Review of REPRODUCTION by Ian Williams

 3 Stars

I finally got around to reading this 2019 Giller Prize winner; actually, I listened to it as an audiobook, and that may not have been the best idea because of the experimental style.

In the late-1970s, nineteen-year-old Felicia Shaw, a black immigrant from a “small unrecognized island,” meets Edgar Gross, a much older and affluent white man of German background.  Their first encounter is in a Toronto hospital room where their mothers are patients.  Felicia’s mother dies and Edgar convinces Felicia to take care of his mother once she is discharged.  Their short-lived relationship results in Felicia becoming pregnant.  The novel then jumps fifteen years into the future.  Felicia and her teenaged son Army rent part of a house from Oliver, a bitterly divorced man.  In the latter part, Army is 36 but still living in the house shared by Oliver, Felicia, and Riot, a college-aged young man whom they have raised since his birth. 

The novel examines relationships and unconventional family structures and how they are formed.  Often relationships are established only because of proximity.  That is certainly the case with Felicia and Edgar and Felicia and Oliver.  When Felicia and Army move into part of a house owned by Oliver, they form a sort of family with him and his children.  Later Oliver and Felicia adopt Riot, even though they are not a couple.  Army tries to form a relationship with his father and even forces others to accept him as part of their already unorthodox family.  On the other hand, some characters use distance to separate themselves from relationships.  This is certainly the case with Riot’s mother and father. 

The structure is unusual.  Williams explained it in an article in Quill and Quire:  “it’s in four parts and each part approaches reproduction differently.  In part one it’s biological.  It’s in 23 paired chapters so it’s chromosomal.  Part two has four characters, so we go from those two characters to four characters and 16 chapters.  And part three [grows] exponentially, from 16 to 256 small sections [16 x 16].  At the end of part three the book gets cancer and you see those tumours growing in the superscript and the subscript [rendered by the text flowing intermittently above, below, and along the sentence lines]. That is the final form of reproduction beyond human control” (https://quillandquire.com/authors/poet-ian-williams-experiments-with-structure-to-tell-a-classic-love-story/). 

The style is also irregular.  For instance, song lyrics, German words, and Caribbean patois are included.  Some sections are like stream-of-consciousness.  My issue with the style is that, especially in the later sections, it becomes more of a focus than the content.  What’s with the many different spellings of Edgar’s names?

The characters are certainly distinct, but the men are all unlikeable.  Edgar’s surname is so appropriate for a self-absorbed, arrogant manipulator who treats women abhorrently.  Oliver is a wanna-be rock star who frequents strip clubs and constantly mocks his ex-wife’s appearance.  Army is full of get-rich-quick schemes even as an adolescent; in his mid-30s, he remains a hustler, even in his romantic relationships.  Riot is another man-child who expects others to support him while he makes art films which include recording a man’s death.  And don’t get me started on Skinnyboy!

Women are forced to shoulder more responsibilities than men.  Edgar has no qualms about leaving his mother without a caregiver, knowing that Felicia will feel a moral responsibility to step in.  Felicia raises Army as a single mother without any financial support from the wealthy Edgar; in fact, he blames her for getting pregnant, even though he had lied to her about having a vasectomy.  When Army brings a terminally-ill man into the home, his care falls mostly to Felicia.  I kept wishing Felicia would develop a backbone and stand up to the men; if she had been more forceful with Army and Riot, they might have become more mature.  I can understand a 19-year-old being manipulated, but it is more difficult to understand in a 55-year-old. 

I’ve read two other titles that were on the 2019 Giller Prize shortlist:  The Innocents by Michael Crummey (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2019/10/review-of-innocents-by-michael-crummey.html) and Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/03/review-of-small-game-hunting-at-local.html).  I think both of these are of better quality.  When compared to these two novels, Reproduction suffers because of more focus on style than substance. 

Review of TROUBLED BLOOD by Robert Galbraith

 3 Stars

This is the fifth Cormoran Strike novel.  The investigation, this time, is a 40-year-old cold case.

