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

The Offing, by Benjamin Myers

4th February 2021, Zoom. All nine present. 

This was the majority preference from SC’s shortlist for February 2021. It had been suggested as a worthwhile read by a former club member. It’s a short-ish book, covering the coming of age of a 16 year-old boy, Robert, who can’t wait to leave his pit village in North east England and his uninspiring family. He does this by setting off to walk… somewhere. He sleeps under hedges, under a tarpaulin, forages for food. Quite soon he meets up with Dulcie, the ageing owner of a small cottage with a runaway garden, which provides work, and as he overhauls a tumbledown shed his relationship with Dulcie and her dog Butler (‘German Shepherd’), develops. 

It’s been very well reviewed on Amazon – somewhere around 4.5 stars. The public vote seems in favour… so what did the BBBC make of it? 

As it turned out, most of us liked or loved it. There was one exception, SC, who loathed it. 

For most, the lyrical descriptions painted vivid and appealing pictures of a rural idyll, of a simpler time immediately post-war, and of the burgeoning relationship between Robert and his mentor and muse, the ageing but ‘not-going-quietly’ Dulcie. The awful reality of holidays, as RV described it, was brought to life vividly, described through the girls on the beach, enjoying themselves out of context only to return too soon to humdrum lives. CW cited the mellow feeling engendered by the descriptions of summer days in the countryside, bees buzzing, hot sun – important for CB too. He noted the connections between Dulcie’s character and the real-life female adventurers Amy Johnson and Freya Stark. JH felt she was a real character, a wonderful creation with a great back-story. He also appreciated some of her observations: planners and architects being ‘janitors of mediocrity; peddlers of dreck’. 

The coming of age experience reminded some of Lawrie Lee’s ‘As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning’; for MT the voyage of adolescent discovery took him back to his own youth, and contained elements of his favourite book ‘The Magus’. AA enjoyed the quote: ‘They occupied that no-man’s-land between adolescence and adulthood, where insecurity and innocence, joy and world-weary cynicism do battle, where different masks are tried on for size’. CB drew comparisons with The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and the 100-Year-Old Man – both tales in which the protagonist simply decides to get up and go, making a story of their resulting adventures.

For AA, CB and WM it was ‘like stepping into a warm bath’ – AA looked forward to it every night. As he imagined the poet Romy entering the offing, he equated it with Robert’s own story, beginning as a boy but ending as a man. It plucked similar chords for JH, who was reminded of adolescent experiences that he felt had made him a more rounded person and, on the whole, felt it was soft, light, evocative and affirming. WM experienced the book as romantic, gentle and enjoyable.

The simplicity of the plot appealed – it was a framework on which to hang a weave of descriptive prose. MW thought it was a lovely book – a breath of fresh air after Time’s Arrow, as did CB. He felt the secret to enjoying this book was to go with the flow. The characters were big (including Butler the dog), well drawn and developed over time, and the story of the developing relationship between Dulcie and Robert was believable and transporting. 

For RV it was well-written and enjoyable. There were clunks in places but not enough to distract. He particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the darkness, when Robert was sleeping out in Dulcie’s meadow. AA picked up on this too: ‘Night settled upon the meadow like a trawler’s net sinking slowly to the deeper waters, the sun fading as the gloom enfolded everything within it’. The talk around the weather reflected exactly the way the English will always have something to say about it. JH observed that this was a universal connection. 

Myers’ writing about the aftermath of war hit home for some – the portrayal of shattered menfolk hanging round the farms good for nothing. Also his descriptions of the shipyards as Robert passed through. JH recalled a quote about war: ‘started by the few, fought by the many’. Even SC grudgingly admitted that this was one of the few areas in which he felt Myers managed to hit a target.

What wasn’t so great about the book? For a number of people Myers had a tendency to overdo the descriptive prose – too many adjectives when simplicity might have been more effective, and this became overbearing. RV mentioned that discussing the ‘gene pool’, as Dulcie and Robert did, would not have been possible in 1946. And there were other anchronisms, including the appearance of crab sticks 30 years before they were invented. For some the attempt to write the poetry in Romy’s best-selling anthology fell on its face, but for others it didn’t matter. CB felt the theme around the working-class lad taken in as a project by a better educated older woman was rather trite and patronising – too glib, neat and not really much of a lesson for society. WM wondered if the sum of £400 that Robert received after publication of the anthology wasn’t a huge and unbelievable sum for a poetry book in 1946. 

