Hamnet – Maggie O'Farrell

Meeting venue: by an open fire in Mark W's living room, 4th November 2021

This is a simple story in many ways. It is a very ‘human’ book, not political, and, although classed as a historical novel, it’s not really historical in any other sense than that it is a reflection of the lives of fairly ordinary people at the end of the 16th Century – possibly one of its charms.

As we know, it centres around the death of William Shakespeare’s only son, twin to Judith and younger sibling of Susanna. What is interesting, and perhaps contributes to the uniqueness of the book’s viewpoint, is that it relegates Shakespeare himself to bit-part player, (as he was in real life while running his company). He is never named, so the baggage his latter-day reputation brings with him doesn’t overshadow the story Maggie O’Farrell wants to tell.

This story is that of Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (who we know as Anne Hathaway), of the quite commonplace death of one of her young children in a modest town house in a Midlands market town in 1596, and of the way this affects her and the family around her.

The book received a broadly positive reception from the BBBC, and scores ranged from a not bad 6.5 to a positively euphoric 10! Steve, whose choice it was, had read it before and he had a comment about the wisdom or otherwise of re-reading a book that you enjoyed first time round, which will be appended to the end of this summary.

Things we liked:

• An elegant, accessible prose style that didn’t get in the way of the story and was a welcome relief from some of the somewhat heavier-going fare of recent months (JH). It was pleasing to note that historical novels didn’t always have to be as impenetrable as some previous club reads such as Wolf Hall, for example (MT).

• The structure: the two principal narrative strands (young Agnes, older married Agnes) were cleverly woven together; no-one found this a permanent obstacle though some said it took a bit of getting used to.

• O’Farrell’s ability to create vivid, believable characters was remarked upon. Brother Bartholomew was cited by MW, AA, CB as a character they particularly liked, but all members of the Shakespeare family were well-formed, distinct and believable. Her descriptions of the details of everyday family life were powerful, not least around her existence at the farm before getting together with The Latin Tutor, when he sees her across the fields with her falcon. Several good words for the apple-shed encounter as well! 

• Likewise the author’s ability to write convincingly about the almost shamanic relationship Agnes developed with the natural world around her – so she became someone the townsfolk of Stratford respected, though at the expense of good relationships with the more traditional medical experts in the town. The appearance of the doctor in full quarantine paraphernalia was vivid and effective, incorporating a hint of humour. 

• Fantastic, lyrical descriptions: ‘’Night-time in the town, a deep, black silence lies over the streets, broken only by the hollow lilt of an owl, calling for its mate. A breeze slips invisibly, insistently through the streets, like a burglar seeking an entrance. It plays with the tops of the trees, tipping them one way, then the other. It shivers inside the church bell, making the brass vibrate with a single low note. It ruffles the feathers of the lonely owl, sitting on a rooftop near the church.’’ (CB)

• Almost everyone commented on the amazing description of childbirth, when Agnes takes herself into the woods, watched over by the spirit of her mother, to give birth to Susanna: 

• “Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the relentlessness of it. It is like trying to stand in a gale, like trying to swim against the current of a flooded river, like trying to lift a fallen tree. Never has she been more sensible of her weakness, of her inadequacy. She has always felt herself to be a strong person: she can push a cow into milking position, she can douse and stir a load of laundry, she can lift and carry her small siblings, a bale of skins, a bucket of water, an armful of firewood. Her body is one of resilience, of power: she is all muscle beneath smooth skin. But this is something else. Something other. It laughs at her attempts to master it, to subdue it, to rise above it. It will, Agnes fears, overtake her. It will seize her by the scruff of her neck and plunge her down, under the surface of the water.” (RV, SC) 

• O’Farrell’s deep dive into the complexities of human emotion. Agnes, living without the man she loves by her side, becomes prey to private uncertainties and fears about what he might be up to in London, especially once he has torn himself away after the funeral (a powerful scene): “It’s as if her mother needs London, and all that he does there, to rub off him before she can accept him back, Judith observes”. AA pointed out that people would have lost close relatives more frequently than now – however O’Farrell has herself remarked that maternal grief would have been no less powerful for that fact. 

• The passages leading up to Hamnet’s death were memorable – particularly in which the bed is brought downstairs to the fireside in a desperate attempt to sweat the fever out, amid arguments over which remedies might work, and which were useless (dried toad, for example). Our medical consultants assure us that the descriptions of the physical effects of bubonic plague were ‘spot on’ (AA) 

• The powerful climax of the book involving the trip to London to confront her husband – cleverly presenting the mayhem of London life through the eyes of a ‘simple country girl’, as she realises that his presentation of his play ’Hamlet’ is his own way of expressing his grief, that he is as profoundly affected by Hamnet’s death as she is, but that he has found his own individual way to deal with it. This is the only point in the book that there’s a form of homage to Shakespeare’s own talents. 

• The ending: neat, revelatory and satisfying for many of us – a much better ending that some more laboured efforts we’ve read in the past. 

• A number commented on the fact that the book had additional topical resonance (though this could not have been an original intention of the author) through the parallels with the current pandemic. Quarantine, theatres closed by order of the Queen, no-one allowed to gather in public… 

• O’Farrell’s ploy of removing William Shakespeare to the list of bit-part players – never naming him other than by what he meant to her: The Latin Tutor, for example, latterly ‘husband’. This for most had the effect of enabling us to concentrate on the story of a woman living a hard, sometimes desperate life, yet striving at the same time to be fulfilled through the lives of her children, her husband and through the use of her own undoubted intelligence. We felt that this was an original and eloquently expressed representation of such an ‘ordinary’ woman’s life in the late 16th Century.

Things we were less convinced about:

• The chapter dealing with the passage of the plague-carrying flea from Venice to England was enjoyed by some as adding additional colour and depth to the story, but others found it a pointless digression, adding little and not telling us anything we didn’t already know. 

• The ‘spoiler’ at the start, in which it is stated that the child dies, took a couple of members by surprise, as they were unaware of the back story of Hamnet’s death. However, for others, this in no way detracted from the enjoyment of the story as it was for a number of us already known; indeed the fact had been a central part of the book’s publicity at launch as O’Farrell made it clear that it was learning the fact of Hamnet’s death at school that started the thought processes leading to writing the book. But it demonstrates the dangers for publishers in making assumptions about the level of historical knowledge of its potential readership. 

• The degree to which Agnes descended into the depths of grief after Hamnet’s death was seen as over the top by some. RV: ‘I was happy to return to read it, it was an easy read; and yet, over-wrought in places... Obviously I am aware that grief can do terrible things to people, but this seemed SO extreme, especially given that up to 50% of all children did die in medieval England before reaching puberty, that the death of a child would be not exactly commonplace but largely expected. Yet both she, and WS, are so overcome. So I’m not totally convinced by both of their terrible, mind-altering grief, as child death was so common.” As mentioned, O’Farrell has defended this by saying that maternal response would not necessarily have been diminished simply because of the higher incidence of child death.

SC at times had some sympathy with Mary: “Mary, Susanna knows, is of the opinion that grief is all very well in moderation, but there comes a time when it is necessary to make an effort. She is of the opinion that some people make too much of things. That life goes on.”

• Some suggestion (JH) that O’Farrell’s presentation of the hazy ‘facts’ around the death were rather manipulative – she marshalled the information very much to meet her own ends. Arguably however this is what authors do – particularly crime writers, who drip-feed the key information through as it suits them.

SC’s response to re-reading the book for the club was that he rather wished he hadn’t. The second reading made him more critical – of things like the use of present tense; of the extreme depths of Agnes’ at times seemingly endless grief, for example, whereas at the first time of reading he had found himself totally engaged, captured, absorbed by the book.

An appropriate final word comes from JH:

‘The final pages of the book were extraordinary – particularly the way that the battlement scene in Hamlet is used to share a parent’s grief “Hamlet, here, on this stage, is two people, the young man, alive, and the father, dead. He is both alive and dead. Her husband has brought him back to life, in the only way he can. As the ghost talks, she sees that her husband, in writing this, in taking the role of the ghost, he has changed places with his son. He has taken his son’s death and made it his own; he has put himself in death’s clutches, resurrecting the boy in his place.”’ 

