Americanah is Adichie’s third novel, following Purple Hibiscus in 2003 and Half a Yellow Sun in 2006. It’s a more personal novel than the earlier works, reflecting a maturity of her style and writing.
Although its reputation as a novel about race goes before it, Americanah is at its heart a love-story. It follows two central characters, Ifemulu and Obinze, who meet and fall in love with while growing up in Lagos. The portrait of life in Nigeria is unblinking – corruption is everywhere and affects everything. Many if not most middle-class Nigerians have just one ambition – to make enough money to be able to afford to leave the country, for either the UK or America. The non-linear structure of the novel means that much of it is told in the form of Ifemulu’s and Obinze’s reminiscences once Ifemulu has gone to America on a scholarship. Her experience of life in America is initially hard. She stays in Brooklyn with relatives for the first few months, and uses a fake identity card to try (largely unsuccessfully) to find work. Rejection after rejection make her wonder what she is doing wrong – is she too African? Slowly she comes to terms with American culture and the way of life, and in particular the prevailing attitudes to race. Before she came to America Ifemelu wasn’t really conscious of race – now she can’t avoid it. In her blog she later writes
“I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America”.
Or putting it another way
“Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care.”
Her approach to the way she wears her hair – braided, ‘relaxed’ or naturally – comes to act as a metaphor for a central question of racial politics – do immigrants attempt to integrate into America culture, or do they retain links to their home countries, culture and ways of life? Initially she adopts an American accent in an attempt to fit in (and in particular to find a job) but eventually rejects that enforced Americanisation – the attempt to make her an Americanah – and goes back to using her natural accent and way of speaking.
She attempts to sustain her long distance relationship with Obinze, but when she is forced, through lack of money, to accept a sleazy job helping a tennis coach “relax”, she sees this as a betrayal of her relationship, and ghosts Obinze. This is a turning point for her in other ways as she finally obtains a well paying job and new relationships which she struggles to sustain.
Obinze’s parallel journey is to England. He also finds life in his new environment difficult and experiences many of the same problems Ifemulu faces. He lives with friends, struggles to find work, and has to use false identity papers. In desperation he pays for a marriage with an EU citizen which will allow him to stay in the UK, but on the day of his wedding he is arrested and deported. Racism in the UK is different from that in the US, but part of his daily experience nonetheless. Adichie catches some of the anti-immigrant sentiment that was to eventually lead to Brexit:
“He sat on the stained seat of the noisy train, opposite a woman reading the evening newspaper. Speak English at home, Blunkett tells immigrants’. He imagined the article she was reading. There were so many of them now published in the newspapers, and they echoed the radio and the television, even the chatter of some of the men in the warehouse. The wind blowing across the British Isles was odorous with fear of asylum seekers, infecting everybody with the panic of impending doom, and so articles were written and read, simply and stridently, as though the writers lived in a world in which the present was unconnected to the past, and they had never considered this to be the normal course of history: the influx into Britain of black and brown people from countries created by Britain. (258/9)
Back in the USA Ifemulu starts her a blog on the issue of race in America. The narrative includes several of her posts – informal and personal, allowing the author to reinforce points about race which may not have emerged fully in the main narrative. Her blog rapidly becomes very popular and she is able to use the earnings from it to give up her day job and buy an apartment. She is even invited to give talks at conferences and conventions on race in the USA.
She begins a new relationship with a Professor of history at Yale. Their relationship centres upon a mutual passion – their support for Barack Obama’s run for the US presidency. His campaign slogan – Hope – summarises how they feel about the prospect for race relations in America following his win. But the optimism fades quickly, and after a fight over a protest Blaine arranges, Ifemulu slowly comes to the realisation that her future lies back in Nigeria. This is the point the novel originally opens on, with her reaching out to Obinze after several years of silence, the previous narrative all being told in flashback to explain how they have reached this point. It is clear the mutual attraction is still there, and although Obinze, now rich from property deals, is married with a daughter, they resume their relationship as if they intervening years had not happened. The novel ends on a positive note for them.