SC struggled with the book throughout. The use of a certain kind of sentence structure to infer literary awareness simply served to suggest airs and graces: ‘But I was a young man once, so young and green, and that can never change. Memory allows me to be so again.’ Real people don’t talk like that. Or this: ‘Guided only by gravity’s pull of the downhill camber’… 

The adjective problem was typified by the sentence: ‘clodded clouds were folding themselves into furrowed peaks to the far blurred line of the offing.’ And overall he felt it all seemed rather self-conscious. The Offing doesn’t creep up on you, quietly snaring you with its prose – Myers crashes around flourishing affectations and shouting ‘look at me, I’m a poet, really I am’. Which SC was firmly convinced he was not. The ending was terrible and pompous: ‘I sit back down and type the final sentence of the story about lives led as freely as greater forces would permit. These are my last words and I leave them here for you’. SC wondered if he was expected to weep with gratitude. 

So as you can imagine, there was a bit of a points differential between us: Apart from SC, all marks were between 7.5 and 8.5. However SC gave it 2.0, so the overall average score was 7.17.

Time's Arrow by Martin Amis

Discussion on Zoom, 7th January 2021 – all present.

Richard, whose choice this was, had never read a Martin Amis and had wanted to for a long time. Although he’d heard the titles of many of Amis’s books – London Fields, Money, the Rachel Papers - he chose this one as he is very interested in time and books on time.

Overall opinion

Most of the BBBC were looking forward to reading this – some had read other Amis books and has been impressed with them; others had not but had wished to. And most knew that the reviews of Times’ Arrow had been ‘extravagant in their praise’. Rose Tremain said: "Time's Arrow turns the bored, banjaxed, broken-hearted old reader into a breathless, bedazzled young reader for whom the novel becomes once again a source of illumination and an act of hope." James Wood described the book as "a stunning achievement, perilous and daring". It was even nominated for the Booker prize.

But there has rarely been a BBBC book which was so disliked or by which people were so unimpressed, and there has never been a book which was so unexpectedly disliked (out of the 187 books read so far since May 2005, the only books to score lower than this book were a very bad Robert Ludlum and an equally bad Victoria Hislop! Many did not expect to like either of those and therefore were not disappointed; whereas people DID expect this to be good, so the disappointment was all the greater. For example, MarkT reported that he had been looking forward to reading another Amis, as the Rachel Papers was one of his youthful greats, and he has read it many times.)

In sum, overall opinions were that:

• it was a slight, trivial, and fundamentally boring book (R);
• arduous, gimmicky, irritating and gruelling. This was a contrived structure to challenge the writing skills of Amis rather than do anything useful for the reader. Pandering to his conceit (ChW);
• Overall, I could not find any point to this book, other than an intellectual exercise for the author (W);
• I felt I was reading a jumble of words – therefore unintelligible and irritating – a dreadful waste of paper (J);
• The main character is an uninspiring and immoral person who seems just swept along by events, including loveless childhood, a failed marriage, medical duties in concentration camps and then escape to the US and a series of jobs at a hospital and a voracious sex life and failed relationships, including with the desperate sounding Irene. Is there a point to the book part from the reversal challenge: maintaining a story and characters in reverse time order? (ChB)

One or two opinions were not so wholeheartedly negative:

• Weighty, serious themes of domestic abuse and violence, torture, murder and genocide (given an odd perspective through being reversed); and humorous at times, mostly because of the inversion of events. Overall, a brilliant idea with some great imagination and some nice sentences, but neither an easy read nor an enjoyable experience, and although there was enough to make me interested to read a novel of his not written backwards, it didn’t endear me to the author (A). 
• I like an experimental art form, one where the artist tries to push the boundaries of their art form. Like being taken on a journey without knowing where it is going. It was unsuccessful, but one should respect the attempt (S).

There were four main areas to the discussion: the topic, the reversal of time, the style and the experimental nature of the book.

