Day Eight of
my Book Advent Calendar brings us to “H” and I’ve chosen a book by Mark Haddon. He is best known for his The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time, and I would certainly recommend it, as well as A Spot of Bother, but I’m going to
feature his most recent.
Day
Eight: The Red House by Mark Haddon
5
Stars
The plot is
simple. Richard, a radiologist, rents a holiday house in the Welsh countryside
with his wife Louisa and his stepdaughter Melissa. Richard invites his sister
Angela, her husband Dominic, and their three children (Alex, Daisy, and Benjy)
to join them. The duration of the novel is the one week of the family vacation,
each day being given a separate chapter.
Not much
happens; there are no dramatic events. The focus is on the inner lives of
characters. The point of view constantly alternates among the eight characters.
The book is written in varying degrees of stream-of-consciousness/dramatic
monologue style combined with excerpts from books being read, snippets of
lyrics of music being listened to, and seemingly random lists.
Because of
the constantly shifting point of view, the reader gradually gets to know each
character as an individual and what is really important to him/her. Secrets,
anxieties, insecurities, motivations, regrets, and desires are revealed. It is
this character development that is the novel’s tour de force. The author has a
real talent for “peeling back those layers” (24) and revealing the person
“under the veneer” (32). Often it is seemingly small observations that reveal
so much. When Dominic enthuses about the amazing view at the cottage, Richard
responds, “You’re welcome” (25). Those two words say so much about Richard’s
personality. When he meets Louisa’s first husband who comments that “Louisa
tells me you’re a doctor,” Richard is uncomfortable with his too-lengthy,
muscular handshake and so feels the need to clarify: “Consultant.
Neuroradiology” (55). Again these are telling words, as is a sentence on the
following page: “He’d arranged his cutlery at half-past six” (56). By the time
the book is finished, the reader will feel he/she has spent a week with these
eight people.
Family is
obviously one of the themes of the novel. Early on a definition is given:
“Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone
sailing under a different sky” (10). In one way or another most of the
characters want to escape from their families. Louisa is embarrassed about her
”working-class roots which she was trying to escape” (102), an embarrassment
she shares with her daughter who hopes to see her mother’s brothers, “Never
again, hopefully” (240); Angela wants to be “off duty” from her family so she
can have “only herself to please” (96); Daisy wants to run until she finds “the
edge of the world and the beginning of some other place where no one knows her”
(151). One character literally runs away.
Characters
claim not to have anything in common with family members. Alex “recognized nothing
of himself in Mum and Dad” (45) while Angela looks at her brother and thinks,
“We have nothing in common, nothing” (30). Louisa thinks Richard would “have
nothing in common” (224) with her brothers just as Melissa dares Daisy to “Tell
me one thing [Louisa and Richard have] in common” (94). Of course this is not
true as many similarities are revealed. Louisa experienced “unexpected
loneliness” (107) when her first husband, who “wanted it all the time” (55),
left her; Richard suffered “intolerable loneliness” (111) when his first wife,
“who was so explicit about her needs” (124), left him. Angela and Benjy spend a
great deal of time in the worlds of their imaginations. Dominic acknowledges he
“has never really grown up” (97) and Richard unknowingly agrees with his sister
(71) by thinking of himself as “a little boy” (131). Poor self-esteem is
evidenced in the female cousins (123), and Richard and Benjy even have similar
gestures (129).
Richard
decides, “I didn’t really understand what family meant . . . . You have to work
at these things” (101), and, ironically, throughout the book the characters
also work at connecting with family: that “was what one wanted ultimately,
wasn’t it, that connection” (60). People want to be asked, “Tell me about
yourself” (17) or “Tell me more” (175) but, unfortunately, few connections are
made. Sometimes people are “too distracted” (180) and aren’t “really listening”
(101). Instead there are “stilted conversations” (27) and a constant “Reaching
out and pulling back” (88). For example, during a conversation with his sister,
Richard doesn’t know what question to ask (129). Then he learns his mistake
(145) and so approaches his sister only to have her reply, “I talked to Louisa
earlier. I’m not sure I can talk about it twice in one day” (163). After a
conversation with Daisy, Angela realizes, “A door had opened and she’d slammed
it shut” (189), but she is not the only one to do this. Richard realizes he
mishandled a conversation with his daughter-in-law and promises, “Perhaps I should
talk to her. . . . I won’t wear hobnailed boots this time” (234). In fact the
characters seem very adept at saying the wrong thing. During a conversation
with her sister-in-law, Angela realizes, “On what planet was this a good thing
to say?” (82) and Alex acknowledges his “foot-in-mouth disease” (181) just as
Louisa apologizes, “I shouldn’t have said those things” (197).
