What's my New Year's resolution? Well, I'll tell you what it isn't. By Griselda Heppel.
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| A haunting atmosphere doesn't cover gaping plotholes. |
But I care. If I can’t completely trust the world the author has created, what’s the point of reading on? If the letdown comes right at the end of the book, as it so often does, I’m left with a dispiriting sense of being had.
Years ago, I read a prize-winning novel framed as the biography of a fictional artist, whose clever conceit was to hide the identity of the narrator until the very end. As, one by one, people in the artist’s life died off, the reader becomes increasingly intrigued as to who the voice – who knew the artist so intimately as to express her innermost thoughts at different crises in her life – could belong to. When at last the narrator’s identity was revealed, it felt like a slap in the face. No. That person would simply not have had such close knowledge of events in the artist’s life, most of which happened before the narrator was even born. For me the entire edifice of the story collapsed. It was, though, beautifully written.
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| Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift |
I have to admit that this highly acclaimed novel left me cold. Jane, the servant through whose eyes the story unfolds, seems to have no personality of her own, only what her ‘masters’ expect of her. That is perhaps Swift’s point but it’s hard to care about her or in fact any of the characters, as they relate to each other with a detachment bordering on callousness.
Swift has taken immense pains in getting the 1920s historical setting right, depicting the social system by which a huge section of the population earned their living by being ‘in service’ to a much smaller, privileged group. He accurately gives Mothering Sunday its original purpose of being the one day off in the year given to maidservants, to allow them to go home to visit their mothers. But he hasn’t noticed Mothering Sunday’s place in the church calendar as the fourth Sunday in Lent, three weeks before Easter, because in the story he places Easter Sunday just one week later. A tiny detail, you probably think, why should it matter?
It matters because in the society and period in which Swift’s book is set, the church year mattered very much indeed. It was the norm to go to church and you would know exactly which Sunday was which. For Swift to have his characters celebrating Easter (or not, given the story) on the wrong day gives the lie – for me, anyway – to all his other historical details. Why should I believe any part of the story’s setting, if neither he nor his editor could be bothered to check such an easy fact?
By now you’ll guess that whatever my New Year’s resolution is, it isn’t to read more literary fiction. I’m open to persuasion, however. There are, after all, wonderful writers whose tightly constructed plots rendered in beautiful prose don’t disappoint: A S Byatt, Jane Gardam, Anne Michaels, Walter Kempowski. If you can add to this list, please do!
OUT NOW
The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel
BRONZE WINNER in the Wishing Shelf Awards 2021
By the author of Ante's Inferno
WINNER of the People's Book Prize
Comments
Because for me that is what makes fiction work. Anne Michaels who you mention wrote the quite brilliant Fugitive Pieces which had a similar effect. However, if the one about the artist's life was Second Place by Rachel Cusk then I agree. It never really took off for me in that way.
As for Mothering Sunday, it has been sitting in the local Oxfam Shop waiting to be bought but I haven't yet taken the plunge. At the moment my reading pile has been added to by Xmas presents and I am just dying (metaphorically that is) to begin reading Katherine Rundell's biography of John Donne, my favourite poet.
I think of life now in terms of story rather than a plot and I think most novels have some kind of story to them. Even 'Ulysses' was about the day in the life of one man. For now, the story of Mothering Sunday will have to remain in the shop.
I am going to add Claire Keegan to your list because Foster and Small Things Like These, read recently, are just great novellas.
Happy New Year! from Peter
I didn't realise Swift had written Last Orders. I haven't read it but I loved the film and was very moved by it. I wonder why Mothering Sunday didn't move me in the least, in spite of its being a tragedy (sorry, spoiler there, but you probably guessed already). Could it be because Swift isn't much good at getting inside the head of his female narrator? Oops, that starts a whole different argument. I certainly found her strangely wooden and detached, her actions frequently unbelievable. (From some Amazon reviews by women, I'm not alone in thinking this.)
Oh yes, and Katherine Rundell's Super-Infinite about John Donne! My husband got this for Christmas and I think I may have to snaffle it from him to read it first.
Thank you as ever for your thoughtful, perceptive comments. I'm guessing not many people read blog posts on New Year's Day. Hats off to you!