid in their own coin by me.  Samuele Stocchino.

His reign of terror is unstoppable, even with a price of 250,000 lire on his head.  Years later Mussolini, shamed by such lawlessness in his realm, sends a special envoy to tame the tiger.  Up until this point, the 3rd person narrative is solely Stocchino’s.  While looking through his eyes, the flesh and blood of the man isn’t tangible.  That comes into focus when the point of view shifts to that of Mussolini’s hunter, Saverio Polito.  And what do we see?  Not a huge monstrous presence to match the reputation.  Rather a small shrunken human, a man who is as much a victim as those he has killed; someone who has fallen into an abyss of his own making.

What they had not understood about the “tiger” was that he was waging a war against himself … For him, the only conceivable good thing was to assuage the fury within him.

How much of this story is true?  Let the author explain:

Samuele Stochino is a historical character, though at the same time legendary.  Samuele Stocchino (with double c) is the twice-over legendary character whose story is told in these pages. What you have read is not the truth ….

Now I don’t mind the mixing of fact and fiction but therein lies my only problem with this book.  If this is fictional, then surely there must have been options for a more satisfactory ending – after all that prior drama, where did that anti-climax originate?

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Stabat Mater – Tiziano Scarpa

Despite my growing unease, let us tarry a little while longer in Venice ….

Winner of the Strega Prize 2009

Published by Serpent’s Tail

Translated by Shaun Whiteside

Everyone, but everyone has heard parts of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (even if only while holding on the phone).  What they may not know – like me –  is the context in which they were written.

Stabat Mater offers insights into the life of the orphans of the Ospedale della Pietà, many of whom were skilled musicians kept segregated from the world.  When giving concerts in church, they were hidden behind metals grills. When travelling through the city to play for their benefactors, they remained veiled.  This was dictated by the shame of their births.  (Many were the unwanted children of the city’s prostitutes)  Their education contained similar contradictions:  progressive in regard to their musical education, yet rooted in the dark ages in other respects.

The narrator, Cecilia, 16, fantasises of escape through marriage or of her mother coming to reclaim her.  She is given to nocturnal wanderings,  always accompanied by a nightmarish Medusa-like figure of death.  During one of her nocturnal walks she witnesses a secret birth in the toilets in the basement of the orphanage.  This is her initiation into the origins of  life and it sows her jaundiced view of mother-child relationships.  The epistolary form  - this is the letter which Cecilia writes to her unknown mother – allows for full and honest expression of her emotions, which like the notes from her violin soar from the ecstatic to the depths of her jaundiced and claustrophobic existence.

Children spring from their mothers’ bellies and burst out crying, still terrifed by what they’ve abandoned, the death they’ve escaped.  They’re body-parts of the mother who flees from them. 

Mothers try to keep them bound to themselves, they hold them back when they are born, but the babies escape anyway, so the disappointed mothers take their revenge, they incite death against them, the rope that holds them back becomes the snake that bites their little belly and injects it with deadly poison.  They too are marked, they were innoculated with their fate in the womb.  The snake is pulled away, but in the middle of their bodies children bear a mother-scar, a death-scar, forever.

When Vivaldi replaces the worn-out composer-priest of the first half of the novel, Cecilia’s mood – and that of the novel – lightens.  Vivaldi’s refreshing compositions break boundaries and open up new musical horizons.  Vivaldi recognises Cecilia’s musical talent and becomes a personal mentor, relieving some of her solitude.  Yet in a dark incident (darkness is never far away in this pages) he also teaches her the importance of personal experience for musical interpretation.   He also promises her that

I will make you play the most intoxicating pieces, you will shake people’s souls in their foundations, that point at which our self dissolves into something coinciding with the vibrations of the cosmos.  

Cecilia’s part of the bargain is to remain in the convent, anonymous yet world-famous behind the metal grilles. Is Vivaldi’s promise sufficiently enticing for one already aware that she is buried alive in a delicate coffin of music?

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Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey

Winner 1988 Booker Prize and 1989 Miles Franklin Prize.

It’s funny isn’t it how sometimes a novel simply does not call out to be read. All I knew about Oscar and Lucinda, apart from its prize winning credentials, was that it was the story of two gamblers. Not for me, even if it was written by one of the greats of Australian literature. I owned my paperback copy for years – it came as part of a set. I hadn’t consciously bought it. Then the Folio Society put their edition in the sale for less than a tenner … at that price it would make a lovely edition to my FS collection. Then Kim announced Australian Literature Month and Gaskella decided that she would read it. Sometimes the universe must send many signals before I realise that this is a must read and that its reputation is, in fact, very well deserved.  This process seems so appropriate to a novel that examines luck, chance and providence in all its many guises.