We did, on the whole, like the book, some of us very much indeed. All of us found something to appreciate, and it ended up being one the better-scoring reads of recent years, logging an average of 7.92.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union – Michael Chabon

Meeting venue: The Ring-O' Bells, Widcombe, 7th October 2021

This is a book which is set in an alternate universe – one where the State of Israel lost the May 1948 War of Independence, and hence where Israel was overrun, causing a humanitarian crisis which of course relatively immediately followed the crisis caused by the Holocaust, and leading to the USA offering a portion of Alaska as a temporary homeland, leased to the Jews in a similar way to Hong Kong being leased to Britain, with the contract specifying a date on which it would be returned. That date is a few months away – the ‘Reversion’. In this Universe, this ‘Jewish State’ is policed by a Jewish police service, and the ‘hero’ of the novel is a detective in that service. The book tells the story of his investigation of a murder.

Richard chose it because a (non-Jewish) friend of his highly recommended it.

Although as is usually the case many could see both positives and negatives within this book, the BBBC split into three over it.

On the one side were three of us (ChrisW, Richard, ChrisB) who felt that despite some drawbacks, it was essentially a very good, or even an excellent book (scoring two ‘8’s and a ‘7’); on the other, there were three (MarkT, Steve, Willm) who actively disliked it (scoring a ‘3’ and two ‘3.5’). And finally there were three (John, MarkW, Andrew) who liked elements of it but were neither as positive nor as negative (scoring 5.75, 6 and 6.5).

In sum, the negatives revolved around: hard to follow, slow to get into it, too difficult to get into this alien world (You can't participate in the game if you don't know the rules), not really gripped by the characters, not than interested in a Chandler pastiche, the language and syntax and Yiddish slang words.

The positives revolved around: the language, the style, the fact that it was a Chandleresque detective story, the themes, the fact that it was an alien world (customs, traditions, language) into which one could get transported, the characters and the relationships – its enjoyability and entertainingness.

The Negatives
Two BBBC members who actively disliked the book did not complete it. The third found many positives, but still ended up actively disliking it.

Willm: I have a contrast in view to those who liked it. I didn’t get on with it at all. Clever turns of phrase, but why? Why write a book: a pastiche of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. The movies are great but why write a book? The Jewish material just passed me by. I gave up after 45 per cent.

MarkT: I agree with all of the negatives. I liked the bit from Tess of the D’Urbervilles but it was such a relief to stop after 100 pages.

Steve: The author creates immediate impact through a Raymond Chandler-like downbeat voice and applies similar laser-sharp wit; sometimes the humour is almost Wodehousian. In fact, there was masses of powerful, in your face imagery, although sometimes I felt that he was maybe just trying too hard. Chabon’s ‘reality’ is presented so matter-of-factly, unarguable, it’s as if he believes he doesn’t really have to explain himself. Instead, the back story is drip fed, so while you get (some background) early on in the book, you don’t get other key background context until later. So you gradually get to fill in some of the yawning gaps in one’s understanding, but that’s still being fed in right up to the end. In a way one experiences a more acute form of the frustration that you sometimes experience when a writer is withholding information from you simply to spin the story out - which obviously happens with any fiction, but some pass it off better than others. I really wanted to know where I stood with the background story so I could get properly stuck into the actual plot. There were too many distractions fighting for attention. For example, for all my life the word ‘Yid’ has been considered an unpleasant insult, but there must be degrees of subtlety here that I’m missing. However, I was sometimes transported wholesale into this surreal world Chabon creates. Sitka is a real place, in Alaska, near to where Jonathan Raban sailed and wrote Passage to Juneau which we read a few years back. Also Snow Falling on Cedars. Interesting that that book centred around the true story of Japanese immigrants and refugees. So I could visualise the landscapes, even if much of the detail was outlandish. The (to me) alien world of Orthodox Jewish life stands as a barrier to more complete understanding - the passage involving the visit to the ‘boundary maven’ for example was so loaded with ‘specialist’ information that I was learning for the first time, much of it involving string, that it was very difficult to decide what to hold in one’s head as important detail for the sake of the story and what to treat simply as simpler background context. The significance of the painted red heifer completely passed me by, for example. I fought a sense of inadequacy, that I should know and understand more. And I experienced, as already mentioned, a frustration that there were too many questions raised at every corner - that this unnecessary complexity got in the way of a good story. And of course this was compounded by the embedding of the story in the world of chess, a game I have never mastered – though as it turned out, knowledge of the game wasn’t as critical to an understanding of the outcome as the understanding that for some people it’s a matter of life or death. 

I don’t often check on the web to see what other people thought of it. On this occasion I did, and found a review by Adam Mars Jones in The Guardian, from 2007, who sums up one of my main issues with the book well: ‘The real problem with the book is the piecemeal way Chabon introduces his alternate reality. It's an unwritten rule of the genre that you should be able to define the difference between the parallel world and ours in a single sentence... …No such establishment of a baseline is possible with The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Two million European Jews were slaughtered in the 1940s, rather than six, and there's no reference to Hitler or any other political figure (the current American President is referred to only in those vague terms). No doubt Chabon has compiled a little dossier or chart of his world, but there are readers who would like a peek, too. You can't participate in the game if you don't know the rules.’ 

So in the end, the only thing I felt really drove me to finish the book was a desire to find out if Naomi really was dead, or if she’d manage a miraculous resurrection (stranger things happened in the book). So I had to mark it down because of the disappointment. In a sentence: mercurial flashes of brilliance but too self-indulgent and free with the in-jokes to carry a gentile like me wholeheartedly along with it.

The Positives
ChrisB: A rollicking detective story, very Chandleresque, very enjoyable, a neat style. I liked the story, the pursuance of the “who murdered …” theme, and the back-story – his relationship with his father, his candidature to be his generation’s messiah. Not sure I understood why Mendel Shpilman got killed. There were some amazing turns of phrase: “he fears he suffers from tinnitus of the soul”.
Overall, rather a fun book despite its heaviness. A book I will remember.

Richard: I liked lots about the book: it became more about chess and about history, and I love both of those; it started to appear to me as an interesting and a complex book, with complex characters, many of who I could like, and even understand; I found a lot of aspects of the book interesting: the politics, the idea of what might have happened if Israel had lost the War of Independence, the relationships with the USA, the desperate yearning by the Jewish people for a permanent home, and then on top of all of that, a murder story and a detective story, and then chess, and add in complex Jewish sects, and then the style. I thought the main characters were quite strongly drawn – Meyer Landsman, Berko Shemets, Bina Gelbfish, - even Frank (“Mendel Shpilman”) starts to come across as a strong character. And there were a host of more minor characters that also stood out strongly – Willy Dick, Rebe Shpilman, many others. The politics are really interesting: the issue of a Jewish Homeland was such an important one for so many generations, and it is interesting to see how relatively less important it is now that Israel is a (relatively) unassailable fact. So this story postulates a situation where the Jews are still searching for a homeland, and the issue of what will happen after ‘the Reversion’ is a burning one. The way that modern Hebrew was thought about in the book. And I thought that the style was rather marvellous. His use of words and metaphor and simile was simply superb – almost every page had on it something that was striking and unusual, and sometimes beautiful. I found them really clever, unusual and apposite. 

ChrisW: agree with Richard and ChrisB. A weird book: I had two reinvent invent my understanding. I loved this introduction into a different world, very Germanically Yiddish. I’d bought into the film noir, the seediness, damp, cold rainy environment, the intensity of religion and the deals. I found the relationship with his wife very touching and well explained, the implications of the reversion, the USA involvement. His command of words, very funny, all these customs, the enlightenment into Yiddish-ness, and into a different locality and culture. I liked it, very entertaining, I wanted to go to bed to read it.

The in-betweeners
Andrew: There were many positives. Chabon captured well the New York cop writing style and world-weary, harsh dialogue; The book read Like Philip K Dick transplanting the “frozen Chosen” into a Raymond Chandler detective story; Chabon is great at painting quick pictures; and great descriptions – particularly his use of metaphor - and the terrific description of Rabbi Shpilman – like clay lumped together by blind orphans etc. However, it’s quite a complicated writing style which often gets in the way of flow; there is a huge cast of characters (with the main ones well-drawn and interesting but not particularly compelling or making me care, except perhaps for Berko); and I spent too much time looking up words and translating from Yiddish which spoiled the flow. I thought that it had a great start with the very first sentence: “Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered”, there was the clever twist of Landsman finally telling his dad he hated chess in a letter and his dad killing himself 2 days later: Landsman then has 20y of guilt before he finds the letter again – unopened! But it was overcomplicated and knotty at times and I got bogged down a few times in the first quarter until it took off once we’d met Mendel and then his parents.
I thought the book was far too long until I got to halfway and realised that a big worthwhile story might be unfolding and how pleased I was that there was still half the book to go rather than just a couple of chapters of wrapping up and denouement - finally felt part of the world of the story …. at the same time as feeling pissed off that it had taken half the (very long) book … but in fact although the scope of the story soared to include global events, it never sang and whizzed along, always dragging a bit and for me slowed down by looking up too many words I didn’t know.
Overall, enjoyed the plot and Landsman and some of the other characters; I enjoyed the writing and the way Chabon saw people and things and his descriptions of them; but it was too long and too slow; there were no characters to care about; and it never zipped along like Shuggie or A Gentleman in Moscow - a bit like cycling on cobbles … But with some sharp writing.