The largely positive responses to this novel are often qualified by two concerns – that the novel is sprawling, and that it is didactic. It could also be argued that the novel is a little too obviously aware that it is a novel about race. It includes a number of fourth wall breaches such as when Shan, Blaine’s irritatingly confident sister, ‘slightly drunk, slightly dramatic, and now sitting yoga-style on the floor’ proclaims:
“You can’t write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it’ll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you’re going to write about race, you have to make sure it’s so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn’t read between the lines won’t know it’s about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy.” (335/6)
Americanah is unquestionably not watery and fuzzy. The rejection of bullshit ghetto books with bright covers possibly explains why both the hardback and paperback editions of the novel are presented in such a subdued way. As for the concern that the novel is sprawling, some readers will certainly have found it that way. For me it just kept on the right side of complexity, although I found the introduction of so many new characters even in the final pages of the novel a bit frustrating. It’s going to be interesting to see where Adichie goes next as a novelist.
(And more specifically, does her legal status within the Bertram household offer the reader any insight into her character?)
Was Fanny adopted? Strictly speaking, no. Adoption as a legal concept did not exist in the UK until the twentieth century. The first legislation relating specifically to adoption was not passed until the 1920s. Before then the legal status of anyone brought up as the child of another family was unclear. The construction of non-nuclear families was often a necessity given how common early death was in nineteenth-century Britain, but the law was rarely involved in the process.
Why does this matter? I think it’s because it introduces another way of looking at Mansfield Park. It can be read as a story of profound childhood trauma. A child is uprooted from her family home, her parents and many siblings and taken halfway across the country to live with an aunt, uncle and cousins she has never met before. Apart from periodic letters from her brother William she has no further contact with her family until she is eighteen. She is treated moderately well in her new home, but is never considered a full member of the family. When she does finally return to her family after eight years their poverty alienates her further (although even the Prices are not above having at least two servants! I have mentioned before the phenomenon whereby no matter how poor people become in nineteenth century literature they are always still able to employ a servant or two).
We are not told anything directly about Fanny’s feelings about her move to Mansfield Park, but there are some hints in the text about how traumatic it might have been. When considering her return to Portsmouth Fanny wonders at the reception she will receive from her mother “who had certainly shown no remarkable fondness for her formerly”. Fanny is sure this lack of maternal affection (and by extension the decision to send her away) must be her fault:
“She had probably alienated love by the helplessness and fretfulness of a fearful temper, or been unreasonable in wanting a larger share than any one among so many could deserve. Now, when she knew better how to be useful and how to forebear, and when her mother could no longer be occupied by the incessant demands of a house full of little children, there would be leisure and inclination for every comfort.” (Chapter 37):
In other words she has understood all this time that the decision to send her to live with her aunt and uncle was a rejection of her by her parents, a punishment for an unknown fault. She has carried the burden of this belief in her unworthiness since the age of ten. She has also had to live with constant reminders of her lack of intelligence, grace and attractiveness compared to her older cousins. This is how she is introduced at the opening of the second chapter:
“Fanny Price was at this time just ten years old, and though there might not be much in her first appearance to captivate, there was, at least, nothing to disgust her relations. She was small of her age, with no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty; exceedingly timid and shy, and shrinking from notice; but her air, though awkward, was not vulgar, her voice was sweet, and when she spoke her countenance was pretty.”
Fanny is defined here by a flood of negatives. From this point on she is treated as a second-class member of the family – whenever her cousins arrange an outing or activity, Fanny is left behind to sit with her docile aunt.
Fanny had no share in the festivities of the season…as to her cousins’ gaieties, she loved to hear an account of them, especially of the balls, and whom Edmund had danced with; but thought too lowly of her own situation to imagine she should ever be admitted to the same,
The details of her move from Portsmouth to Mansfield Park are arranged so hurriedly in the novel’s opening chapter that they are easy to overlook. Initially when Mrs Price approaches her sister for help she asks
Her eldest was a boy of ten years old, a fine spirited fellow, who longed to be out in the world; but what could she do? Was there any chance of his being hereafter useful to Sir Thomas in the concerns of his West Indian property? No situation would be beneath him; or what did Sir Thomas think of Woolwich? or how could a boy be sent out to the East?
It seems as if help is indeed given to find William a situation in the navy, but in addition:
“What if they were among them to undertake the care of her eldest daughter, a girl now nine years old, of an age to require more attention than her poor mother could possibly give? The trouble and expense of it to them would be nothing, compared with the benevolence of the action.”
