Tangled Rope

An early, but not unwelcome, arrival. I haven’t had time this past summer for many of the literary endeavors that I strive for and enjoy, but autumn may give me a chance to read and write about The Best American Poetry 2010′s selections (as Chris and I did in last year’s BAP09 project).

“Affinity” (1999) is the kind of novel that proves why I resist reading book covers or reviews, and instead rely almost solely on recommendations from friends, who are sensitive enough not to spoil the plot nor pigeon-hole the book or writer into a particular genre. Set in London in the late 1800s Sarah Waters‘s second novel follows–and indeed the style feels so voyeuristic at times that one is following–30-year-old spinster Margaret Prior as she seeks to rehabilitate her mental health after a pair of traumatic events: her father’s death, and an accident that nearly cost her life. Her therapy includes a nightly ritual of chloral to calm her “nerves”, and visits to the female inmates at Millbank prison (naturally).

It seems a slow starter for a “ghost story”, but this primary narrative, told through Margaret’s diary entries, is interspersed with the journals of spiritualist Selina Dawes, an inmate at Millbank known for her remarkable ability to communicate with the dead, and her questionable involvement in the death of her wealthy patron.

Really, that’s all I can say about the plot without spoiling it–and it deserves to be kept fresh.

Waters’s masterful writing slowly, almost imperceptibly pulls Margaret into Selina’s mystery, until a chain reaction is triggered, and the reader is confounded by bizarre possibilities and countered expectations that seem too disparate to entwine. Yet the narrative is entwined, in the end; the mystery is solved, though not packaged, and the fate of Margaret and Selina demands its emotional response. Waters makes this work in part by (1) hooking the reader into an empathetic response for both Margaret and Selina (indeed, she fairly manages to make one care about /all/ her characters, even those who antagonize our heroine), and (2) neither proving nor dismissing any possible theory prematurely, from Selina’s psychical powers to the intentions of the Millbank wardens to Margaret’s own drug-confused veracity. The narrative itself is captivating and special; Waters’s execution of the prose is enviable and unsettling.

Meg Rosoff‘s How I Live Now is a keen, slightly daring, and tremendously human little novel aimed at the “young adult” crowd. I picked it up not sure what I’d find, expecting, at least, to wrestle with the ill-deserved controversy that rose up around its main character, 15-yr-old Daisy. To my surprise this unimposing-looking book slowly caught me in it several tendrils and squeezed gently, then tightly.

The novel is a story of dislocated young people surviving a war. More specifically it revolves around Daisy, an American girl with an eating disorder, sent to live with her aunt and cousins in Great Britain. The small farm home Daisy joins is a complete reverse of the loveless life she was accustomed to in New York with her father and step-mother, and the change is not unwelcome. Soon after arriving, however, war breaks out around the world, the kids are left on their own, and Daisy happens falls madly in love with cousin Edmond.

There’s a lot to talk about in this book, but most remarkable is the voice that Rosoff has transliterated for Daisy. Daiy’s narration reads like an authentic, stream of reflection, running on from sentence to sentence, needless of quotes or cautious rhetoric. Here’s a short passage describing the romance that erupts between her and Edmond, who has an uncanny ability to empathize–even answer people’s thoughts:

After some more time I tried an experiment by thinking something very very quietly to myself, and then nothing happened for ages, Edmond just lay there with his eyes closed and I felt a little disappointed and a little relieved all at the same time and then just as I was moving on to the other things in my head, he propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me with a little half-smile and then kissed me on the mouth so gently and sweetly, and then we kissed again, only not quite so sweetly.

And after a little while of this my brain and my body and every single inch of me that was alive was flooded with the feeling that I was starving, starving, starving for Edmond.

And what a coincidence, that was the feeling I loved best in the world.

This closing sentence grabbed me because it seemed so simplistic, almost naive, but I allowed for it, keeping it in mind as Daisy’s personality emerged. Later I was able to look back and be certain this was just another sign of Rosoff’s control her character.