Mark W: Another book that I found really hard getting into. This time I really struggled with the first fifty pages or so but, for some reason, the chapter where Bina returned as Landsman’s boss was a bit of a turning point, perhaps because it gave an additional element to the narrative (the relationship between these two) that sustained my interest to the end of the book. In fact this element, rather than the whodunnit and whydunnit elements was for me the most interesting part of the book, probably because the rest of the characters were pretty uninteresting, apart from the partner Berko. Having said that, I still found the narrative pretty hard to follow but I’m not really sure why that was, possibly because I struggled with some of the language and syntax, and not just because of the plethora of Jewish slang words thrown in. The story seemed a bit confusing to me, and the revelation at the end when the murderer was revealed was a bit of an anticlimax. The idea of this Jewish community in deepest Alaska was an interesting one though and there were some interesting ideas, notably the rabbis acting as all powerful mafia style bosses. Whether there is any element of reality in this would be interesting to know. All in all, not bad after a slow start but difficult to follow and a fairly far-fetched whodunnit. Preferred Tulayev and Sympathiser.

John: I really liked the premise that the book is based on – an alternate history in which the Jews were expelled from the new state of Israel in 1948 and forced to make settlements in other parts of the world. Many of the Jews of Europe finding a refuge of sorts in a cold corner of Alaska - Sitka. This apparently was a makeshift solution as it was expected that Europe would in due course take them back, but now this District itself is about to revert to America. A source of much consternation and which seems to be backdrop to this story. I think I followed the story, but it was hard - what with the complex mix of characters and the variety of cultural, religious and linguistic hoops to hop through and around. All sorts of digressions and detours that added to the confusion – the murder of Landsman’s sister, a fake drug treatments centre in the middle of no-where with a suspicious red heifer which will help Jews to reclaim Israel, and the arrival of US Federal Agents who block the investigation in order to help bring about the “return” of the Christian messiah. Wow…… all very complicated and often hard work. It was not an easy read partly because of its complexity and partly the rather world-weary tone it was written in – a homage to Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett I assume. But there were moments when the story took off at a pace and gripped you. It would then seem to get bogged down again in some arcane detour. As one reviewer noted this book was at various times everything from an elaborate joke to an unwieldy bore. But there some wonderful lines that stood out from the melange.

Almost everyone (even those who did not like the book as much) had interesting quotes which they brought, to demonstrate this author’s way with words; and there were so many to select from that in all of the quotes people brought, there was only one overlap!

Some choice quotes were:
• like goldfish in a bag, about to be dumped back into the big black lake of the Diaspora
• In drafty, tin-roofed huts and barracks, they underwent six months of intensive acclimatization by a crack team of fifteen billion mosquitoes working under contract with the U.S. Interior Department.
• A trace of a double chin that Landsman puts down to a vanished life as a fat boy.
• They leave Brennan standing outside the Front Page, with his necktie smacking him on the forehead like a remorseful palm
• the beaded curtain clatters behind her with the sound of loose teeth in a bucket.
• He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker
• The round tables that crowd the stage wear overturned chairs like sets of antlers
• Rain tossed in vandalistic handfuls at the windshield.
• Bina accepts a compliment as if it’s a can of soda that she suspects him of having shaken.
• Mrs. Kalushiner comes back, dragging the great leg iron of her life.
• In a narrow window opposite the cot, metal-slat blinds leak the disappointed gray of a November afternoon in southeastern Alaska. It’s not light oozing through so much as a residue of light, a day haunted by the memory of the sun.
• Landsman is at the wheel of a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sport, which he bought ten years ago in an access of nostalgic optimism and has driven until all its secret flaws seem indistinguishable from his own
• Ahead of him rise the tower blocks of the Shvartsn-Yam … huddled in the darkness like prisoners rounded up with a powerful hose
• and a bunch of bohemian semiprofessionals who like the atmosphere of ruined festivity that lingers in the neighborhood like a strand of tinsel on the branch of a bare tree
• “You,” she says, making a face like she just tasted earwax on her fingertip”
• Several inches remain in the bottle when he is through, but Landsman himself is filled top to bottom with nothing but the burn of remorse
• Girls hobbled by long skirts go along braided arm in arm, raucous chains of Verbover girls, as vehement and clannish as schools of philosophy
• His full ashy beard flutters in the wind like bird fluff caught on a barbed-wire fence
• He’s too superstitious not to see this as a bad omen, but when you’re a pessimist, all omens are bad
• Every generation loses the messiah it has failed to deserve
• It never takes longer than a few minutes, whenever they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That’s what a family is
• As it happens, I told Chief Inspector Vayngartner how you had just been shot.” “And he said?” “He said that in light of this fresh evidence, he might have to reconsider long-held atheistic beliefs.”

The Case of Comrade Tulayev - Victor Serge

WM (who selected this book): 

Victor Serge was a lifelong revolutionary - moving through every proletarian battle of the first half of the 20th Century, as he saw the failures of each bellief.  Not staying with any particular orthodoxy saw him imprisoned, ostracised, lionised, and eventually dying in poverty but not despair.

This is his final book and it illustrates the nature of terror in a totalitarian state (a term he coined for the USSR).  All this is demonstrated without a lot of overt violence or descriptions of physical torture.  The recognition in everyone’s mind is that they could be arrested at any minute, tried, and executed. Whether they be old revolutionaries, bureaucrats, workers, or anyone in any way associated with them.  And the vast majority of these people were true believers in the socialist state and the glorious future to come - why they could be convinced to confess to crimes impossible for them to have committed.

However, many chapters include lyrical, beautiful, poetic descriptions of the natural world, the night sky, the sparkling snow, in contrast with the closed, physical, mental, emotional poverty of the people.

The novel itself is almost a succession of essays all linked by the perceived ‘plot’ to murder Tulayev.  The last chapter, for me, has a qualitative different feel, almost romantic, as Kostia re-emerges, but reverts to fear as the truth is revealed to Fleischman, and the final paragraphs where all the functionaries are simply faceless men as the army marches by.

JH: 

Not an easy read – dense – hard to follow with the different characters and why they are there. Sontag’s Introduction says 'a polyphonic novel with many trajectories'  – in other words, hard to follow.  I gave up after 120 pages and speed read the rest. 

However it captured the absurdist nature of Stalin’s Russia – the depth of paranoia and acceptance that individuals had little control over what was going on, as well as a bizarre faith in the cause, the party and Russia.  As Rublev says 'it is better to die dishonoured, murdered by the Chief than to denounce him to the international bourgeoisie…' (p.71)

The book also provoked me to think more about the awfulness of such a regime (Stalin’s 1930s purges: c.700,000 executed, c.1m+ dead in gulags). Compared to Comrade Tulayev, Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is a much easier read as it does not suffer from poor editing, dodgy translation and is focused on one individual’s experience, whereas Serge’s novel is more about the convoluted contradictions and the wider context in which these purges took place – which may explain its complexity and why it is far less known.

SC: 

A very challenging book and certain aspects of the prose pushed me to the point of giving up, but it seemed too important to dismiss lightly.
It was a sporadically fascinating historical document. The insights into the bleakness of life in the USSR in the 1930s were often powerful. The early passage told by the prostitute about the poverty her family experienced, and Makeyev’s rise and fall from minor rural official,
‘He felt himself, like them, possessed of a legitimate authority, integrated into the dictatorship of the proletariat like a good steel screw set in its proper place in some admirable, supple and complex machine’

Interesting that the vast majority of characters are male bullies and most of the females are compliant partners playing the traditional and often quite sexually descriptive role - but there are exceptions, Zvyeryeva for example

However, I found the structure of the book confusing, and as with every Russian novel I have ever read, the names were an impediment to fluent reading and absorption of the plot. After a while I gave up worrying about who was who and just ‘enjoyed the scenery’.

There were undercurrents of Kafka, and George Orwell. I was also strongly reminded of Armando Iannucci’s film, ‘The Death of Stalin’, which covered similar ground though not so much from the perspective of the ordinary person.