Sir Thomas is more cautious about the idea of bringing an unknown child into his family. He has the foresight to see some of the potential complications, even if not the sense to act on his doubts:
Sir Thomas could not give so instantaneous and unqualified a consent. He debated and hesitated;—it was a serious charge;—a girl so brought up must be adequately provided for, or there would be cruelty instead of kindness in taking her from her family. He thought of his own four children, of his two sons, of cousins in love, etc.;—but no sooner had he deliberately begun to state his objections, than Mrs. Norris interrupted him with a reply to them all, whether stated or not.
“My dear Sir Thomas….you know I am a woman of few words and professions….I don’t say she would be so handsome as her cousins. I dare say she would not…do not you know that, of all things upon earth, that is the least likely to happen, brought up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible. I never knew an instance of it. It is, in fact, the only sure way of providing against the connexion….. Breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her even to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister….
Of course these are prophetic words, in that the risk of an attraction between cousins is not ultimately negated by the children having been brought up together.
When Fanny finally returns to Portsmouth (in chapter 39), she finds herself alienated from her family, and can no longer consider it her home. The Price family home in Portsmouth is, in Fanny’s eyes, an “abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety. “ Fanny thinks her mother to be “a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her better, no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her company that could lessen her sense of such feelings.”
Fanny’s status in Mansfield Park is profoundly ambiguous. There are few precedents for a relationship of this nature, and it is for Fanny and the Bertrams, with the ever-helpful advice of Mrs Norris, to negotiate. Bringing a young man into a family to inherit a family estate and name was not unknown, and long term fostering of a child was necessary from time to time, but always with a clear objective – either to provide an heir (in which case a name change was also necessary) or to provide respite to the child’s birth parents. Jane had first-hand experience of the former type of adoption – her brother Edward having been ‘adopted’ by the Knight family, changed his name, (although retaining the Austen as a middle name) and made their legal heir. Wikipedia describes this adoption of sorts rather bluntly
“When Edward was twelve years old he was presented to Thomas and Catherine Knight, who were relatives of his father and were wealthy. Thomas had given George Austen (jane’s father) the living at Steventon in 1761.They were childless and took an interest in Edward, making him their legal heir.”
Here the reasons for providing a home to Fanny are less clear-cut – essentially it is to help her parents financially, although offering some money would have done the job just as easily. This decision, so central to the novel, seems lightly done.
Mrs Norris attempts to delineate Fanny’s status in the Bertram household by her allocation of sleeping quarters:
I suppose, sister, you will put the child in the little white attic, near the old nurseries. It will be much the best place for her, so near Miss Lee, and not far from the girls, and close by the housemaids, who could either of them help to dress her, you know, and take care of her clothes, for I suppose you would not think it fair to expect Ellis to wait on her as well as the others. Indeed, I do not see that you could possibly place her anywhere else.”
Lady Bertram made no opposition.
Fanny is placed with particular precision, nearer the governess (Miss Lee) than the daughters, and close by the maids. She may not be a servant but neither is she a member of the family.
Sir Thomas also frets about the question of Fanny’s status in his household:
“There will be some difficulty in our way, Mrs. Norris,” observed Sir Thomas, “as to the distinction proper to be made between the girls as they grow up: how to preserve in the minds of my daughters the consciousness of what they are, without making them think too lowly of their cousin; and how, without depressing her spirits too far, to make her remember that she is not a Miss Bertram. I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorise in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relation; but still they cannot be equals. Their rank, fortune, rights, and expectations will always be different. It is a point of great delicacy, and you must assist us in our endeavours to choose exactly the right line of conduct.”
The novel’s silence on Fanny’s feelings about her move to Mansfield Park leaves it to the reader to construct this part of the narrative. Are we intended to assume that her distress at removal from her family is brief, and she easily comes to terms with the changes in her life? Or does it emotionally cripple her, causing her to withdraw into herself and become the passive observer of life we see her as?
I tried. I really did try to enjoy Mansfield Park. If ever a writer deserved the benefit of the doubt it is the author of the extraordinaryPride and Prejudice. But I wasn’t able to love this novel. There are without question scenes of fine writing and much to admire throughout, but it would make this blog pretty pointless if I tried to ignore its serious flaws. And yes, those flaws are the ones people always mention – the central character, Fanny Price, and the novel’s hurried and unconvincing ending.