1. The topic

There was again a clear consensus that “As the story of the Holocaust, concentration camps and medical experiments was well known to me and generally all readers (one would assume) there was no surprise in anything that came through the story because we knew from the outset what Amis was going to be writing about.” (ChW)

 

There are two elements here.

First, did Amis have anything new to say about the Holocaust? Again the consensus was not: 

• “Does this add to our understanding of the Holocaust or of immigrants to the US? I feel not.” (ChB) 
• “I do not feel that this book has anything to offer or to add about those awful events. I got no new perspective, no new knowledge, about the Holocaust – although some of the descriptions were very distressing, about removing “Clothes, spectacles, hair (“Freightcars full of it. Freightcar after freightcar.”), teeth” and the gold fillings, which the main character then used to live off for the rest of his life. And the awful ways that people were killed - not just the gas chambers or the vans full of exhaust fumes or the shootings - for example “Enlightenment was urged on me the day I saw the old Jew float to the surface of the deep latrine, how he splashed and struggled into life, and was hoisted out by the jubilant guards, his clothes cleansed by the mire. Then they put his beard back on.” And somehow the time-going-backwards element and the jaunty way that he wrote about this death made it even worse. And for me, there were no new perspectives on the fact that some awful characters did escape justice and lived full lives under new names – although I do know that many more escaped to South America then did to the Northern continent. ” (R)

Second, maybe it was simply the wrong topic for the book:

• “Maybe if the story had been one which had dealt with a completely unknown subject it might have been more interesting and compelling for the reader to work with the book. Instead I nearly gave up twice.” (ChW)

Again, some were (slightly) less damning:

• “Perhaps the reversal of the obscenity done to the Jews does bring it home again, ensure we respond with horror, anger and grief at what was done.” (ChB)

2. The time-flowing-backwards

A number of people liked this IDEA: 

• “great idea of a life in reverse, reverse chronology, including the narrative, dialogue and explanations” (A)

Andrew thought that the execution of the idea also created some interesting juxtapositions:

• his terrible crimes against people and his abusive treatment of Herta made almost matter of fact by being told in reverse eg. as he brings people back to life and reunites them with family
• which for me heightened the impact of the atrocities as it made me think about them more while trying to make sense of the narrative – though at the same time the author risks being highly offensive.

Although others disagreed:

• “While, the reverse actions of the death camp did have the effect of presenting the horrors in an even more horrifying way, we already know what happened there.” (W)

There were other positive things for some: although “it was not easy to read as I needed to spend time reversing the dialogue and narrative to check what is/was happening, but fascinating with every event in reverse - eg.

• shopping, having a meal, washing up,
• damaging and mending things,
• · babies being born,
• buying presents for people
• restrictions getting less and less for Jews,
• having a dump,
• performing an operation – putting on messy bloodstained scrubs and taking bloody swabs out of the bin after suturing the skin

And some of these reversals provide some amusement:” 

• “Rounding it off with a cocktail, we finish our meal and sit there doggedly describing it to the waiter, with the menus there to jog our memory.”
• “One of her duties is to replenish Hamilton’s chamber pot each morning.”
• “Something ails the ship’s engines. How they cough and choke and retch. The smoke that feeds our funnels is much too thick and black.”

And ChrisB agreed: 

“the reversal provided some funny, almost slapstick moments with reverse bodily functions, reverse medical procedures.”
And a number of people thought that there were times, using this idea, when the writing provided a pause for thought, and a deeper underlining of some important ideas, for example: 

• “On the ramp he cut a frankly glamorous figure, where he moved like a series of elegant decisions."
• “Everything is familiar but not at all reassuring.”
• “Human beings want to be alive. They are dying to be alive.”