I think, overall, we’ve moved on as a society. It’s an interesting book as a historic document and perhaps a dire warning. It didn’t feel particularly relevant to 21st century global society. 

AA:

Published in 1947 in the aftermath of WW2 so perhaps not surprising it appeared to lack careful editing. Written at the same time as 1984 and 15 years before One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic. Sontag’s intro was quite interesting but far too long.

Great start with Kostia going shopping and description of his and Romachkin's rooms and Romachkin with the destitute prostitute.  Each new chapter introduced a new official who I never felt I really got to know

Really enjoyed the scene of Erchov being sent a private train to collect him and his wife and the unscheduled stop in the middle of nowhere where he was divested of his post, his power, and his uniform in a room with his portrait on the wall.  The whole toxic terrifying mess of the Party comes through strongly, with similarities to The Sympathiser, but too repetitively: 'To hell with my and me, to hell with self, to hell with truth, if the Party can be strong!'
So despite some beautiful descriptions I began to find it dull and just under half decided to stop.

CW: 

I can’t say I enjoyed this book, but it’s very well written and the individual chapters describe vividly the reach and control of the Party and the all pervading fear and worry of Russians who cannot trust even their closest relatives. Some descriptions such as a freezing Moscow street at night with snow blowing around the street lamps were beautifully described and I liked that there were many different scenes with different characters all living under this terrifying political system. As the book progresses and more and more characters are removed and liquidated one becomes almost blasé that only half of the characters remain by the end of each chapter.

Particularly liked the chapter about Makeyev who was born a peasant and who rose to the very highest ranks through chance and  his ignorance .

Whilst clearly a magnificent novel in 1947 I feel that it has lost something today because so many of the names referred to were unknown to me and had no historical connection. Coming just after the end of the Second World War it must’ve been compelling reading to hear in detail what had been going on in the Soviet union while America and Europe were enjoying the roaring 20s followed by the Nazi build up to the Second World war.
How much better is the Russia of today with Putin? And China, North Korea, Belarus. State control seems to be getting stricter and stricter. The only difference being that they are capitalist Communists.

CB: 

I really enjoyed so much of the language, with fantastic use of metaphor and ideas. Great insights into the human condition and especially life in urban and rural Russia at the time. It also conjured up the terrible pressures and fear during this period of Soviet history. The sense that anyone in power could easily find themselves in a reverse position overnight.

However, it was a difficult book to follow with characters departing the stage and then re-emerging later, though the beginning and end with Kostia and Romachkin did bracket the book well.

It felt like the book needed a good edit. some stories just went on too long with too much verbiage. And many sentences did not make sense (probably poor translation).  So it was a soporific book to read at times.

I did like the distinctness of some of the characters, especially Makeyev,  and the presentation of Stalin himself was realistic and cogent.  And some lyrical sections: “The slumber of the moon-drenched forest finally impregnated the old man and the grown-up children with such vast quiet that it seemed to cure all ill

Whilst the book refers to a particular point in history in a particular place, it resonated with many other totalitarian regimes that we have heard of. And some of the creeping assault on civil liberties within our own country, though so far much less radical, are signs of a society moving in the wrong direction as far as freedom of the individual and democracy are concerned.

MT: 

Struggled with the book, the introduction really long and tedious. I found the start ok, with the story of the room (!) mates but after that it became very confusing to me and I mostly had little idea what was going  on and what the various connections were  I am at an early stage so of course it may get better so I will try and read a lot more over my travels in the next couple of days. I could not relate to any of the people, situations or women in the book so far.

RV: 

The main problem was that I felt that this was a polemic pretending to be a novel. The author told us a lot about the brutality, injustice, paranoia, servile attitudes (but not surprising else one ended up dead oneself), and downright awfulness of both the regime and of life in Russia in the 1930s, but there were few characters I liked or found sympathetic, and no relationships between anyone.
 
The only character I really liked was Kondratiev, who I imagine was meant to be the author, Serge, so I especially liked the ‘Road to Gold’ chapter, and also the Spain chapter, although Kondratiev’s character did not come across so well there.
 
So, lots more to say, and some good quotes, but overall, a bit of a turgid book, and one that I am pleased to have finally finished.

Scores:     WM 8.5; JH 5.5;  SC 5.5;  AA 5; CW 6.5; CB 6; MT 3 ; RV 5.5; MW 6.5

Wildwood by Roger Deakin

Discussion, August 5th 2021 

This book is seen as a classic of nature writing. When the book was published it received many plaudits being described as “masterful, fascinating, excellent” by the Guardian’s reviewer, the Financial Times called it “an excellent read – lyrical and literate”, and the Sunday Times suggested reading it was an “elegiac experience”. It is an exploration of wood in nature, our culture and our lives. Roger Deakin was an English writer and environmentalist who died in 2006. This book was published posthumously and describes a series of journeys across the globe he made to meet people whose lives are intimately connected to trees and wood. The reader accompanies Deakin through the woods of Britain, Europe, Kazakhstan, and Australia in search of what lies behind man's enduring connection with trees.

JH enjoyed the book the more he got into it and once he realised that it should not read it as a start-to-finish book, but more a pick-up and put-down book. He thought it was full of fascinating information and insights, and some remarkable vignettes, as well as introduction to some wonderful groups of people whether it was the walnut gatherers of the Kyrgyz forests to the legendary meetings of the Essex moth group (260 species of moth in one night? With names such as willow beauty, dingy footman, or flame shoulder). He also enjoyed the way it highlighted the diverse skills and artistic endeavours of wood folk whether be the Norfolk man making willow frames for guardsmen’s bearskins, or the Essex folk selecting the right willow for the best cricket bats, or the artist David Nash’s wanderings of his Wooden Boulder.

JH saw the writing at times as romantic and ethereal, but at other times provocative and harsh, such as:

“Alice Springs, in some ways a deeply tragic place, seemed to us like a big desert waiting room” - a Janus like place with an alternative culture, a "desert Totnes”, but also where the “aboriginal women with one arm in plaster, always the left arm because it is the one that they instinctively raised to ward off the blows of their abusive drunken men”.

SC finished reading this book in Portugal and was able to rekindle his enthusiasm for it having struggled with the early chapters. In the hills in the northern Algarve two woodland cultures collide. Turn a corner on the wonderful road from Monchique to Aljezur and you find yourself deep in rich dark cork oak forests, still cultivated as they have been for hundreds of years for their unique bark, but under increasing threat. Turn another corner and you’re confronted by hill after rolling hill of eucalyptus monoculture. As one of the fastest-growing sources of wood pulp, it was subsidised and encouraged to support the Portuguese paper milling industry. But the knock-on effects have been awful. Eucalyptus suppresses other species, virtually nothing else grows, so there’s very little diversity of fauna existing under its cover. And eucalyptus is highly resinous so in prolonged dry weather it almost explodes into flame when ignited and fire devastated much of the remaining natural woodland around Monchique. People regularly lose property, livestock, even their own lives. And not much seems to have changed yet. So being reminded of all this gave SC a much-needed kick to restart his reading of Wildwood. He enjoyed the book.

SC said it was always rewarding to read the words of a true enthusiast (especially when they can write proper). There are fascinating passages about apple trees, walnuts, buying wood, seasoning, steaming and bending wood, hedging, sculpting, collecting, and growing it. He enjoyed some of the descriptions, and he learned a lot, but overall thought it was a long and at times difficult book. This was partly because there was much repetition that needed editing out, and that the book suffered from a lack of self-control and self-editing - particularly when talking with/about artists. He was not sure you can write a convincing piece of art criticism if you don’t show examples, and there are no pictures in this book. These passages, mostly around the three Nash’s encountered, plus the driftwood lady, were too long and not as informative as they could have been. As a result, for him it lurched into pretension too often. Which is a shame because the link with art is truly important. Ingrained, even... SC was also concerned about references to the authors prep school and his useful pals created an impression of an old boys’ network - a sorry state of affairs when knowledge this important is restricted to so few. CW also felt he went on a bit too long about his schoolboy days and his biology teacher and all of the experiences he had in The New Forest. In contrast MT loved the chapters on the New Forest and the way the author highlighted special places.

SC suggested it was not a book to be force-fed in a month – more a brilliant book to pick up and put down over years. Both WM and CW felt it read more like a collection of essays. WM recognised that it had some lovely passages it would have benefitted from more editing. CW felt that this was not a book to read from one end to the other like a novel but rather one which could be dipped into from time to time - a chapter at a time.