To this end, I’m still considering how exactly Rosoff manages such a convincing, even captivating, exploration of the Daisy’s world through a sometimes cumbersome style, and halting language. Another passage, after Daisy and young cousin Piper witness the slaughter of two companions by the Enemy:

…our driver didn’t wait around to see what might happen next but just stepped on the gas and as we drove away I thought I felt tears on my face but when I put my hand up to wipe them it turned out to be blood and noboday made a single sound but just sat there shell-shocked and all I could think about was poor Major M lying there in the dust though I guess he was much too dead to notice.

There never were seven more silent human beings in the back of the truck, we were too stunned even to cry or speak. When we reached Reston Bridge our driver, who I knew was a close friend of the Major’s, got out of the truck and stood there for a minute trying to get up the courage to go inside and tell Mrs. M what happened, but first he turned to us and said in a voice that sounded broken and full of rage, In case anyone needed reminding This is a War.

And the way he said those words made me feel like I was falling.

Even the occasional figure of speech (“shell-shocked”, “full of rage”) is used with purpose, to lend authenticity to the young girl’s voice (a habit which Rosoff chooses to utilize throughout, rather bravely, I think, in the face of possible lashings from those who fear anything resembling a cliche), who is challenged with presenting an entirely new world with language she has not personally experienced before. Equally impressive are the descriptions of action and scene that happen purely and naturally through the narration. I purposely omitted the description of the murders that proceed this passage, but they are dense and surgically accurate, and I can think of few other recent first-person narratives that do this as convincingly in first-person.

The strong, natural description of a narrative both shocking and authentic is really in my eyes made perfect by Rosoff’s style and attention to her characters’ inner worlds–even those we don’t get to see but through Daisy’s eyes. Together How I Live Now is a brilliant gem that I was pleased to stumble upon, and has sent me to discover more of Rosoff’s fiction.

John Harwood‘s The Seance is the sort of novel that I love to pick up, not necessarily because of its “literary” merits (though The Seance is fairly well-endowed), but because the narrative captivates, holds me in my chair for chapter upon chapter, well past the time I should have set it down for the day.

Harwood has composed a faithful Victorian-era gothic/horror novel, one complete with an old mansion, secrete passages, thunderstorms, phantoms, delirium, diaries, mysterious old armor, and the classic tension between the supernatural and science.

Told through the records of several nested narratives, The Seance tells the story of Constance Langton’s encounter with the cursed Wraxford Hall, and the lingering mysteries of its former occupants.

When Constance Langton’s 2-year-old sister dies and sets her mother into a catatonic state of mourning, Constance seeks aid from the Other Side to comfort her mother and restore familial harmony. She discovers nothing but charlatanry and unintended consequences that leave her entirely bereft of family.

She finds some hope in a sudden inheritance passed down by an unknown and distant relative that sets her as proprietress of the cursed Wraxford hall. She receives with this several journals that document the Hall’s possession by its most recent masters, including a cold-hearted mesmerist and his wife, Eleanor, a reluctant medium trapped between the threat of psychosis and misery.

Constance allows a society of paranormal investigators access to the supposedly haunted Wraxford Hall, only to discover that several members of the group have very personal motives.

Part of the reason this novel is so attractive is that Harwood utilizes conventions of the genre without falling into ridiculousness. Indeed, he manages to renew many of these through smooth writing that focuses on legitimate description of people, place, and action.

The novel is clearly not a pure horror work intended to deliver wave upon wave of chills and frights; instead, it allows for narrative mystery but also fosters questions of psychology and philosophy that lead the reader to a more generalized consideration of mystery as a natural by-product of human-recorded history. The story is told through artifacts and heresay of the past, and it is a past that Constance trusts to hold a truth that will satisfy her own longings.

So just as there is a tension between science and the supernatural, Harwood interests us also in the tension between “History” and the subjective views of an individual. The historical narratives given to Constance in good faith eventually fray and twist against her own projections and desires, enriching the mystery of the narrative even to the final pages.

