November 16, 2014 · 6:04 pm

The Little Stranger: Ghosts of my Ambi(valence)(guity)

   

Published just after (like months) the first season of Downton Abbey began, Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger shares the basic plot features of the show (well, sort of): British aristocratic family falls on hard times after the end of the War (this time, WWII) as they are without fortune, but more importantly without a ‘place’ in a world that has moved past the need for lords and ladies.

Place is significant in The Little Stranger as the deteriorating manor house that forms the claustrophobic setting for the novel parallels the degradation of the family’s wealth and social standing. As a good gothic tale, the creaking house is a character in its own right, taking action – at first to protect and then to threaten – the family and any guests. Further gothic elements of maidens in distress, haunting figures and would-be heroes, The Little Stranger is as much an exercise in genre as it is an exploration of the consequences of changing social mores brought about by economic and political turmoil.

That exploration, while complicated and rich in the abstract, is captured in the novel in the minute interactions among characters, casual glances, waylaid gloves and dogs barking at the wrong time. That is to say, the fascination of changing social attitudes falters under the microscopic and magnified lenses of the novel. I am not ordinarily drawn to pages and pages detailing a parlour visit and the composition of the tea tray. Nor was I drawn to it in this instance. I suspect that if you have interest in the time period, or in ghosts and haunted mansions (or in considering how ghosts might be manifestations of our own interests) and mysteries, you’d enjoy the read.

My complaints registered, I should say that I found the mystery element compelling: how/whether the doctor-hero was, in fact, a murderous villain bent on protecting and seizing both the bodies and ideas of the aristocracy. And appropriately haunting. I’ve come back to did-he, didn’t-he in the days since finishing the book, more as wonder of how deceptive first person narration can be and how capable we are of deceiving ourselves – and the pleasure that comes from both.

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November 3, 2014 · 3:21 pm

Punishment: Retribution and Reconciliation

This past week the Canadian press – and Canadian communities – have been asking a lot of questions about crime and punishment. With the very public revelation of Jian Ghomeshi’s criminal behaviour, the public conversation includes calls for criminal prosecution all the while enacting a sort of collective trial, sentencing and punishment in the press and social media. While listening and reading stories of his violent and repugnant behaviour, I was reading Linden MacIntyre’s new book, Punishment.

Punishment is not about sexual and physical violence. Nor is it about the CBC or the media (though MacIntyre long worked for the CBC). Instead it’s a book about a former prison officer, Tony Breau, who gets involved – is made to be involved – in a small town murder investigation. It’s also about the consequences of telling the truth: the violence, threats and shame that attach to those who speak out (you can see, then, why it might be a book that resonated with what I was reading and hearing in the cultural conversation around violence against women). So it’s a novel that takes on the ‘big’ crime of murder, but it’s also a novel that explores the slippery boundary between what is considered criminal, and the ‘crimes’ outside the criminal code: betrayal in friendship, adultery and the wilful withholding of truth from others.

Punishment offers readers as nuanced and complicated exploration of guilt, punishment, retribution and reconciliation. Early on in the novel it explodes the idea that all those in prison are criminals and that all those on the ‘outside’ are innocent; the novel does not belabour this point, it simply makes the observation that many crimes go unrecognized and unpunished and that many criminals are in prison for complicated reasons. Much of the novel is concerned with how and if Tony can reconcile his past with his present, his moral position with an unjust society, his care for others with the certainty that the truth can be painful. (In a quintessentially Canadian literature way) this struggle is worked out in the small and isolated community, where the big bad criminals come from the United States and the city, where outsiders are suspect and when guilt is both the prelude an apology and an unavoidable state of being.

What the novel does incredibly well (and with a sort of bravery, I think) is to ask readers to consider – just consider – separating the crime from the criminal; the behaviour from the person. It can be hard to empathize. It can be hard to consider empathy. When we are betrayed by lovers or friends, when a singular crime is perpetrated against us or when we are wronged by systemic and entrenched systems, the impulse is not to empathy. The push is to retribution, to punishment. As if in the punishment itself we might understand the crime or feel differently about the criminal. I am not making a novel argument in suggesting that there might be a difference between retributive and restorative justice.  Rather, I’m making an argument that this novel shows – with great care and nuance – how these forms of justice differ and what is at stake for us as individuals and as communities in taking one approach or the other.

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October 30, 2014 · 8:24 pm

Mister Sandman: When No One Else Is Looking

I’m headed to a dinner party tonight where I will, almost certainly, have to talk about Barbara Gowdy’s Mister Sandman. S., who lent me the book, will be there, and so I’ll return it and have to say whether I liked it or not, what I thought of the writing. What do you do when a book recommended is one you just don’t like? I feel like I ought to apologize for not taking the same pleasure she did, or reexamine my own taste for its deficiencies, or pretend to have liked it more than I did.