Nevertheless, the overall consensus was that this was a gimmick, and that it did not work, certainly over the length of even a short book:

• “Why was it necessary for the book to be written backwards. In the epilogue to the book it says that Amis decided to write a book backwards and having played tennis with a friend one day who gave him a book about the “Nazi doctors“ he decided that this would be the subject of his reverse book. No explanation why he felt it was necessary to write the book backwards or what he felt it would achieve. PLUS I also felt that the details given were too shocking to be played with in this reverse manner.” (ChrisW).
• “Generally, I found the reversal of time a distraction from the story though there were lots of clever descriptions. Taking on reverse medical procedures and processes or love scenes, for example was a challenge, handled well. I am not sure it always worked consistently and there is an inherent conflict between a flowing narrative going forwards with the action going backwards. The text goes forward but we are to believe that all speech and movement were backwards.” (ChrisB) “The reverse time seemed interesting to me for the first few pages (and as I say, very occasionally that element reinforced a point in the writing), but very quickly it became nothing more than a gimmick. It was a gimmick that he tried and generally succeeded in maintaining, but one where there were huge holes in the concept – after all, people still TALKED forwards, and hence although each paragraph or event went backwards, all of the words and all of the sentences still moved forwards, and there were other holes in the concept as well. So – it is clever, in its way, but for me, completely ‘so what’. Amis has nothing to add about time to the many very interesting books, both fact and fiction, that have been written about our experience of time.” (R)

3. Style

There were some positive aspects to Amis’s style.

• “The narrator was an interesting concept – his conscience? If so surely Amis missed the opportunity for the conscience to have a more moral view on the activities of the doctor and to express these when instead all the conscience did was crack jokes and repeatedly refer to the inability to quite understand what was going on because everything was being recounted backwards.! Too long. Didn’t gain anything from this book.” (ChrisW)
• “The first few pages were interesting, but as I read on interest began to wane. There were a few cleverly constructed, quotable, descriptive sentences!” (W)

And ChrisB provided a few examples of these: “Some nice observations about relationships”:

• “I have noticed in the past, of course, that most conversations would make much better sense if you ran them backwards. But with this man-woman stuff, you could run them any way you liked – and still get no further forward.”.

“A nice description of desperation and anger”:

• “Tod’s hidden mind insists, in dream form, that Tod feels pain. The dreams tell us this in their miserable iteration. And fear. Tod is a big depositor in the bank where fear is kept. Around midnight, sometimes, Tod Friendly will create things. Wildly he will mend and heal. Taking hold of the woodwork and the webbing, with a single blow to the floor, with a single impact, he will create a kitchen chair. With one fierce and skilful kick of his aching foot he will mend a deep concavity in the refrigerator’s flank. With a butt of his head, he will heal the fissured bathroom mirror, heal also the worsening welt in his own tarnished brow, and then stand there staring at himself with his eyes flickering.”

“Observations on life”:

• “I’m being immature. I’ve got to get over it. I keep expecting the world to make sense. It doesn’t. It won’t. Ever.”  

“And suicide”:

• “But you can’t end yourself, not here. I am familiar with the idea of suicide. But once life is running, you can’t end it. You’re not at liberty to do that. We’re all here for the duration. Life will end. I know exactly how long I’ve got. It looks like for ever. I feel unique and eternal. Immortality consumes me – and me only.”

“And sexual frustration”:

• “Herta’s nightdress is childish. It is patterned with genies and sprites. I begged of them, these sprites and genies. Deliriously, all night, in bed, I begged – oh, the bedbug of nightbeg …”

And some ChrisB just liked:

• “It was November. The humans had grown their winter coats, and the high buildings trembled in the tight grip of their stress equations.”
• “Europe churned in the night like the seas of human forms round the stoves of station waiting rooms.”

Andrew thought that “Herta – sounds like hurt her” which was very apposite about the wife of this man. 

 

And even Richard, who scored the book the lowest, found some positives: “I do think that generally Amis writes well, and initially there was quite a lot to like. On page 1 I thought he made a lovely start: “I sensed their vigour, scarcely held in check, like the profusion of their body hair”. I also thought the idea of him being solely an observer of this person, who was not him, was potentially interesting. And I liked this observer’s grammatical pedantry – very like me – for example, also early on, he is taken aback by people’s lack of observance of grammatical rules: “The apostrophe in ‘Please Respect Owner’s Rights’ isn’t where it ought to be. (Nor is the one on the placard on Route 6 which locates and praises ‘Rogers’ Liquor Locker’.)” And there was some nice writing in relation to the ‘time-flowing-backwards’ gimmick – “A child’s breathless wailing calmed by the firm slap of the father’s hand, a dead ant revived by the careless press of a passing sole, a wounded finger healed and sealed by the knife’s blade”.  