In 1974, Dr. Margot Bamborough left her clinic and was never seen again.  The initial police investigation was led by a man who was shortly thereafter hospitalized because of mental illness; his successor had no success in determining what happened to the doctor.  In 2014, the doctor’s daughter hires Strike and his partner, Robin Ellacott, to find out what happened to her mother.

The police had focused on Dennis Creed, a notorious serial killer who had been abducting, torturing and killing his female victims in the vicinity of Bamborough’s disappearance.  In the course of the investigation, other suspects emerge:  among others, there’s a vicious gangster and a patient whose girlfriends tended to end up dead. 

Besides the cold case, the novel also focuses on Strike’s relationship with his father and his visits to his aunt/surrogate mother who has been diagnosed with cancer, Robin’s divorce, and the mutual attraction between Robin and Strike. 

At over 900 pages, this book is a doorstopper.  I found it becoming tedious for a number of reasons.  The interrogation scenes with witnesses or children of witnesses went on and on.  Of course, some witnesses are missing and memories are faulty.  Then there are the lies and misdirections.  The reader is given so much information with so many red herrings that it is virtually impossible to solve the case.  Astrology was an obsession of the lead police investigator, and Robin and Strike’s discussions of the subject also go on and on.  In addition, each chapter begins with a quotation, sometimes fairly long, from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen; after a while I just gave up trying to figure out the relevance to each chapter.  It is difficult to maintain suspense in a lengthy tome, so some judicious editing would have been appropriate. 

I re-read my review of Lethal White, the previous book in the series, and found that many of my comments could be applied to Troubled Blood:  “This is a lengthy book with lots of twists and turns and red herrings.  The plot is so complex with so many details that the reader will be at a loss to tie together all the information into a coherent whole” and “There are some predictable elements.  . . .  the women with whom Strike has liaisons cause problems for Strike and confusion for Robin.  And there are the inevitable conversations where Strike and Robin talk at cross purposes and fail to understand each other” and “Though this can be read as a standalone novel, it is best read as part of the series since the Strike and Robin relationship has developed over time.  This book, more than the others, focuses on the unacknowledged romantic tension between the two.”

I would not call this a page-turner.  To the first three books in the series (The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, and Career of Evil) I awarded 4 Stars; the fourth book Lethal White received 3.5 Stars; and this one gets only 3 Stars.  There’s an unfortunate trend here.

Here are links to my reviews of the other books in the series:

https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2015/10/reviews-of-cuckoos-calling-and-silkworm.html

https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2015/10/review-of-career-of-evil-by-robert.html

https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/10/review-of-lethal-white-by-robert.html

Review of MISS ICELAND by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

 3.5 Stars

When my husband and I toured Iceland in 2017, we were in a progressive country with a reputation for gender equality and for being one of the most LGBT-friendly countries in the world.  It had already had a female president and a prime minister who was the world’s first openly lesbian head of government.  This novel, however, takes the reader back to the early 1960s when Icelandic society was much more conservative.

Hekla is a young woman who aspires to be a writer.  She leaves home for Reykjavík, but she encounters obstacles to the fulfillment of her dreams.  The male-dominated community wants its women in beauty contests or in domestic roles. 

Writing is Hekla’s obsession.  When her friend Isey asks her whether she wants a boyfriend or to write books, Hekla answers, “In my dream world the most important things would be:  a sheet of paper, fountain pen and a male body.  When we’ve finished making love, he’s welcome to ask if he can refill the fountain pen with ink for me.”  Later, she tells Isey, “’Writing.  It’s my lifeline.’”  Whereas male writers gather in cafes to discuss writing, she devotes every free moment to actually writing.  She starts a relationship with Starkadur, one of these men, and for the longest time doesn’t share that she writes, knowing that he wouldn’t understand that a woman could have a passion for writing.  His Christmas gift  to her is a cookery book.  When she does eventually reveal her secret, he acknowledges her devotion:  “’If you’re not working, you’re writing.  If you’re not writing, you’re reading.  You’d drain your own veins if you ran out of ink.’”  She persists even when she is told, “’The world isn’t the way you want it to be . . . You’re a woman.  Come to terms with that.’” 

