This book
was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Costa Novel Award, but it
took me a while to get to reading it.
When my copy arrived and I saw the lengthy, chunky paragraphs unbroken
by direct dialogue, I put it aside. When
I did start reading it, I wasn’t sure it was a book for me, but it grew on me and
I ended up fascinated.
A
thirteen-year-old named Rebecca Shaw goes missing while on a family New Year’s holiday
in an unnamed village in the Derbyshire Peak District of England. A search and investigation follow, but
initially nothing is learned about what could have happened to her. The focus of the book then turns to life in
the village in the aftermath of the disappearance; the book becomes a kind of chronicle
of the lives of the inhabitants over 13 years.
“It went on
like this. This was how it went on.” These two sentences from the book are a good
summary of the plot, if the definite article is replaced by “life.” Each of the chapters, after the first one,
begins in the same way (“At midnight when the year turned . . .”) and then
proceeds to describe the ordinary events in the lives of the ordinary people
who make the village their home. There
are births and deaths, marriages and divorces, triumphs and tragedies, devotion
and disloyalty, kindness and cruelty.
There is a
large cast of characters; we meet shopkeepers, farmers, teachers, the school
caretaker, a potter, the vicar, teenagers, a yoga instructor, etc. At first, it is difficult to remember who is
who and how the various characters are connected, but because characters
reappear so often, any confusion dissipates.
We don’t know everything about everyone but we know enough about each
one that their major traits and concerns are remembered.
The events
chronicled are often mundane: Cathy
walks her neighbour’s dog, the reservoirs are inspected regularly, Irene
struggles with her special needs son, teenagers write exams and leave for
university, a mother is torn between wanting to pursue a career and taking care
of her twin sons, shopkeepers struggle because of a lack of business. Some events are obviously traumatic for those
involved but these are given no special treatment; in fact; they are often
mentioned in an unemotional, flat tone in a sole simple sentence. There are sentences like, “Martin and Ruth
Fowler separated” and “Jackson had a stroke and was taken to the hospital” and “on
the local news there was a report of a man in court on child-pornography
charges.” These life-changing events are
given no more prominence than the rhythms of nature: “The bees stumbled fatly between the flowers
and the slugs gorged” and “The first fieldfares were seen, gathered on a single
hawthorn and chattering into the wind” and “There was weather and the days
began to shorten.”
The message
is that life goes on. Regardless of what
happens, time does not stop: “The clocks
went back and the nights overtook the short days” and “The clocks went forward
and the evenings opened out.” The
rhythms of life continue for both humans and animals: birds migrate and return, the community celebrates
its annual festivals, crops are planted and harvested, animals mate and give birth
just as the humans do. Rebecca fades
from memory though she is not ever totally forgotten – that is the fate of all
of us. In our absence, life will go on
for people and for nature.
Despite its
repetitive structure, there is suspense in the novel. Rebecca’s disappearance is remembered by the
reader so some activities raise expectations.
When the weeds are cut away in the river, will her body be found? Will the structural inspection of a reservoir
yield information about her fate? Does
the secretive school caretaker’s resistance to having the boilerhouse
demolished have anything to do with the case?
Will the walkers exploring the area make a discovery? Does the title suggest the site of Rebecca’s
body? There are even villagers who could
be suspects. Besides the man arrested
for child pornography, there’s a village lothario who worries that “all his
discretions [might] begin to unravel. He
couldn’t afford for that to happen,” and a man who “drives to the disused
quarry and took a sledgehammer to his desktop computer”.
There are
also humourous touches. An annual
cricket game is held with a neighbouring community and the villagers never
win. One year, the annual pantomime is Dick Whittington, but at a parish
council meeting, Clive “had concerns about the use of dick. Janice Green excused
herself from the room for a short period, and on returning asked Clive how he
would prefer that to be minuted. As is,
Secretary, he said. As is.” The
understated tone is perfect.
This book
is unconventional. In its structure and
use of the passive voice it breaks the generally accepted rules of creative
writing, yet it works. Reading it
becomes almost mesmerizing. By the end,
the reader will feel as if he/she has taken up residence in this village.
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