The World Before Us
by Aislinn Hunter
4 Stars
The title, which can be interpreted in more than one way,
signals the thematic depth of this book which gives readers a different way to
look at the world before us while, at
the same time, suggesting that those who lived in the world before us are still affecting the world before us.
When Jane Standen was fifteen, Lily Eliot, the five-year-old
girl she was minding, disappeared near Inglewood House and was never found. Two
decades later, Jane is an archivist at the soon-to-close Chester Museum in
London. Research leads her to discover there was a connection between the
Chester family which founded the museum and the residents of Inglewood House;
in fact, she learns that a young girl, known only as N, disappeared from the
Whitmore Hospital for Convalescent Lunatics near Inglewood House in 1877, near
the same area Lily went missing. Jane decides to try and discover what happened
to N.
There is an unusual element to the narration. Jane’s story
is narrated in third person, but she is accompanied by an invisible chorus of
voices, the leader speaking in first person plural. This collective comments
throughout on what Jane is doing and how she is feeling, much like a Greek
chorus would in a drama. One of the mysteries is the identity of this group.
They are not exactly ghosts; one of the children in the group “thinks it’s fun
to pretend he’s dead.” Jane is unaware of them but they can sense each other:
“every presence has a kind of weight, something felt: moods and shifts and
feelings, a steady pulse of being.” The narrator speaks of their being lost
with Jane being “the closest thing we’ve got to a map.” Their hope is that
“eventually we might discover who we have been, what purpose we serve and what
use we might one day be.” At first, I was perturbed by this “supernatural”
element, but gradually realized that the presence and commentary of this
otherworldly group provide thematic depth.
A major theme is that of the interplay of past and present.
Jane’s sections are narrated in the present tense, but it is obvious that she
is very much defined by her past. The trauma of Lily’s disappearance has had
lasting effects. As an archivist, she has an intense relationship with the
past: “so much can be recreated; all the bits and snippets – the receipts for
roses, inventories tucked into books, even sherry glasses or cigar boxes or the
worn clasp on a velvet band – are enough to conjure whole lives.” Gradually it
becomes clearer who the unseen presences were; it seems almost as if they were
revived by Jane when she began her research: “This is why we’re here: because
Jane thinks about us almost as much as she thinks about herself, because the
distance between her life and ours is not as great as with others.” “The living
only see what’s useful” and so tend to disregard much. Like Jane, when she
visited the cave paintings at Font-de-Gaume and didn’t realize she had been
“surrounded” by drawings, we are surrounded by the past. In the end perhaps it
is best to think of the chorus as a reminder of past lives who “are never dead
to us, until we have forgotten them.” Perhaps those who lived in the world before us now have “a
different way of relating to the world, another mode of being,” another way of
seeing the world before us.
Besides the unique narrative technique, there is also the
inconclusiveness of the ending that will discomfit some readers. There are
several unanswered questions. I don’t like unnecessary loose ends, but the
ending of this novel is appropriate to its subject matter. Who knows what
ripples into the future, Janes present and past will have. Thus the closing
sentence is wonderful: “And across the road the clock tower strikes six o’clock
– a strong brass chord – and a chorus of bells follows.”
The book is beautifully written; it possesses strong lyrical
qualities. At the same time, it examines serious themes for the reader to
contemplate. Readers have reasons to read it more than once.
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