CW thought Deacon wrote beautifully and was able to describe his experience of the sounds and sensations of woods, forests and desert in vivid detail. CW particularly liked his description of his safaris in the desert in Australia along the Macdonnell ranges south of Alice Springs. His description of white Galahs and swarms of budgerigars took me straight back to my camping days in Aussie in my old Kingswood panel van sleeping out under the stars with the smell of eucalyptus from the bonfire. CW highlighted one passage:

“With the shortening of the days, the mountain is displaying its geology through the minerals in its leaves. Each species flags its terrain in a subsiding flourish of its colours. The chameleon leaves are litmus to the chemical changes going on inside them.” 

 He also loved some of his descriptions in the UK, for example of rooks and their habits living in extended family units just like the ones he shares his garden with, or his description of sleeping out to really experience nature particularly at dawn as the woods come to life. Although CW learnt lots from the book, he initially found it difficult to get into. He disliked the first few chapters as they seem to lose the point which I thought was meant to be about wood and things connected to wood. He felt the author would divert onto a tangent on issues that had very little connection to wood, and which felt it was more about him wishing to demonstrate his knowledge of poetry and English literature. However, by persevering things seem to pick up and CW enjoyed it more and more.

But others in the group were not so positive about this book.

AA had been looking forward to reading this book, as he is fond of trees and forests and wood, but Deakin’s journey through trees felt more like a journey through mud. AA was interested in what he read but didn’t enjoy reading it. He felt it didn’t take him anywhere, and it didn’t feel like a journey. It seemed structureless and wordy and repetitive without progression or development – long, even endless. AA felt it was an amorphous mass, devoid of signposts, which rapidly became a bog - so he finally gave up. It might have helped if it’d been broken down into much shorter chapters with clear topic headings. He recognised the author’s enthusiasm comes across, and AA appreciated some of the lovely descriptions and the writing: 

 "A wood fire in the hearth is a little household sun."

"No doubt you could play a dead rook like a bagpipe, all drone and no melody."

MW also found the book pretty heavy going and overly long. It seemed to be a book of two parts. The first part was a bit of a tour of the UK with the childhood New Forest stuff at the beginning, with various artists etc. The second part was a bit of a world tour with various woody connections. The second half seemed rather random with no real thread but just a collection of foreign jaunts with various acquaintances. MW enjoyed some of these chapters but found himself speed reading others, for example the Australian bits which were rather tedious and repetitive. It seems that the author was very enthusiastic about his subject, which is a very niche subject. While he admires enthusiasts as a rule but this one doesn’t seem to realise that not everyone is as enthusiastic as him so some of the minute detail could have been avoided. 

CB who loves woods and walking through forests felt he did not really engage with this book – though he found it more engaging as the author travelled overseas and captured the atmosphere of different locales – especially the dense forests of Poland.

RV saw this as a book of contrasts, and one that he ultimately found difficult. On the one hand, he thought that Deakin wrote beautifully, and some of the passages where both extremely lyrical and very interesting, while on the other hand, he found it a very long book, and a very soporific book. The problem for me is that the plot in this book was very weak! He also found it (especially compared to the Robert MacFarlane book we might have read in its place) a very self-centred, self-absorbed book, not about places and nature and landscape as much as about HIS biography and HIS interactions with these elements.

But on the positive side, RV identified some thoughts and ideas that especially resonated:

 “It is no accident that in the comedies of Shakespeare, people go into the greenwood to grow, learn and change.”  

“The enemies of woods are always the enemies of culture and humanity.” 

“Electricity kills darkness, candlelight illuminates it.’” 

“The house represents what we ourselves would like to be on earth: permanent, rooted, here for eternity. But a camp represents the true reality of things: we’re just passing through.” 

“This is the pleasure of wood: that it warms you so many times over. First when you fell it, then when you cart it back to the woodpile, and again when you saw it into logs. Then it warms you again as you cart it and stack the woodshed to the roof with willow and ash, and again as you barrow it to the hearth. Then, at last, the final warming in front of the fire, the climax and finale of the whole exercise, the sum of so much work, so many hours lost in thought.”  

Or the passages about the relationship between trees and the houses that were then built: 

“The proportions of each room, and of the house as a whole, were predicated on the natural proportions of the trees available. Suffolk houses like mine tend to be about eighteen feet wide, because that is about the average limit of the straight run of the trunk of a youngish oak suitable in girth for making a major crossbeam of eight inches by seven.” 

RV also highlighted some good stories –his descriptions of the river near Beaulieu and the New Forest, the descriptions of Driftwood Art, or the way that Stonehenge was originally built from green oak! But in conclusion RV saw it as a good book, but simply not one for our book club, and he supported SC’s view that this was “Not a book to be force-fed in a month - a brilliant book to pick up and put down over years.” He hoped that he would do that.

Scores: MT: 4.5, AA: 5, RV: 5, CB: 5, CW: 6.7, WM: 5.3, JH: 6.5, SC: 6.5, MW: 5.5

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Except fur yin, a' body loved this book, mair sae than ony ither in th' lest four years o' th' club’s lee.  (Except for one, everyone loved this book, more so than any other in the last four years of the Club’s life.) But don’t worry it is not written in Glaswegian dialect.

 The Book

This is a searing, autobiographically inspired depiction of o' a raw lee in poverty in 1980s Glescae as th' pits 'n' th' shipyards closed 'n' o' a bairnskip suffused wi' alcoholism, physical 'n' verbal violence 'n' loue.  (a raw life in poverty in 1980s Glasgow as the pits and the shipyards closed and of a childhood suffused with alcoholism, physical and verbal violence and love.)

A powerful book about poverty, addiction and abuse set in 1980s Glasgow following the neglected wee Shuggie from the age of 5 to 15, a misfit who talks and walks and dresses “no right” for a Catholic boy, and in particular his relationship with his chaotic alcoholic and disintegrating mother, the beautiful, proud, but damaged Agnes and his inextinguishable love for her, and hers for him despite all the neglect and harm. (AA)

When I was reading it, I felt that it was a very powerful, a really big, meaty book, a very real book, very well-written, with strong, complex and believable characters, and a lot of very apt and well written expressions (RV). This book captured the awfulness for children of living with a parent with a serious alcohol problem; and the awfulness too for the parent, most of the time. It caught the massive anxiety, the constant worry, that children undergo; and the way that it blights their lives in almost every way. (RV)

I finished the (long) book today, and I was surprised how long it was. It took me a while to get into it, and first I was dismayed by the grimness of it. But soon I was immersed in it and spent lots of spare moments trying to finish it. Today I have felt quite emotional and sad, and still involved in its space.  It was easy to read, but many words I had to look up. (MT)

A terrific book, bleak and beautiful with some stunning chapters and images such as the fire, the death scene, Agnes at Shug’s lover’s house, the women sitting around in their knocked off bras. (MW)

Poverty and Glasgow

And it also captured the decay of Glasgow in that era, and the decimation that the Thatcher years brought, following her closure of the mines.  “Thatcher didn’t want honest workers any more; her future was technology and nuclear power and private health. Industrial days were over, and the bones of the Clyde Shipworks and the Springburn Railworks lay about the city like rotted dinosaurs. Whole housing estates of young men who were promised the working trades of their fathers had no future now. Men were losing their very masculinity.” (RV)

And the amazing idea of having all of your teeth pulled and wearing dentures, because your diet was so poor that by the time you were a teenager all of your teeth were rotting out anyway! “Leek took out his top set of porcelain dentures and rubbed at his cheek as if they had been pinching . Agnes, annoyed with the constant trips to the dentist, had convinced him to have his teeth, weak and riddled with aluminum fillings, pulled for his fifteenth birthday.” (RV)

Glasgow is described as I remember it. I have a very close friend who is from Lesmahagow - a mining village outside Glasgow. I could not understand half the words she uttered when I first knew her. She showed me some grim parts of Glasgow and some of it was quite scary. She became a social worker and told me some awful stories. I also cycled through Glasgow on my cycle tour, and followed the banks of the Clyde -recently, still quite grim, and scary. (MT)

Religion

The importance of religion in Glasgow daily life recurred over and over again and having opted for either Catholics or Protestants you were stuck. Shuggie tried to avoid this by taking no sides but it was impossible to not be picked on for being the opposite religion to the right one over and over again.

“Big Shug Bain had seemed so shiny in comparison to the catholic. He had been vain in the way only Protestants were allowed to be, conspicuous with his shallow wealth, flushed pink with gluttony and waste”. (CW)

The religious divisions were fascinating, I had forgotten about the divide in Glasgow, between protestant and cath-lic, and the areas where they lived, and the football teams they supported. (MT)

The role of women and men

The dominant role of misogynistic males in the book - women’s lot was hopeless. Their role was to keep the house in order and to care for children: “whatever it takes Agnes, keep going, even if it’s not for you, even if it’s just for them. Keep going. That’s what mammies do.