Hekla is published but used a male pseudonym.  When she sends a manuscript to a publisher, he comments, “’There’s certainly a daring and fearless element in the prose, to be honest I would have thought it had been written by a man . . .’”  He declines to publish and makes pointed reference to having heard that she declined to compete for the Miss Iceland title.

Men, on the other hand, “’are born poets.  By the time of their confirmation, they’ve taken on the inescapable role of being geniuses.  It doesn’t matter whether they write books or not.’”  There are some wonderful jabs at these men who think of themselves as poets. Starkadur who claims, “’there are so few female novelists in Iceland and they’re all bad,’” has a poem accepted for publication despite the fact that it has a “line that starts with ‘assuage the wound’ and ends with ‘crepuscular gasping of mantled hopes’.”  He quits his job at a library because he wants an “environment for inspiration”! Hekla’s father writes that “It’s actually quite amazing how so many poets lack physical stamina.  If they’re not blind like Homer, Milton and Borges, they’re lame and can’t do any sort of labour.”

Hekla’s only real friends in the city are also trapped by societal expectations.  Isey dreams of being a writer too but finds herself as a housewife married to a barely literate man who is “good at sleeping through the children crying at night”; she resorts to writing in a diary but the busy life of housewife and mother leaves her with few options; she has an opportunity to read only if “the fishmonger packs the haddock in a poem or a serialized story.”  Eventually she writes to Hekla that she has “packed away my wings.”  Isey serves to show what Hekla’s life could be like if she gives up pursuing her goal. 

Jon John is a gay man who wants to be a fashion designer but has to take jobs on ships where he is routinely humiliated and brutalized.  He compares the treatment he receives to the oppression of blacks in the United States at the time.  Jon John mentions that “’The Icelandic government negotiated a deal to make sure there would be no blacks at the [Keflavík Air] base.’”  Iceland also wants no homosexuals.  Jon John’s  is a sad story:  “Men only want to sleep with me when they’re drunk, they don’t want to talk afterwards and be friends.  While they’re pulling on their trousers, they make you swear three times that you won’t tell anyone.  They take you to the outskirts of Heidmörk and you’re lucky if they drive you back into town.’”  Society sees him as a freak:  “’They consider us the same as paedophiles.  Mothers call in their children when a queer approaches.  Queers’ homes are broken into and completely trashed.  They’re spat on.  If they have phones, they’re called in the middle of the night with death threats. . . . It’s so difficult not to be scared. . . . I wish I weren’t the way I am, but I can’t change that.’”

For anyone who has visited Reykjavík, reading this novel will undoubtedly bring back memories.  I loved reading the street names in the city, streets like Laugavegur and Bankastræti down which we strolled.  I was reminded of the Mál og Menning bookstore in which I browsed.  Visitors to the city cannot escape noticing Hallgrímskirkja, and Hekla makes reference to its being built.  Mention is made to historic events like the assassination of JFK, the awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to MLK, and the Beatles’ concert in Copenhagen; these will resonate with older readers. 

The style of the book can best be described as sparse and restrained.  It consists of short passages which resemble vignettes.  These sometimes give an impression of disjointedness.  Hekla is the narrator, but the first-person narration does not include any of her thoughts.  Her voice is unemotional and often feels impersonal so it is difficult for the reader to connect with her. 

The ending bothered me.  It is very abrupt.  The entire last section entitled “The Body of the Earth” left me wondering about exactly what happened.  The flashback strikes me as strange, and the last letter left me questioning Hekla’s motives.  Did she really make that request?   

My only experience with Icelandic literature has been crime fiction from writers such as Arnaldur Indriðason, Ragnar Jónasson, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, so it is great to read another genre.  Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir has apparently written other novels and the quality of Miss Iceland has me convinced that I should check them out as well. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of SHUGGIE BAIN by Douglas Stuart

 4.5 Stars

This novel has been shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, and I will be disappointed if it does not win.   What James Joyce did for Dublin, Douglas Stuart has done for 1980s (Thatcher-era) Glasgow.  (I would suggest that readers look at the photos of 1980s Glasgow taken by Raymond Depardon; some are available for viewing online.)