 

And yet, almost everyone agreed that these positives could not outweigh the general negatives, and even the occasional humour from the reversal of time palled. As Richard put it, “by the time I had got only a few more ages in, I had written to myself “I’m getting tired of this gimmick” for example when he wrote “The little children on the street, they get littler and littler. At some point it is thought necessary to confine them to pushchairs, later to backpacks. Or they are held in the arms and quietly soothed – of course they’re sad to be going. In the very last months they cry more than ever. And they no longer smile.” And Andrew was especially scathing over Amis’s “disappointingly sloppy dog’s breakfast when Amis shows off to the reader his grasp of clinical examination”

• “Auscultation would reveal dyspnoea, rich in rales, also tachypnoea, suggesting mediastinal crunch. Eyes show strabismus and nystagmus, also arteriovenous nicking and silver-wiring. In the mouth the buccal muscosa (sic) are lesioned, the oropharynx inflamed.”

As Andrew put it, “lazy writing, full of inaccuracies and errors - and irritating”.

4. The IDEA – Experimental fiction

Andrew thought the idea of a book “narrated by a sort of conscience of the protagonist who is constantly baffled and misinterprets the reversed events and situations” was interesting, as did Willm: “The narrator being intrinsically part of while being consciously separated from the protagonist Tod was an interesting idea: I have at times found a part of myself observing what I have done and wondering why I did it”. And Steve was “struck by MarkW’s reference to Jazz – the book reminded me of Jazz – an art form that I don’t like especially, but one where I can recognise the artists’ skill, and the fact that s/he / they are trying to do something NEW. I like an experimental art form, one where the artist tries to push the boundaries of their art form. I like being taken on a journey without knowing where it is going. Therefore I liked bits – which were often amusing – for the first 20 pages!”

But again here, most felt that the book failed:

• “However, the narrator seemed to be simply a passenger, and the role was not developed, either as a ‘conscience’ or a ‘soul’ (whatever this could be)” (W).
• “It was inconsistent, with a narrator who sometimes was the observer, sometimes speaking for the man himself” (S)
• John “Felt sorry for the dedicatee – the authors sister” and “did not think this book a “valiant effort” or “interesting experiment” - more a conceit, an indulgence by a “too clever by half” author – a sad reflection on Amis as I have enjoyed some of his other work such as London Field or Night Train. Understood what the author trying to achieve but it didn’t work – therefore a failure of a book”.
• And ChrisB thought that “although the premise of a soul experiencing a person’s life backwards was intriguing, it felt at times as if the author was more concerned with the technicalities of this than the story.”

As MW put it: “I like books where one forgets that it is a book at all – here it was hard work – here the technique was ALL.”

Conclusion

So fundamentally, most found the book boring, a technical exercise, a failure - maybe a clever book, but as Richard said at the outset, a slight, trivial, and fundamentally so boring book. ChrisB asked “Really what the book is about? I’ve come to the conclusion that Odilo Unverdorben, as a moral being, is absolutely unexceptional, liable to do what everybody else does, good or bad, with no limit, once under the cover of numbers.”

Richard Velleman

January 2021

The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx

Met by Zoom, 3rd December 2020. Apologies from Steve.

This is the 2nd novel of Annie Proulx who published her first in her 50s. Since then she has published a number of novels and also short stories – Brokeback Mountain being a well-known one of the latter.  She is inspired by landscapes and the way in which geography/topography fashions people and language. She has a house on Newfoundland and spends part of the year there – presumably the summer part!

There was general agreement that this was an interesting, very well written, very unusual book, full of well-drawn characters, evocative descriptions of Newfoundland lifestyle, landscape, seascape, weather, the Gammy Bird newspaper, and food.  

Examples include:
Rock ledges like black metal straps held the sea to the land.

The Heavy Weather was a log room with a filthy linoleum floor and the smell of a backed-up toilet, vomit, stale smoke and liquor.

…the children rushed at Quoyle, gripping him as a falling man clutches at a window ledge, as a stream of electric particles arcs a gap and completes a circuit. The fog against the window like milk, dense as cotton waste, carried a coldness that ate into ones bones

…a yellow day on Monday – the sky cast was an ugly yellow like a jar of piss.