Alas. I thought Mister Sandman was just okay. In short: It’s a book about the disparity between ‘true’ selves and what we reveal to those we love. The secrets we keep from our partners and children; the secrets we keep from ourselves. The reverberations of these secrets are detected by the changeling child of the family, Joan, who, because she is ‘brain damaged’ and assumed to be mute, absorbs (and records) the secrets she hears, only to echo them back in (magical) and transformative ways. No question the novel is inventive in form and in some language. There’s a playfulness and humour that underlines the ‘heavy’ themes of betrayal, self-awareness, sexual awakening and identity.

And yet I didn’t care much about what happened to any of the characters or if they were ‘found out’ for who they really are/want to be. This lack of care wasn’t because I didn’t appreciate their specificity, rather I found that the opacity they present to the world (and in many instances, to themselves) made it a challenge – if not an impossibility – to connect or empathize with any of them myself. Moreover the characters – while undergoing significant ‘change’ in plot and experience – do little to evolve in their temperament or approach to one another. It’s as though the significant changes happen at them and around them, rather that to them in a way that might transform, complicate or enrich them (and so the reader’s understanding of who they are and their connection to us).

The particular book aside, as I read more books recommended, or review copies, I’m beginning to think this blog – or my thoughts – ought to move past the ‘did I like it’ / ‘didn’t I like it’ binary (thus sparing me the discomfort of having to publicly declare whether I liked a book recommended, when I could, instead, just talk about images of grass and angels). It’s tiresome to write (and so I suspect tiresome to read) the reasons why I liked or didn’t like a book (maybe). What to do instead? Close reading of passages? Exploration of themes? Discuss.

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October 20, 2014 · 3:58 pm

Nora Webster: Unflinching (Lessons in appreciating unlikeable characters)

There are no cats in Colm Tóibín’s Nora Webster. But there is an awful lot of grumpiness. My cat, Titus, makes this sound (I call it playing her like an accordion) when properly prompted, that sounds much like the titular protagonist, like this: *harumph, grump, grump, grump *harumph, grump grump grump

Oh sure, Nora has many good reasons for being a total grump: her husband dies, she’s left to raise four difficult (and well drawn) children, she has to scramble to earn a salary after years of being comfortably supported, in making the salary she has to give up reading for fun, she’s a Catholic sorting out Irish politics. And then, what seems to pain Nora the most is having to rely on others. No, she doesn’t have to actually ask anyone for help, but perhaps just as bad (worse?) she has to accept help that’s offered to her. She’s entirely self-interested and self-obsessed, convinced always that other people are judging her appearance, her spending habits, her parenting style, her grief. For instance, when her daughter goes missing she spends as much time wondering how others will view her reaction as she does worrying about where Aine might be.A self-interest that raises challenging questions about the role of a parent. She rationalizes that her indifference or purposeful silence in response to the obvious needs of her children spares her children humiliation or more pain; the reader is left to wonder whether this silence is yet further evidence of her selfishness in that she doesn’t engage their pain because she’s too busy thinking about her own. To what extent must parents subsume their own feelings to protect/respond to/engage the feelings of their children?

Is it a pleasure to read such a grumpy-grump character? Well, it’s as much pleasure as it is to play Titus like an accordion. A kind of voyeuristic enthusiasm for seeing someone else get it all so perfectly wrong. Someone who could have more friends, greater satisfaction from her relationships, more confidence and comfort in her own skin, but who… doesn’t. Elects not to. Or does she? I suppose it’s not a conscious choice for Nora. She sees it all as put on her. The judgement of others. The circumstances of her life.

When she does make choices – to take singing lessons or to decorate her living room – these choices are couched as concessions to others. She’s not doing these things for her own pleasure or enjoyment, but rather to satisfy others (her singing teacher, her children).  No escaping the guilt.

It makes for a somewhat claustrophobic read. All the same, it’s a fascinating character study and a triumph of writing when this reader stayed with the rather wholly unpleasant Nora and continued to hope she’d do something surprising (like smile) (or care for someone else) while knowing that the book is a reminder that as readers we make unrealistic demands of authors. We expect likeable characters. We ask for a character development that will make our characters better, more heroic, more likeable. What Tobin presents instead is a rich character, who does develop over the novel, but becomes no more heroic, no more noble or likeable. She remains reproachable, unpleasant and grumpy. And instead of complaining about how frustrating and sad (and grumpy) she is, this reader was thankful for the long and deep engagement with the unlikeable.

And because I’m such a delight to be around myself, it was a chance to embody and empathize with the deeply flawed and unpleasant of the world.

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