The novel, beginning in 1981 and ending in 1992, covers Shuggie from the age of five to sixteen.  A sensitive, lonely child, he endures regular physical and psychological abuse because of his effeminate mannerisms and interests.  Besides bullying, he has to contend with having an absent father and an alcoholic mother.

The focus is on Shuggie’s relationship with his mother Agnes.  Unhappy with her life, Agnes takes solace in alcohol.  Her self-destructive journey leaves her family even more impoverished.  Her two older children, Catherine and Leek, look for ways to escape so Shuggie is left to care for her.  Much as he tries, Shuggie is not able to help his mother, and despite periods of sobriety, her addiction continues to spiral out of control.

This is very much a novel of character.  When she was a child, Agnes’ father treated her like a princess, and she believes that her life should be so much more than it is.  Though she is beautiful, her father speaks of her having a “selfish devil” inside her.  In her pursuit of happiness, she leaves a stable husband and takes up with a man who promises her a more exciting life but ends up being a philanderer who has no difficulty abandoning more than one family.  Angry and sad, she resorts to drinking which makes her vulnerable to predatory men.  Regardless of her situation, she is a proud person:  “Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high.  When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world.  When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise.”  When sober, she shows herself to be full of love, but when drunk, she manipulates those she loves.  In the reader, Agnes arouses complicated emotions.

Of course, Agnes’ actions have an effect on her children.  Leek, for instance, walks with “hunched shoulders . . . around his ears.  . . . It was getting harder to get up in the mornings, to let the day in, to come back to his body and stop floating around behind his eyelids, where he was free.”  Shuggie loves his mother unconditionally and cares for her as best he can.  Before he goes to school, Shuggie leaves a bucket beside her bed should Agnes vomit; he also “arranged three tea mugs:  one with tap water to dry the cracks in her throat, one with milk to line her sour stomach, and the third with a mixture of the flat leftovers of Special Brew and stout that he had gathered from around the house and frothed together with a fork.”  He hides pills, razors, and knives so she cannot harm herself.  He helps her maintain her dignity in public and tries to protect her from “uncles” who come to take advantage of her.  He lives in a perpetual state of anxiety; returning home from school, he listens at the door to determine his mother’s mood.  Leek tells him, “’She’s never going to get better.  . . . The only thing you can save is yourself.’”  Despite his brother’s warning and Agnes’ many broken promises to give up drink, Shuggie never gives up hope that his mother will get better. 

The bleakness is almost unrelenting.  The description of Glasgow, for instance, is depressing:  “Glasgow was losing its purpose . . . Thatcher didn’t want honest workers anymore; 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.”  Agnes and her children live in a housing scheme at the edge of a shuttered colliery:  “In the distance lay a sea of huge black mounds, hills that looked as if they had been burnt free of all life.  . . .  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.”

There are touches of humour, albeit rather black humour.  One woman’s child is away from home in a special school which allows her “to dedicate more time to raising her favourite child, Stella Artois.”  When a friend tells Shuggie he should fight for his mother, he retorts, “’I do fight for her!  . . .  Mostly with herself, but it’s still a fight.’”  At the end, he tells another friend, “’My mammy had a good year once.  It was lovely.’” 

The book includes a lot of working-class Scottish slang so readers will encounter words like dreich, girning, sleekit, boak, skelfy, papped, and gallus.  A glossary would have helped because the dictionary on my Kindle didn’t have definitions for a lot of the argot. 

This novel is not for the faint of heart; it is a gritty, harrowing, heart-breaking read.  Its examination of the complex relationship between an alcoholic parent and a child is realistic, empathetic, and powerful.  It will leave the reader drained and numb, but in awe at the author’s accomplishment, especially considering that this is a debut novel. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of INVISIBLE GIRL by Lisa Jewell (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This psychological suspense novel gives the perspective of three characters (Cate Fours, Owen Pick, and Saffyre Maddox) whose lives become interconnected.