An amazing beginning with the description of Quoyle’s tormented childhood, body and life:
And brother Dick, the father’s favourite, pretended to throw up when Quoyle came into the room, hissed Lardass, Snotface, Ugly Pig, Warthog, Stupid, Stinkbomb, Fart-tub, Greasebag… pummelled and kicked until Quoyle curled, hands over head, snivelling, on the linoleum. All stemmed from Quoyle’s chief failure, a failure of normal appearance.

The reader has to catch the rhythm of the writing – many short sentences lacking verbs or other grammatical normalities as well as all the local vocabulary, and cadences which well conveyed the quirky speech patterns of the locals: Leave me take that saw boy.

The isolated communities are buffeted by nature and change which inevitably leads to decay of local industry and migration of the population in search of employment and a better life. And all the details of boats and boat-building which, while they may be lost on non-boat-people. add detail and believability to description of activities which have always been central to the lives of ‘Newfies’, but which are now in terminal decline.

The place names: Lost all Hope, Bad Fortune, Never Once, No Name; and the names of many of the characters: Partridge, Pretty, Nutbeem, Tert Card, Alvin Yark, and Benny Fudge whose face seemed made of leftover flesh squeezed roughly together. Another character had a face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.

There is quite a shocking amount of abuse vying for space in the Gammy Bird, but the story also has instances of wry and self-deprecating humour from Quoyle. And in many ways this is a story of both obsessive destructive love and and a slowly developing life-affirming love that is without pain or misery.  The affection between Quoyle and Wavey is very beautifully and touchingly described, with an occasional small glance or touch building slowly.  Also Quoyle’s unreserved love for his children, and the activities and interruptions of the children all rang true, as well as the traumas, fears and misunderstandings which can be part of many young lives.

It was agreed that Proulx had undertaken a lot of research to write this book, with detailed interviewing of many local people, so that many of her stories seemed to ring true, or to at least have a ring of truth to them.
 

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)

[November 5th 2020 - Zoom]

A compelling and elegantly subversive novel.  That this novel caused such a stir in Poland is no surprise. The main character, Janina Duszejko, is an ageing woman who lives in a remote rural Polish village. She was a successful bridge engineer, but now spends most of her time studying astrology as well as translating the poetry of William Blake. Janina is deeply troubled about the world, her place in it and the hierarchy of humans among their fellow animals.

As JH pointed out this novel is almost impossible to categorise.  On the surface it appears a murder mystery, but can also be read as an eco-narrative, a dark feminist comedy, an existentialist fable, a paeon to William Blake, or a psychological commentary.  It is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate.  

Positive perspectives

The majority of BBBC members enjoyed this novel.  For example, CW enjoyed it so much he reread some of it again and wanted to read more by the author. It was well expressed with  loads of atmosphere and very good descriptions. He thought it was a fascinating and weird book that allowed the reader to see things from a very different angle. Janina’s approach to nature really made you think about how we all do and should see nature. WM also enjoyed the story and her writing style, specifically the innocent, childlike way in which Janina experiences the world - “The sun had only just risen and, still red from the effort, was casting long sleepy shadows.”

SC thought it was an absorbing read and certainly not what he expected.  Started off as a who-done-it, but then developed layer by layer of different themes and issues as the story progressed – but which she managed to successfully connect together as the narrative developed.

SC also commented that the novel raised some interesting issues about astrology – particularly for those who believe in it. Did it mean Janina could foretell her own future and even death, and so allow her to commit these murders in the knowledge /hope that she wouldn’t be caught?  Similarly, WM noted that underpinning the story was the belief that all events and behaviours are predestined by the configuration of stars and planets at the hour of birth, which also pre-sets the time and cause of death. Thus, in this system of understanding, Janine is not really culpable for her actions. Though, of course she can still be punished for them, and hence her fear of being arrested and imprisoned.  

MW found the book interesting and enjoyable with some great descriptive writing – for example her description of the near-blind dentist who could only work in the summer when it was light enough to see into patients’ mouth.  While easy to see Janina as a batty old lady, certainly didn’t expect her to be the murderer. Shift from her being a harmless biddy to serial killer. She got away with it – all the people she murdered seemed to deserve it.