What was I expecting? A desperado tale set in the gun-slinging, drunken Australian outback perhaps? (No idea if they slung guns in Australia – apologies if not, there’s no accounting for my imagination …) I certainly didn’t expect to start on the Devon coast with the story of a young boy and his Plymouth Brethren minister father. A father whose heart he broke by defecting to become an Anglican minister and a compulsive gambler. (Horses – he was fortunate – his winnings paid his way through college … even if he did cut a shambolic figure.)

Lucinda’s life starts in the outback. Orphaned at the tender age of 17, she inherits the proceeds from the sale of her parent’s farm, promptly goes to the city and buys herself a glass factory. (It does make sense in the context of the novel.) The money secures her an independence that other women could only dream of  (though tellingly not the respect of her workers) and by degrees she turns into a feisty and headstrong madam. Albeit lonely and so begin her various dalliances at the card tables.

How do these two meet? Well the reader must have patience. Carey is in no rush and tells the parallel stories of their childhood and youth with meticulous precision, taking as much care to ensure that the secondary characters are as real as the principals. So Oscar’s father, Theophilus (meaning lover of God), isn’t simply the principled zealot that the incident with the Christmas pudding would imply. He is a lover of God’s creation, a meticulous marine biologist, and a successful minister. He has been poaching Reverend Stratton’s congregation and so, when Oscar, convinced (by the throw of a stone) that his father is misguided, runs to Reverend Stratton with a request to convert, it is to the Reverend and his wife, a gift from God …. even if they can’t really afford to bring the boy up.

This sets the pattern for Oscar. In pursuing his own aims, he unconsciously ruins the lives of others. There’s certainly no malice in anything Oscar does, nor is there much forward planning. After college, on the toss of a coin, he decides to emigrate to Australia but to get there he must board the ship. The embarkation scenes are pure gold. Oscar’s lifelong fear of water renders him powerless. Carey has manoeuvered Lucinda to be on the same ship.

The rain started again, heavily, and the ganway ahead would not clear. She lifted her umbrella to see properly, peering up from the fourth step. It would appear that there were problems with an invalid. She recognised the red-haired clergyman as the one who had arrived in a hansom, or, rather recognised the hair. It was he who was the invalid. She thought it strange they should carry a man backwards up a gangplank. But then, as she watched, she saw they were no longer going up, but coming down. And this was how she first saw Oscar, altough there was not a lot to see because he had his hands pressed to his face.

Chapter 46 and Lucinda sets eyes on Oscar.  It’s not an auspicious start, is it?  As they journey towards Australia, they discover each other’s love of gambling and begin to play cards together, unaccompanied in Lucinda’s cabin.  This establishes the careless pattern of their relationship  which eventually (the languorous pace continues once the shores of Australia are reached) sees Lucinda ruin Oscar’s life.    She must become his protectoress.  As luck would have it, she’s in a position to become just that. Eventually however, their friendship deepens but somehow or other their future together and Lucinda’s fortune becomes dependent on Oscar delivering a glass church into the outback.  (Yes, a glass church in the heat of Australia – completely fantastical in the midst of a novel more on a par with mid-19th century realism).

By which time the denouement has been foreshadowed.  It’s just a matter of detail and detail is where Carey excels.  (For example, I didn’t know that about the side-effects of laudanum!)  The pages turn a little faster during this final adventure which is led by Oscar’s archenemy Mr Jeffries who

was amused at Mr Smudge (derogatory nickname for Oscar) preparing for anything.  He had never, in his whole experience, met anyone so mentally and physically unprepared for life. 

Mr Jeffries’s assessment of Oscar is correct.  Unprepared for life, completely ill-equipped for adventure.  This escapade is always going to be a case of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory and it raises the supreme irony of this being the one thing that Oscar manages supremely well.   (Or does it?  Is chance, fate or whatever you care to call it, finally settling the bill?)

This novel held me in its thrall.  It made me laugh.  I didn’t cry but I certainly felt the heartache of some in places. If I hadn’t banned myself from rereading this year, I would probably go back to the beginning and start again to pick up all the nuances that are woven into its tapestry. I will do that sometime (perhaps when I persuade my book group to read it) but meanwhile I’ll just link to John Mullan’s excellent analysis ( 1) Chance   2) Visualisation   3) Origins   4) Reader’s Responses ) and a podcast in which he talks to Carey about the novel.

The first    of 2012!  I hope I didn’t gush too much.

Thanks to Kim and Gaskella for the providing the impetus I needed to pick this up.

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