Cate and her family (husband Roan, daughter Georgia, and son Josh) have temporarily moved to an affluent neighbourhood in London.  She becomes anxious when a series of sexual assaults occur in the area; she suspects their “creepy” neighbour whom Georgia says followed too closely when she walked home one evening. 

Owen Pick is that “creepy” neighbour.  He is suspended from his job as a college instructor because of sexual misconduct charges.  Full of anger and resentment, he accidentally finds himself involved with an online incel group.  When a young girl goes missing, he soon becomes the prime suspect.

Saffyre Maddox is that missing girl.  Her chapters are narrated in the first person and focus on the past.  Once a patient of Roan Fours, a child psychologist, she becomes fixated on him even after she is discharged from therapy and begins following him.  When she learns where Roan lives, she often watches his home.  Here she also encounters Owen. 

None of the characters is likeable.  Cate is just clueless about all members of her own family and refuses to confront people when it is obvious she should be asking them questions.  Owen lacks self-awareness and, albeit unintentionally, becomes temporarily fascinated with the incel (involuntary celibate) internet community which is deeply misogynistic and promotes violence against women.  Saffyre repeatedly makes poor choices and becomes a stalker.  Roan’s behaviour towards Cate is abhorrent.  Georgia is totally self-absorbed.  Josh only plays the role of perfect child. 

Owen is the most interesting character.  He’s an awkward, socially-inept loner.  He makes poor decisions but it is obvious that all he wants is to be loved.  No one has demonstrated any real care or concern for him for years, so he behaves stupidly because he wants a sense of belonging.  Because he is odd, people rush to judgment and he becomes the target of suspicion. 

Of course Owen is used to illustrate the theme that appearances and impressions can be deceiving.  People see him as “weird” and “creepy” and only one person describes him accurately:  “gentle, civilized and thoughtful.”  That same person expresses the theme:  “people can hide a lot of darkness behind carefully constructed masks.”  This theme is also illustrated through several other characters as well.  Cate, for instance, admits she has a façade that hides “the insecure, pathetic core of her” and Saffyre speaks of having “two different personas.”  The theme is repeated at the end of the novel:  “If you looked behind the mask.  That he might actually be the bad guy, not the good guy.’”  Considering this theme, the last line of the novel suggests a frightening possibility.

Characters are developed quite well, though there are a couple of times when they make unrealistic decisions.  Saffyre, for example, hurts most the person who loves her the most?  Her explanation is weak:  “A sense that I needed to let the game play itself out, that there was a different ending, just out of sight, and that it was the right one, somehow.”  And how does a person in a caring profession reconcile himself “to causing pain to people he loved on a daily basis?” 

There are some surprising twists, though the introduction of a new character towards the last third of a novel makes at least part of the ending predictable.  Nonetheless, this is a solid psychological thriller.  Not only does it have suspense and keep the reader guessing, it also asks readers to question how well we ever really know someone. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of WHERE THE EDGE IS by Gráinne Murphy (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

In rural Ireland, a bus falls into a sinkhole; aboard are eight people.  The driver and one passenger are quickly extricated, leaving six others trapped.  Rescue teams work frantically to determine the best way to pull them to safety while the media reports on the operation.  The perspective of five people is given:  Tim (the liaison between the family of the trapped passengers and the rescue team), Nina (a reporter covering the story and Tim’s ex-wife), Richie (the bus driver), Alina (the first passenger rescued), and Lucy (one of the people still in the bus).

Though the bus crash and the rescue efforts bring together the main characters, the novel does not actually focus on these events.  Instead, we are given the individual backstories of the five characters.  Tim and Nina lost their daughter Aisling just before her first birthday and their marriage fell apart afterwards.  Richie has just placed his mother who is suffering from Alzheimer’s in a care facility.  Alina, a Muslim immigrant from Lebanon, has to contend with an overbearing, Catholic mother-in-law.  Lucy, drifting through life and between unsatisfactory relationships, has just moved back in with her difficult mother.  Each person seems to be on the edge, trying to get free from an unhappy life and move on.