RV thought that it was a very good book - full of very many lovely and interesting observations. It was beautifully written and translated. The book was not a Whodunit, it was a tour-de-force of writing of about both character and ideas, in a rather exceptional style.  RV loved the way that the ideas came think and fast, throughout the book – “We have this body of ours, a troublesome piece of luggage…..Fancy being given a body and not knowing anything about it. There’s no instruction manual.”  Or “Perhaps that’s the whole point of prayer – to think to yourself in peace, to want nothing, to ask for nothing, but simply to sort out your own mind.”

AA also enjoyed the book - felt it was refreshing, wacky and written with great imagination.  A book about the place on earth of humans and animals, with its dreamy, mythical feel and much oddness.  He liked its clarity and succinctness and the author’s turn of phrase, and particularly liked the offhand narrator with her thinking-aloud, matter-of-fact style and lots of humour, mainly in the delivery – for example: "And the flowers in his garden are neat and tidy, standing straight and slender, as if they’d been to the gym."  AA noted the casual way she drops in revelations, big and small, including about herself – such as having the tv on all day – on the weather channel.  Or the way she rails against how older women are invisible, and Janina seemed a little harsh on herself when she says how people see her as a mad old woman - until it becomes increasingly clear that she is.

MT thought it was a different sort of book, quite quirky, quite funny in parts. He liked it and kept him absorbed to the end. He liked I liked the description of the small community, and her strange life. Some of the terms were lovely, such as “testosterone autism”, or "I was a weak as a potato sprout grown in the darkness in the cellar". I laughed at the concept of the dentist with powerful glasses, with one of the lenses taped into place. I thought the church scene was good, and the huge hypocrisy of the vicar, in promoting animal sports. I liked her anger, but I was surprised that she cleverly murdered all the animal 'murderers' .

Most members commented on the quality of the translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. For example, SC thought it was a terrific translation, and felt it was one of the best translated books we had read. Specifically members commented on the translators skill when Janina and her companion repeatedly attempt to translate a passage of Blake: several versions of a particular verse are rendered in English, which has been translated from the Polish, which in turn has been translated from English. It is difficult to imagine a trickier task for a translator, or one undertaken with more skill.

More questioning perspectives

Not all members were as effusive in their praise.  CB saw it as a curious book which he did not get into, though it was easy enough to read. Only the big reveal at the end helped me understand what was happening in the rest of the book. Maybe others saw it coming. None of the characters are appealing which perhaps fits the harsh and limited life they mainly led. It was hard to remember that the protagonist was a woman and in her sixties. CB started to reread it and came to appreciate the language and descriptions more, for example: “with age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts”. He also like the descriptions of life on the Plateau, her reactions to her neighbours, the use of nicknames, her appreciation of the animals and forest around her, and her affectionate relationship with her Ailments.

AA noted he didn’t care strongly about any of the characters – less so as the book went on, and felt the story rather petered out until the end part – and lost interest and although he enjoyed reading it wasn’t desperate to keep picking it up.  This novel didn’t engage him deeply or teach me anything. He felt it was deceptive in many ways – more complex than it appears, leaving much to the reader, and understating its themes of destructive people and forces going unchallenged.  

Janina & William Blake

WM appreciated the construction of the writing, and the way it expressed the complementarity between Janina and Blake with deeply held beliefs and morality expressed in simple words and childlike concepts of right and wrong, as well as retribution. JH noted that the book is imbued with the Blakean conviction of the cleansing power of rage: the vengeance of the weak when justice is denied. “What a good thing death can be,” Janina reflects, contemplating Big Foot’s dead, once so cruel and destructive, now harmless. “How just and fair, like a disinfectant or a vacuum cleaner.”

There is lots anger in this book – some called it righteous anger or that it even reflected a divine wrath.  It captures some of Blake’s ideas of retribution and the need to strike back, because if something is wrong you need to do something about it.  In this case Janina felt very strongly about what happened to her dogs and to other animals, and that she was treated as either deranged old women, and as such invisible and ignored.  Her sense of justice empowered her to get her own back on those who had status and power.