In the end,
the message seems to be that real connection is impossible. Despite “how
similar they might be after all” (240), “Everyone [lives] in their little
worlds” (221). Dominic concludes, “How rarely people were together” (233).
Richard realizes “And his own sister . . . ? They had the same parents, they
had lived in the same house for sixteen years but he had no idea who she really
was” (238). Everyone “stumbled through life failing to understand everyone”
(246). Daisy’s statement could serve as a mantra for all her family members: “I
am ignorant, I understand so little, I am only human” (175).
There are
minor, rather than major epiphanies. Characters do realize things about
themselves and others, but the insights are not earth shatteringly profound.
Louisa realizes people don’t treat family members like adults (66); Angela
recognizes the root cause of her resentment of her brother (101); Dominic
acknowledges his character flaws (178) which his eldest son also identifies
(239). Many of these insights seem insubstantial and fleeting. Daisy may have a
flash “out of the blue. Her mother was a human being” (87), but her behavior towards
Angela does not change. Some readers might be disappointed with the minor
revelations the characters experience; like Richard they might have “expected
something to be resolved or mended or rediscovered” (260). In reality, although
we may think “something would change. Revelation, turning point, but it doesn’t
happen” (260).
And this
realism is what is great about the novel. An inability to communicate, having
to say, “What I meant was” (218), and having to admit having no “idea what
he[/she] was talking about” (57), especially with those closest to us, is a
common problem. Many people want to escape their pasts but “we all [have] past
lives that rose up” (199). We’ve all had memories evoked at odd moments: “You
thought it was all gone, the house demolished, the furniture sold, photos eaten
away by mildew and damp. Then you opened a tin of sardines with that little
metal key” (54). We’ve all compared memories with others and discovered that
“We all look back and see things differently” (208). We’ve probably all had
moments of insight and then, for some reason, they lose their significance:
“How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again”
(236). At some time we all feel “strangers to ourselves” (198) and that “Every
day [we find] out more and understand less” (217). Certainly there must be
others who can identify with the description of life “as a clumsy cartwheel
down a long long hill, hitting this rock and that tree, a little more bruised
and scratched with each successive impact till . . . what” (260)?
Many times
as I was reading the novel, I thought of T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men”:
“Between the idea/And the reality/ . . . /Falls the Shadow/ . . . / Between the
emotion/And the response/Falls the Shadow”. As William J. Thomas, publisher and
editor-in-chief at Doubleday, wrote, “ Mark Haddon is a master at exploring the
gap between the action and the intent, between the desire to connect and its
impossibility.” The style of the novel with its stream-of-consciousness style
and its occasional inclusion of literary references and dense lists is
reminiscent of Eliot’s poetry, especially “The Hollow Men” and “The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which also includes sections in a foreign language and
passages inserted without explanation. Admittedly, some of the passages in the
novel may leave the reader perplexed: “Marja, Helmand. . . . Dawn light on wild
horses in the Khentii Mountains. . . . Cadmium, arsenic, benzene. . . . Brando
and Hepburn pace their silver cages . . . .Mein Irisch kind, wo weilest du? . .
. Arklow Surf to White Mountains, Cymbeline to Ford Jetty . . . A girl wakes
and has no time to remember the dream about the birds” (131). Nonetheless, a
complete understanding of these passages is not required for an understanding
of the novel’s themes, and, for those so inclined, these are puzzles to be
deciphered. As with Eliot, there is also symbolism here, especially that of
houses. At the beginning, there is a statement, “Behind everything there is
always a house” (12) which is repeated at the end (251). In between there are
several observations about houses, including references to “How eloquently
houses speak” (184) and how silent they can be: “Louisa puts her hand on the
bumpy wall and listens. Paint over plaster over stone. Nothing. Complete
silence” (262). A wonderful image for family memories is found in Benjy’s
drawing of the cottage: “the wonky lines, the weird scale, the eccentric
detail, for this is how they will all remember the place, nothing quite as it was,
elements added, elements removed” (259).
This is not a novel for those looking for an
action-packed, escapist adventure. For those looking for realistic interpretive
literature, seek no further. Reading this book is like going on a journey, and
“the journey [is] the constructive thing” (259).