The Seance is a light mystery, not wholly unpredictable, but with sufficiently strong characterization, rich and satisfying plotting, and clear voices to make up for any of that. It failed me a bit on my expectations of horror, and even the titular seance seemed more ancillary than necessary. And though I didn’t find The Seance to be a weighty, philosophical tome, it also does accomplish some of what good works of literature should, by engaging the reader in questions that move us beyond the superficial aspects of narrative and characterization. In this case, Harwood asks us to consider individuals’ role in shaping their identity in context of the history that is constantly recorded in one way or another.

Chris Lott posted a list of “fine fifteen” novels–works that have “stuck with him”, conjured from memory in fifteen minutes or less. I was pondering this same subject on our first cold and rainy Sunday afternoon of the autumn as I listened to “This American Life”‘ (Episode 137, “The Book That Changed Your Life”) in the car. I happened to be recovering from the previous evening’s failed poem attempt, in which I scolded “books I claim I’ve read but can’t remember”. So here’s my indulgence, in which I trade off some of what I consider must-read classics (many of which Chris listed already) for a degree of novelty:

1. Moby Dick I first read this mammoth work when 15 years old, and it cracked open the world of American literature like a thirty-ton, whale-bone handled hammer for its depth, breadth, narrative, and unforgettable characters.
2. The Trial My German is poor, but the fact that I’ve stumbled and skimmed through Der Prozess in the original language says something about this novel’s importance to me. It epitomizes Kafka’s fiction in a purposely disjointed tale that sets an innocent-guilty everyman against the primal fear of powerlessness.
3. Pale Fire It’s difficult to decide which Nabokov novel to include here, and really, it’s a tie between Pnin, Bend Sinister, Ada, and Lolita, but I find that in some strange way Pale Fire represents what I love in each of these.
4. Victory startled me with its intensity, humanity, and language–even after reading Conrad’s more famous Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, or The Secret Agent.
5. The End of the Affair I am a romantic at heart, and so its no surprise that The End of the Affair is near the top of my list, a story in which Graham Greene seduces me, entangles me, then drops me on my head to show me my brains.
6. A Farewell to Arms One of the few books that left me weeping. Hem culminates a fairly mundane story with resonant heartbreak and loss that still haunts me.
7. Catcher in the Rye I can’t deny it; Salinger changed my life. I read this in a single sitting on a hard chair at the public library. Then I went back the “S” self and checked out all his other stories.
8. Lord of the Flies I read this as a sophomore in high school in the two days after it had been assigned. Then I read it again. This is the book that taught me to read closely, decipher imagery, and search for symbolism. Oh, and it’s a riveting novel with strong characters and piercing philosophical strands. Thank you, Mrs. Riggs!
9. Fahrenheit 451 A short novel that still delights in its succinct dialogue, imagery, and form. This is the slot where A Brave New World or 1984 might have gone, because while I think Huxley and Orwell warned us, Bradbury prophesied.
10. Black Boy Richard Wright’s semi-autobiographical tale of resilience and individualism as an affront to racism and mediocrity. I don’t think there’s another book I’ve read more times than Black Boy.
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray Wilde uncovers a darkness of humanity that is shocking not for its immorality, but for its recognizeability.
12. Pride and Prejudice Austen’s ability to represent the human soul through what is both revealed and restrained in dialogue sets this firmly in my list.
13. Nausea Sometimes you bite into a novel, sometimes the novel bites into you. Sartre’s La Nausee shows a mark to this day for its surgical extraction and display of human futility. It is connected in my mind to Notes from the Underground, The Stranger, Amerika, and, of all things, The Sun Also Rises.
14. Lord of the Rings The Moby Dick of fantasy novels. Though I tend to abhor fantasy novels, Tolkien is one of few exceptions.
15. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes These are short stories for the most part, but Doyle’s inspired characters of Holmes and Watson inform my ideas about character motivations and mysteries to this day. And I could think of few detective novels to put in here that would better represent their importance in my education (though Rex Stout is close).
16. She The last slot could have gone to anything, (Stevenson’s Treasure Island was a close second) but I decided to throw in Haggard’s bizarre adventure/fantasy novel which thoroughly satisfies. In my mind, She connects to H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. P. Lovecraft.

Hey, that’s actually 16. I never was good at math (or following the rules).