Shug’s advice to Shuggie “It’s a grand age to be sticking yersel into a Lassies bread bin, seeing as you’ve got a couple more years before any real harm can come of it“. (CW)

 The harsh bleak lives especially of the women with constant violence, desperation and despair, often with alcohol and Valium as their only escape (AA)

 Harsh life and alcoholism

It tells of the extreme experiences of children in this world (would have been better off in care, said my social worker friend).

It’s only into the middle third of the book, after learning about Agnes, Shug, Catherine and Leek that we finally meet Shuggie properly - abandoned, uncared for, now without his grandparents to look after him, getting himself ready for school, missing school, dirty, cold, hungry and then physically and sexually assaulted - with no-one to tell – and still only 5 (AA)

Terrible description of the slow descent into alcoholism and the role of special brew in Glaswegian life “if it wasn’t for him they could have left the shores of sobriety behind and forever sailed a sea of special brew“. (CW)

 It’s a powerful commentary on alcoholism, sectarianism, dysfunctional families, poverty.   It can be seen as is part of that continuum of great “poverty” literature that runs from Dickens, through Hugo to Steinbeck and onwards. It is a great evocation of a particular moment in time – a world of Kensitas cigarettes, “hackneys”, Tennents lager and Special Brew (JH)

There are shocking events, mainly violent, and by the dozen, and also the chilling brief reference to Wullie getting rid of Lizzie's baby with no questions asked… (“What baby” might be the most powerful quote in the book MW). And these terrible things just keep happening – the Pit women pushing Agnes to drink, and the procession of Pit men bringing drink and rape, Colleen’s disintegration in the street (all for want of contraception), the awful teenage sex just by the side of the motorway…And then after Agnes’ supreme efforts of a year of sobriety, Eugene dismantles this in a single day – perhaps as he felt embarrassed and wanted to normalise her (AA)

And the poor wee Shuggie having his first can of Special Brew at 11, ravenous and trying to fill up on that and custard powder straight from the tin in his mother’s absence. Living in fear, and all the sleepless nights spent worrying about his mother or trying to keep off the booze, his afflicted bowel, his terrible first day at school back in Glasgow, and the older boys eating his lunch, and hopes dashed of moving in with Leek or enrolling for hairdressing evening class, an increasing toll of damage passed on by the damaged Agnes (AA)

[Spoiler alert] And then when his mum finally dies after he’s got her ready for bed, he then lovingly sets about making her look nice again. Always doing his best and trying so hard and hoping things will be better in a childish naive – and moving – way (AA)

So how is Shuggie at the end of the book?

 Still tense – Stuart describes the tension in the faces and nails and the shoulders and the bodies and gaits of Leek and Leanne and Shuggie – these young carers

Shuggie had been watching his mother quietly. He was always watching. She had raised three of them in the same mould, every single one of her children was as observant and wary as a prison warden.

And he is angry -

On particularly low days he folded all types of his bodily discharge into the taramasalata

And he is surviving by providing sexual favours for beer and food – all too reminiscent of Agnes (AA)

Description of place

There is a very strong sense of the different places the action plays out, vividly described.

Fantastic description of Agnes and her family being driven to the new house by Shug - arriving at the houses of their dreams, only to continue on towards the pit - to their actual home next to the slag heaps – and just as their hopes are dashed…..they get to meet all their new neighbours. And the descriptions of Leek’s den amongst the pallets, and Shuggie’s trampled grass circle where he practised being “a normal boy” (AA)

Each scene so well described: the fire incident in the hotel, the meal out with Eugene, the school games field, the choosing from the catalogues.

The characters

The characters are all beautifully defined, especially Agnes, Shug, Leek and Shuggie himself as they go through the first years of Shuggie’s life.  And we get a strong sense of the other characters such as the grandparents, Wullie and Lizzie, secret drinkers, whose steps Agnes was following.

 Agnes may be one of the great literary creations: beautiful, down on her luck, fatally flawed personality, capable of great love and great anger – emotional range. We ride the highs and lows of her life with her like a rollercoaster, hoping that Eugene works out and isn’t a bastard like the rest of them, and though he turns out badly, he makes sure to keep them in custard and makes an ally of Shuggie (SC). 

Some of the individual chapters were extraordinarily successful – for example, Chapter 14 with its brief story of the way Leek (one of the “good” ones in the novel) beat up a nightwatchman with a crowbar and hospitalised him – which was described as one of the best things that could have happened to the watchman’s family as he was now guaranteed “disability for life” – he had “never been a big talker anyway”….. and the way the chapter concludes with the extraordinary description of Colleen McAvenies rantings about her husband and Agnes, and then her final and tragic knickerless collapse in the street in front of her children and assorted neighbours.  A really powerful bit of writing. (JH)

 Some wondered if the novel should have been called Agnes Bain as she is the dominant character, yet it is through Shuggie and his unassailable love for his addicted mother that the novel comes alive. This is interwoven with his emerging sense of his difference from most of the other boys.

 Well written from the perspective of a young boy – instantly having hopes raised and then dashed in a black and white childish way. And how when things are actually good, he is unable to enjoy them because of the lasting effects of the trauma (AA)

 I liked the developing relationship with Leanne, and their terrible similarities with their drunk mothers. Did this make them like they are, Shuggie with no dad, and posh drunk mother? Leanne was the same maybe? (MT)

 The language

The language is beautifully crafted with endless surprising yet so accurate metaphors and a smooth mix of story, reflections by the characters and the drama of a disrupted and disrupting life. And the use of dialect in dialogue is just right: reminding you of the place and character of the protagonists but not so much it is difficult to follow.

 Beautiful prose with descriptions that take you right to the place and person in one’s imagination. The different settings among the decaying pit housing estate surrounded by slag heaps, high-rise 1960s flats with bleak windswept car parks and underneath the arches in Glasgow city centre among be down and outs and alcoholics. (CW)

Stuart’s command of English particularly the use of similes:

“The burnt hills glinted when they were struck with sunlight, and the wind blew black wispy puffs from the tops like they were giant piles of unhoovered stour. Soon the greenish brownish air filled with a dark tangy smell, metallic and sharp like licking the end of a spent battery.”

“A group of women stood in a cluster by the fence their arms folded like car bumpers”

The hopelessness of life “why do we have to just lie down and take everything in life“. (CW)

Closing Thoughts

We all recognised the characters and the lives of the families in their tough circumstances, especially those who have worked with families in poverty and the grip of addiction. Scenes are beautifully and movingly represented even when describing sad or saddening events such as the death of a character or rough teenage romance.

Richard wondered if the book would have had more depth if like, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, also read by the Club, it had had more characters or continued into Shuggie and Leek’s adulthood. But this book was simply one, rather unending, unremitting, steam-roller, of just one thing – the awfulness of Agnes’s drinking and resulting behaviour, and its effects on her children (and the awfulness of Glasgow poverty, both materially and in terms of his view of ‘poor people’s relationships’). “It smelled like margarine and white bread, like marriage and cramped flats.” – in many ways, the descriptions provide an insight into a life that is very far removed from most of us. But he felt it did not provide hope or solutions and quotes the Booker Prize summary: “Laying bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride, Shuggie Bain is a blistering and heartbreaking debut, and an exploration of the unsinkable love that only children can have for their damaged parents.” 

Steve wondered about the opening chapter: One of the most vividly written yet most depressing openings to a novel I can recall. Made even darker when you realise this is how Shuggie turns out after the tribulations that the book goes on to describe – so you start to question whether even this dark chapter isn’t in some way, a redemption, a release.

I liked it a lot, even if it wasn’t exactly escapism. A straightforward and easily consumed book, written with in beautifully simple yet lyrical prose. Fantastic for a first novel – as MW said, you wonder how he could ever hit these heights again (SC).

 And the one dissenting voice: As a whole I did not enjoy this book. I really struggled with it.  It was hard work and interminable, pleased when the ordeal was over.  But I do recognise the merit of the book. (JH)

 A couple of issues

 An odd note when this manly taxi driver Shug took them out to the Pithead for the first time, where ‘Shug couldn’t answer. From the roundness in his shoulders she could see his own heart had sunk.’. Surely a taxi driver would have known only too well the nature of the place he was consigning his family to? Or was he feeling terrible about the fact he was going to leave them there? (SC)

Really can’t understand why Eugene needed Agnes to take up drinking again. Did he really love and respect her or was Colleen somehow egging him on? Or did he need to know that he and Agnes could have fun together without understanding the challenge she might face? RW told us some people can start moderate drinking again, so maybe Eugene hoped she’d be one of those.