The novel examines a number of issues.  One theme is the loss of a child:  Nina and Tim are grieving the death of their daughter but are trying to cope in very different ways.  Another theme is religious intolerance.  When Alina, a Muslim, is freed from the bus, rumours begin that she may in fact have been responsible for the accident.  One of the parents of a trapped victim tells Nina, “’That woman that got out?  That Muslim and her so-called miraculous escape?  That’s what you should be looking into . . . Terrorism in your own back yard . . . ‘”  The topic of immigration is explored:  Alina thinks that “Ireland’s welcome no longer the great warmth [her father] remembered, but a thin thing, with the air of having its patience tried by overuse.”  The reasons for homelessness are mentioned:  “What differentiated the person led straight off the edge of the cliff from the person who veered harmlessly along the grassy verge?”  The plight of those suffering mental illness is addressed, “the poor souls released to the community when the old psychiatric hospital in the city closed down.  They were given six months’ warning before being sent out into the world with neither skills nor motivation for anything but the rhythm of walking.  For putting their lives down one step at a time.”  These people are avoided and ignored; “There was a whole layer of people living in a parallel world, invisibility the tax they paid on whatever circumstances had led them out of their lives.”

A problem with the book is that it tries to touch on too many subjects.  Besides what I’ve already mentioned, identity and belonging, parent-child relationships, relationships post-divorce, and racism are themes explored.  I kept thinking there should be more focus on one or two main ideas.  Maybe having fewer perspectives would have helped to add cohesiveness. 

The language is wonderful.  As most of the above quotations indicate, the style is lyrical.  And there are some wonderful images; I especially loved a man’s actions being described as having “all the intensity of his mam when she was waiting on the last bingo number for a full house.”  Life after giving birth to a child is described as the mother being both consumed and renewed:  “Your old life, your old self, pushed out with the afterbirth, like being in a witness protection programme, your old identity no longer available, a new one all ready and waiting for you to step into.  Relearning the world together.”

Sadness pervades.  At times it was almost overwhelming.  A mother’s grief after the death of a child is exquisitely described:  “In labour, with each contraction your heart expanded to accommodate your daughter.  Shed like excess weight, your heart was left with folds that hang empty, too big for the little that was left behind.”  Reading was almost painful, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I recently read another novel, coincidently by another Irish female writer, which also explored grief at the loss of a child.

Readers looking for an action-packed read should look elsewhere.  This is a slow-paced novel where the conflicts are interior ones.  Though a bit unfocused and in need of tightening, this debut book suggests Gráinne Murphy is a promising writer.  I will certainly be looking out for her future work. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher.

Review of SNOW by John Banville (New Release)

 4 Stars

It’s Christmas time, 1957, in the south-east of Ireland.  The mutilated body of Father Tom Lawless is found in the library of Ballyglass House, the country home of the aristocratic Osborne family.  Detective Inspector St. John (Sinjun) Strafford is in charge of the investigation.  The Osbornes are not particularly forthcoming, and Strafford, a Protestant, also faces obstruction from the Catholic Church which publicizes the death as an accident. 

The mystery is easily solvable.  The mutilation of the body makes the motive abundantly clear.  There is some question as to the identity of the murderer, but that too soon becomes obvious.  What is frustrating is that Strafford seems to ignore obvious clues and doesn’t ask why the murderer would behave in a certain way.  Perhaps the explanation is that Strafford is living in a time when crime scene profiling had not yet been developed and is living in a place where certain subjects were not discussed, whereas the modern reader has knowledge of Ireland’s social and religious history. 

Because the plot is so predictable, the impression is that the mystery is really a stimulus to address a larger social issue, particularly the power and influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland and its history of covering up abuse by priests.  The author makes clear that he feels the church has much to answer for.  Strafford is told that he must be careful:  “’There’s only one Archbishop – only one that counts, at any rate.  Dirty your bib and he’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks, whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Gentile or Jew.  Runs a tight outfit, does His Grace, without regard for creed, race or colour – no matter who you are, you’re still liable to get it in the neck.  . . . the reverend Doctor only has to lift his little finger and your career goes up in smoke – or into the flames of hellfire, and then up in smoke.  And it doesn’t just apply to priests.  Anyone who gets a belt of the crozier is done for.’”  A young woman tells Strafford much the same:  “’A girl has to keep tabs on the likes of His Holiness John Charles, that’s for sure.  I don’t want to end up a slave in a laundry somewhere, working my hands to the bone and the nuns shouting at me.’” 