The one problem I have is the depiction of Shuggie.  He is shown as someone who is fussy, neat, ordered, a ‘mummy’s boy’, who likes dolls, dancing, skipping and hair-dressing, who speaks ‘posh’, and walks differently to ‘real’ boys. This to me is a classic, old-fashioned or dated, description of a homosexual male. I recognise the genetic influence on sexual preference and a tendency to certain behaviours, it seems to me that some result from social learning, Shuggie’s mother no doubt influenced him to ‘speak properly’, but he would not have been exposed to men or women who walked in a mincing manner.

However, the author, Douglas Stuart, says he was ‘othered’ at six-years old and self-identifies as ‘queer’ and he based Shuggie on his own experience of growing up in a similar environment with similar problems, so I must concede to his greater knowledge.

Score: 8.04 (and if the lowest score is taken out) 8.55

Lots of wonderful quotes:

“These sunken faced pit aunties appeared at the door most mornings like feral cats”.

Men rotting into the settee for want of decent work

They were taunting her, their voices pitched, ready to break, the dangerous sound of little boys coming into the intoxicating power of manhood.

Agnes wanted to put her foot through it all, or to scrape it back like it was spoilt wallpaper. To get her nail under it and rip it all away.

Shuggie watched her and said under his breath, “Why can’t I be enough?” But she wasn’t listening.

The meat of her face was a taut as a leathered skull. Her eyes were deep pockets in her head, and her hair was a rich wild brown but thinning, like the coat of an uncombed cat. She stood in bagged-out stretch pants, the stirrups stuffed into men’s house slippers.

There was a thump-thump against the door, like a hard fist against the wood. Shuggie recoiled as Colleen’s kitchen knife shot through the slot and jabbed wildly in the air. Shuggie pressed himself against the inner draught door and watched as the silver blade darted in and out of the letter box. It searched blindly for his flesh, its edge so keen and sharp it screeched as it sawed back and forth against the metal flap.

Stuart, Douglas. Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 (p. 343). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

“His living was made by moving people, but his favourite pastime was watching them.”

“Rain was the natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial.”

“She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.”

“The boy could feel her warm tongue against his cheek like a piece of fatty stewed beef.”

“From where Eugene watched him, he looked like a half-shut penknife, a thing that should be sharp and useful, that was instead closed and waiting and rusting.”

“The other taxi drivers had taken on that familiar shape of men past their prime, the hours spent sedentary behind the wheel causing the collapse of their bodies, the full Scottish breakfasts and the snack bar suppers settling like cooled porridge around their waists. Eventually the taxi hunched them over till their shoulders rounded into a soft hump and their heads jutted forward on jowled necks. The ones who had been at the night shift a long time had turned ghostly pale, their only colour was the faint rosacea from the years of drink. These were the men who decorated their fingers with gold sovereign rings, taking vain pleasure from watching them sit high and shiny on the steering wheel.”

Agnes’ experience

“Agnes screwed her eyes shut and went back to a place where she felt young and hopeful and wanted. 

“Colourless daylight poured through the net curtains. It poked her in the face, and with a snort she thumped back into consciousness. Agnes opened her eyes slowly and found herself staring at the cream Artexed ceiling with its icy stalactite texture. Her lips wouldn’t close over the sticky film on her top teeth as the dry boak rose inside her. Under her right hand she felt the slippery damask fabric of the armchair. Her fingers traced the familiar fag-burn holes. She was vaguely upright, cradling a dead phone receiver …. She sat still awhile, her head tilted over the back of the chair, like an open pedal bin. She closed her eyes again and listened to her brain thump loudly..”

Shuggie’s experience

“When she laughed, he danced harder. He did whatever had caused her to laugh another dozen times till her smile stretched thin and false, and then he searched for the next move that would make her happy. He bounced and flung his arms out as she laughed and clapped. The happier she looked, the harder he wanted to spin and flail.”

“Some mornings she would wake up with a fright and find Shuggie staring at her. He would be dressed, dwarfed by the bag slung over both shoulders, his face washed and his wet hair parted and brushed in the front only. She would lie there, fully dressed, trying to pull her dry lips over her teeth, while he would say, “Good morning,” and then quietly turn and leave for school. He hadn’t wanted to leave without letting her know he would be right back afterwards. He took her pinkie in his and swore it.”

“Her body hung off the side of the bed, and by the odd angle Shuggie could tell the drink had spun her all night like a Catherine wheel.”

“but he came to know it was only indigestion. It was the burning bile of anticipation, the rising fear of what might lie at home. Agnes had gotten sober many times before, but the cramps had never really, completely gone away. To Shuggie, the stretches of sobriety were fleeting and unpredictable and not to be fully enjoyed. As with any good weather, there was always more rain on the other side. He’d stopped counting a while ago. To have marked her sobriety in days was like watching a happy weekend bleed by: when you watched it, it was always too short. So he just stopped counting.”

“Every small detail of the house told of what lay within. This evening the curtains were drawn tight against the cold and the lamps were on. His stomach lifted in hope. Shuggie opened the front door a crack, just enough so he could hear the hum of the house. He knew what to listen for. Wailing and crying foretold a bad night; she would want to hold him in her arms and tell him bad stories of the men who had broken her. If there was the sound of country guitars and sad melancholy singing, then the warm moistness of shit would start to wet his underpants. To hear his mother on the telephone was not always a bad sign. He had to creep in between the front door and the draught door to listen very closely to the tone of her voice, push his ear against the cold dimpled glass and hold his breath. She didn’t have to be crying or screaming or slurring her words for the drink to be in her. It could still be there. It made her overly polite, a false Milngavie accent full of long-syllabled words. Her lips would pull away from her front teeth and she would use words like certainly and unfortunately. These were the worst sounds to hear. Agnes was mourning her losses but still too far from unconsciousness”

Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo

4 March 2021, all present via Zoom, in compliance with lockdown 3.0 guidance, and with thanks to Willm

Book choice and report – AA

Chapter One

Bernardine

Bernardine

was born in Eltham to an English mother and Nigerian father

is a lifelong activist for inclusion and prolific writer, commentator and contributor, and Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel,

who won the 2019 Booker prize for Girl, Woman, Other

and enjoys experimenting with form and narrative perspective, writing this novel in a style she calls ‘fusion fiction’

what the London Review of Books calls a hybrid ‘disruptive’ style that pushes prose towards free verse, allowing direct and indirect speech to bleed into each other and sentences to run on without full stops

Bernardine has talked about people who find themselves in more than one minority or disadvantaged group, about identity, scarcity of role models, always having to prove oneself, being judged instead of listened to, becoming angry by default

and said of her Booker prize win: my win has made a difference: it’s a book by a Black British woman about Black British women

Girl, Woman, Other is her eighth novel and tells the stories of twelve women, aged 19 to 93 from a mix of cultural backgrounds, sexualities, classes and geographies and charts their struggles, hopes and intersecting lives

and explores how race, sexuality, gender, history and financial situation all intersect to define their experiences

which include hardship, prejudice and privilege, dislocation and isolation, love, friendship, and issues of identity

one of her characters, Winsome, quotes the Guyanese poet, Grace Nichols:

we the women/whose praises go unsung/whose voices go unheard

 

 Andrew

Andrew

            was also born in South London, in the same year as Bernardine, and thought Girl, Woman, Other was an exquisite tapestry of the lives the very different characters who he enjoyed meeting

            and enjoyed the spare, fluid, direct style, and the clear, strong, well-painted characters – feisty, flawed and interesting, with Hattie providing a time perspective across the generations

            the book full of warmth and wit, twists and turns, and many terrible events

Bernardine risked that having twelve main sequential characters might fragment the story, inhibit character and plot development, and restrict the author in terms of endings,

making it harder for the reader without a conventional plot and storyline,

but instead she sings the praises of Grace Nichols’ women and gives them voices which come through loud and clear

with powerful descriptions such as Carole arriving at Oxford, her rape at thirteen

“Carole never told a soul”

Hattie’s miscarriages and stillbirth

“a body that gave birth to death”

Winsome telling her grand-daughter Rachel of her experiences of racism when she was her age

“I was served last in whatever shop I went into, even when I was first in the queue/ cars deliberately drove into puddles when I was pushing Shirley in her black bassinet and the two boys was attached to harnesses either side of me”

 

John

John

enjoyed and looked forward to reading this collection of character narratives loosely linked together – akin to a collection of interrelated short stories

which captured the dilemmas of the age and the growing move to identity politics and as BE reflected the way that “feminism was on the descent, and that the vociferous multi-cultural brigade were on the ascent” 

some really exotic and erotic passages – and shocks like Winsome’s affair with her son-in-law, Lennox, and her fantastic justification that “it was better to satisfy him than he left her daughter for another woman”

and insights captured in some great quotes including: the description of Amma’s no-name dad - the rather washed-up lives of exiled African politicos in the 50s and 60s - with his “sermons” during meals on the evils of capitalism and colonialism – “we were his captive congregation, being force fed his politics – the President for Life in our family”

and how Carole evolved at university, unstitched her weaves, and was invited into “family homes that were privately owned – homes without carpets on the floor (out of choice)”

and how the book ended was a very positive motif of the time we live in, and despite the changes we are all going through raw emotion and love still shine through when Barbara aka. Penelope finally meets her mum, Hattie, that “this is not about feeling something or speaking words, this is about being together”

but ended with a warning that inequality is growing globally and in the UK, where the home ownership that Carole commented on increasingly out of reach

 

Chapter Two

Willm

            Willm

            didn’t find the first chapter interesting, felt it was aimed at a different demographic

            then found Dominique’s relationship with Nzinga interesting, perhaps it was the clear psychological abuse of one woman by another, as this usually portrayed as being inflicted by a man, and got really into the book (apart from all the explanations in Megan/Morgan)

up to the Epilogue in which he found Penelope’s behaviour in terms of catching and holding onto Jeremy particularly annoying and distressing, and the meeting with her mother terribly romanticised

            and while he found some characters and relationships exaggerated, they did capture the rejection, exclusion and degradation and othering

overall a worthwhile, informative and educational read, though grim at times

 

ChrisW

ChrisW          

started off enjoying the characters, especially Dominique, but as each story ended and the next started, began to tire of the style

            and felt the fusion fiction style was irritating and added nothing,

there was an overdose of characters which made it hard to remember all their connections,

some Mills & Boon-like family history research in the farming family in the North East

and a rather contrived ending,

so despite enjoying the fantastic snapshots of people with very different lives from the Bath Blokes,

and the reunion at the end

            was unimpressed with the ‘pastichy’ and underwhelming style of the book

MarkT

MarkT

was worried that the book was still in the charts and put off after Richard’s suggestion that it would be like Queenie,

was concerned he wouldn’t like its themes,

then really irritated by the writing style, before getting used to it

and then liking it

enjoying Carole and Hattie, the links between characters, but not the awful rape scenes and racism

though the end didn’t work for him

except Penelope’s meeting with Hattie

 

Chapter Three

Richard

Richard

took a long time to get into it but was glad he had as it was a good book, but not a great book (and much better than Queenie)

he thought the book was about the central quote that Yazz hears, about no one disadvantage trumping any other: “Courtney replied that Roxane Gay warned against the idea of playing ‘privilege Olympics’ and wrote in Bad Feminist that privilege is relative and contextual.” 

but had a lot of issues with how that message was delivered

the characters were interesting but, particularly the arty ones, not real enough, their chapters were too short for development, like a book of short stories – too bitty

and a lot of it was “all a bit too clever, so that it became wearing.’

and despite a lot of good points about racial and gender disadvantage, there was

 a lot of negativity in the relationships, which started to feel relentless,

and while the layout was SO irritating, he liked the fact that it was always written from a woman’s perspective, generally from a black woman’s, and the intergenerational aspect of many of the stories, where one could see how things that were seen as radical in one generation is not seen as that by the next generation,

how immigrants want their children to achieve better than them, but when they do, as Bummi says, “she could not have predicted it would lead to Carole rejecting her true culture”

and the discussion about whether or not it was necessary to explain difference, which he sees as vital

some of the writing was very good: “how she and Augustine had been trapped in a despair that had paralysed their ability to snap out of it, devastated by the weight of a rejection that had not been part of their dreams of migration.”

a good and interesting book with bits to commend it, but more which detract from it, so not a great book

 

Steve

            Steve

            had reservations/doubts beforehand, wasn’t ready for another Queenie, found it hard to get into, then after a couple of chapters was absolutely hooked and is thoroughly enjoying it, having got over the style which he feels helps - interesting and effective

            liked a lot of the characters and their little connections and enjoyed how it was all interwoven

            and the author’s ear for dialogue and brilliance in giving each character their own voice

and Dominique’s tours of London for Nzinga – Evaristo’s 1980s London felt very familiar

hasn’t finished it yet, but so far so good, a really talented writer, though perhaps taken on too great a scope and fewer than twelve characters might have been better

but a tremendously positive book, showing how times had changed since Winsome and Clovis were in the Scilly Isles, while noting there was still such a long way to go,

which adds to the importance of this book

and shining a light on difference and discrimination in an accessible way – while Evaristo’s words were unremarkable,

 the way she wove them together was

a great choice

MarkW

MarkW

wasn’t so thrilled with the book and found the binary black/white distinction simplistic given the huge spectrum of people in each category

was very irritated by the stereotypical characters of the first three chapters, feeling that he was one of the bad guys

after which it got better

with him finding twelve characters was not too many, not expecting character development with so many characters, and enjoying picking up the links

and finding that the style neither added to nor detracted from the story and made

nice patterns on the page

and after the irritation with Amma and Dominique, finding Carole and Bummi interesting and refreshing, enjoying Winsome and her affair and Barbados, but then found Megan/Morgan irritating so sped read the next chapter, Hattie

before finding Grace a great character and going back and reading Hattie properly

so, a collection of chapters,

up and down with some good bits and some really irritating bits

which he scored by marking each chapter and taking the mean

 

Chapter Four

Chris B

            ChrisB

            enjoyed the book, which rolled along nicely, an easy and interesting read, making him nostalgic for London

and found the characters mostly interesting, particularly those from earlier generations (Hattie and Grace), showing well their experience of the times and their struggles as (mainly) Black women through real-sounding individuals and a cast of believable secondary characters

but found it difficult to track the relationships between characters – a character tree would have been useful

liking that the characters were recognisable and distinct from each other, though some of the writing was rather obvious and caricatured – he felt he’d heard it before:

“Yazz is reading English Literature and plans to be a journalist with her own controversial column in a globally-read newspaper because she has a lot to say and it’s about time the whole world heard her”

and

“she’s Mum’s emotional caretaker, always has been, always will be it’s the burden of being an only child, especially a girl who will naturally be more caring”

and unsure how the fusion fiction style contributed to the writing, perhaps making it more conversational

some good tensions in people’s hopes and fears and their resolution or otherwise, and an enjoyable and moving epilogue tying some loose ends together

 

The Book Club

            The Book Club

            generally enjoyed this book, many disliking the style either initially or all the way through, but finding the novel interesting, relevant, and addressing important issues with realistic characters,

some better crafted and more memorable than others

            whose lives were very different from theirs

“Bummi complained that people viewed her through what she did (a cleaner) and not what she was (an educated woman)”

            many admitting struggling to keep up with developments in gender and woke terminology and needing to learn new vocabulary, being picked up by their children if they are politically incorrect

            having to think consciously about such things which seem to be intuitive or innate in younger people who’ve grown up in this world,

rather than the one we grew up in

            and to reflect on white male middle class privilege which has made life so much easier,

and how the barriers and discrimination which are the opposite of privilege remain despite all the work of so many groups over so many decades,

because the levers of power remain in those privileged hands

            “oh to be one of the privileged of this world who take it for granted that it’s their right to surf the globe unhindered, unsuspected, respected”

a book about white male privilege from Black women’s perspectives but not a negative book, a helpful, positive voice in spotlighting the issues

“white people are only required to represent themselves, not an entire race”

 

Epilogue

            Bath Blokes Book Club

            are busy making spike protein antibodies and looking forward to meeting again in person

some are also busy growing beards

most were encouraged by the positivity of the book and several scores were increased as a result of our interesting discussion

hard not to appreciate writing like

“a face that’s gone slack except for a mouth that holds all her misery like a drawstring tightened around a pouch”

or not to smile at

“did your Papa sacrifice his health so that you could become a punky Rasta person who smells?”

 

Scores

Andrew      9

John          8

Willm         8

MarkT        7

ChrisW      6.5

ChrisB       7

Steve         8

MarkW       5

Richard      7

Overall           7.28