The opening sentence of the book suggests the power priests had; Father Tom, as he is attacked, thinks, “I’m a priest, for Christ’s sake – how can this be happening to me?”  Later when Strafford asks about why priests are not reported for abuse, he is told:  “’Report him to who?  Maybe you haven’t heard – you don’t ‘report’ a priest.  The clergy are untouchable.  . . . The most that could have been done . . . would have been to get him transferred.  That’s all the Church ever does, when one of theirs lands in trouble.  Then he’d just get up to his old tricks somewhere else.’” 

Snow becomes another obstacle Strafford has to overcome.  The oppressiveness of the snow serves as a metaphor for the Catholic Church’s oppressive hold on Ireland.  Travel becomes difficult in the countryside because of snowfall, just as the murder investigation is complicated by the archbishop’s interference.  The snow blankets the country just as the church tries to cover up the circumstances of a priest’s death.  At one point, the snow falls “in big flabby flakes the size of Communion wafers.”  When Strafford quotes the last paragraph of James Joyce’s “The Dead” (“’Snow is general all over Ireland’”), he can be commenting on the church’s strong grip over the entire country.

Later in the novel there’s an Interlude written from the point of view of a sexual abuser.  Reading this section is very disturbing.  The man justifies his actions with comments like “[The boy] needed to be loved, whether he knew it or not” and “must have had some sense of pride at having been picked out and made my special one.  That must have been a source of pleasure for him.”  He addresses those who might accuse him:  “Don’t tell me you know about a thing until you’ve done it.  And don’t tell me that, having done it, you won’t want to do it again.  Don’t point your finger at me and call me names and say that God will punish me.  So few of us know what it’s like – more than you’d think, but few, all the same – we who live in the secret, enchanted world.”

It is known that people who were sexually abused in childhood often become abusive themselves.  This is the pattern suggested in the novel.  This fact means that the reader may feel some sympathy for a person.  Since the church did nothing to help abusing priests, the cycle continued.  Of course the cyclical nature of abuse also means that the information given about a victim at the end is downright chilling.

Banville’s writing impresses.  Much of the language is lyrical.  The description of the archbishop is perfect:  there is repeated reference to his little dark eyes and his sharp, cold little smile.  Telling details suggest his personality:  “the tips of his [red velvet] slippers . . . appeared alternately, like crimson tongue-tips, from under the hem of his cassock.  He stopped before the fire and held out his hands, which were as pale as cuttlefish bones.  . . . flames gave a lurid tinge to his thin, pallid face.”  Some of the diction like etiolated and brumous and boreen may have readers consulting a dictionary.

It could be argued that Banville doesn’t reveal anything that most readers don’t already know.  What is unique is his using a police procedural as social commentary.  The language makes the book a joy to read but the content will discomfit.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of JACK by Marilynne Robinson (New Release)

 4.5 Stars

This, the fourth book in the Gilead series, is an interracial romance set in St. Louis.

The novel focuses on Jack Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister.  Just out of prison, he meets Della Miles, a black high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher.  The two fall in love, but there are obvious problems because their relationship is not only socially unacceptable but illegal in 1950s Missouri.

The characterization of Jack is outstanding.  Cultured and charming, he could almost be described as a bit of a Renaissance man, but it is his deficiencies that are more prominent.  Fully aware of his shortcomings, he describes himself accurately:  “’I’m a gifted thief.  I lie fluently, often for no reason.  I’m a bad but confirmed drunk.  I have no talent for friendship.  What talents I do have I make no use of.’”  In fact, he often calls himself the Prince of Darkness.  He believes his legacy is doing harm though he often has excuses for his behaviour:  “But excuses only meant that he had done harm he did not intend, which was another proof that he did harm inevitably, intentions be damned.”  He tries to make “a vocation of harmlessness” but in his relationship with Della he knows that his mere presence is a danger to her:  “Once again I am a person of consequence.  I am able to do harm.  I can only do harm.”  “She couldn’t be seen walking down the street with him without damage to her reputation, a risk a teacher can’t take” and even if he does something innocent like walking down her street to ensure that she arrived home safely, “someone will see me, someone will talk.  I’ll be feeding the rumors that will sooner or later burst into scandal.”  Only by staying away can he ensure she will be safe from his harm; only then would her life be “unthreatened by his Jackness, Jackitude, Jackicity.” 

What he does not understand about himself is why he behaves as he does:  “He had never been good at explaining the things he did.  It was just alarming to him to consider how much sense they always made at the time, or in any case, how unavoidable they seemed.  He suspected he drank to give himself a way of accounting for the vast difference between any present situation and the intentions that bought him to it.”  Though Jack is “confounded by himself,” his actions do weigh heavily on his conscience:  “Jack had dabbled in shame, and it still coursed through him, malarial, waking him up to sweat and pace until, unsoothed, unrationalized, unshriven, it secreted itself again in his bones, and at the base of his skull.”

All this brings to mind the question as to what a “good Christian woman” from a prominent black family sees in this reprobate.  He is an intelligent man and perhaps that is what attracts her to him because “Cleverness has a special piquancy when it blooms out of the fraying sleeve of failure.”  Della, however, claims to have seen his soul:  “’once in a lifetime, maybe, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world.  And if you love God, every choice is made for you.  There is no turning away.  You’ve seen the mystery – you’ve seen what life is about.  What it’s for.  And a soul has no earthly qualities, no history among the things of this world, no guilt or injury or failure.  No more than a flame would have.  There is nothing to be said about it except that it is a holy human soul.  And it is a miracle when you recognize it.  . . . since it’s your soul I’ve seen, I know better than to think about you the way people do when they judge.’”  We can only take her at her word because the risks she takes have such grave consequences for her.

There is an almost overwhelming aura of sadness throughout the book.  Given the time period, there is little hope for a happy ending.  Jack points out to Della, “’If they decide we’re cohabiting, we could both go to jail.’”  Della responds, “’I know that.  My father got a copy of the statute and made me read it to him.  So he’d be sure I was paying attention.’”  Della’s family objects to the relationship, and it breaks the heart of her father whom she loves very much.  Jack knows “He was guilty of exposing this wonderful woman to risks – no, call them dangers – that he could not protect her from.”

Despite this sadness, there are touches of humour.  Seeing a spider, Jack says to Della, “’I’m thinking about bugs’” only to have her respond with “’The gangster?  The bunny?’”  And there are lines like, “he was accused of cheating at cards because he was cheating at cards” and “It was as if he were being forced to see his whole life under an unbearably bright light.  Was.  The experience was not at all subjunctive.” 

As many of the above quotations indicate, the prose is beautiful.  The vocabulary may well send readers to a dictionary; words like condign, convivium, cerements, cicatrix, concatenation, apophatic, homilectical, legerdemain, and divagations are used.  Literary allusions abound; there are references to poets like Robert Frost, Paul Dunbar, William Carlos Williams, and John Milton, and literary works like Pilgrim’s Progress, Macbeth, and Hamlet.

In light of the racial unrest sweeping the United States, this is a timely novel inspiring readers to think about racial injustice.  Jack laments that “the whole world has made and kept this infernal compact, making transgression and crime of something innocent, if anything could be called innocent, a marriage of true minds.” 

My one complaint about the book is the slow opening scenes which consist of conversations between Jack and Della when they first meet.  The night-long cemetery conversation in particular seems interminable and becomes tedious to say the least.  I certainly don’t care about the differences between Methodists and Presbyterians.  Readers who persevere past this beginning will be rewarded.

This book can be read without any knowledge of the other books in the Gilead series (Gilead, Home, and Lila).  Each of the previous books was nominated and/or won major literary awards, and I’ll be surprised if Jack does not appear on the lists of these awards for 2020. 

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.