As these flaws have been anatomised many times before I am not going to dedicate too much time to them. I will try to make this post mainly be about what is good about Mansfield Park – but I won’t be able to ignore the problems and I suspect I might find myself writing more about them than I intend to.
First, a quick plot summary. Mansfield Park tells the story of our heroine, Fanny Price. Aged ten she leaves her family to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram. She grows up very meek and mild. The Bertrams have four children of their own – daughters Maria and Julia, both mainly interested in making a good marriage, and sons Tom and the Edmund. Oldest son Tom is a bit of a playboy; Edmund is planning to enter the priesthood. These young people looking for excitement and romance quickly find it in the persons of Mary and Henry Crawford, siblings of the wife of the local vicar. Romantic entanglements ensue, as you would expect.
It might help structure things more clearly if I address some of my concerns about the novel, get them out of the way, and then come to its strengths. So, firstly, there’s something about Fanny……
The events of the novel are told by a narrative voice which aligns closely with Fanny’s perspective. Only rarely are other points of view used and when they are they stand out. Fanny is the novel’s central consciousness and at one point she is described as the “quiet auditor”. In other words she is not just a passive observer, she also sits in judgement on the other characters.
Fanny looked on and listened, not unamused to observe the selfishness which, more or less disguised, seemed to govern them all, and wondering how it would end”.
The criticism implicit here is always present – Fanny can’t help but silently judge the behaviour of her cousins and their friends, waiting for mistakes and moments of indecorum or indelicacy. There is a strong alignment between Fanny’s perspective and the narrator’s – we are in almost all instances invited to accept her judgment as correct. Unlike Austen’s other flawed heroines, where differences between the judgment of the central character and what the narrator shows the reader allows us to see their mistakes and misunderstandings, Fanny is apparently always right. Even advocates for the novel accept there is an issue with Austen’s portrait of her heroine. Kathryn Sutherland, editor of the Penguin Classic edition of the novel, agrees that
“Fanny Price…embodies so many of the reader’s difficulties with the novel.”
(I note Sutherland’s use of the singular, universal ‘reader’ as opposed to acknowledging any spectrum of views on the issue).
I think the reader is intended to see Fanny’s growth into a young woman over the course of the novel and to appreciate the woman she becomes, not the timid girl she starts out as. Certainly other characters change their view of her. Initially she is treated almost as an invalid – Edmund is always noticing how pale or tired she looks, and urging her not to exert herself. Lady Bertram meanwhile treats her like her companion “I could not do without my Fanny”. She is not considered as a woman in her own right until Sir Thomas returns from the Caribbean and notices she has matured during his absence:
“observing with decided pleasure how much she was grown!…He led her nearer the light and looked at her again – inquired particularly after her health, and then correcting himself, observed that he need not inquire, for her appearance spoke sufficiently on that point.” (Chapter 19).
Once Maria and Julia are no longer on the scene to distract him Henry Crawford makes the same discovery and decides to ‘make’ Fanny fall in love with him. Her resistance increases her attractiveness, and there comes a point towards the end of the novel where the reader is genuinely unsure whether his persistence will work. In this regard Mansfield Park differs from its predecessors where there is never really any serious doubt as to the outcome. Here the reader cannot be certain that Fanny will marry Edmund, even though it is established as early as the fourth chapter of the novel that she worships him:
She regarded her cousin as an example of everything good and great, as possessing worth which no one but herself could ever appreciate, and as entitled to such gratitude from her as no feelings could be strong enough to pay.
But I didn’t find much growth in Fanny. There are no moments of self-realisation, unless you count her recognition that she no longer belongs in her parents’ world in Portsmouth. She makes her mind up and it stays made up, whether it is her judgment on Henry Crawford or her longing for her cousin, Edmund. That she is finally proven right about Henry and ends up married to Edmund really does nothing to help the reader see Fanny in any other way.
The novel’s ending is all the more disappointing for its clumsiness, in contrast to much of the earlier subtlety of the novel. Henry abandons his attempts to woo Fanny and instead runs away with the now married Maria Rushworth nee Bertram. We are told very little about this dramatic and shocking affair, and it comes with minimal build-up – we know Maria despises her husband, but would she really abandon her status and wealth and break the strong moral codes of the time for a man she surely knows does not love her? There was never going to be a happy-ever-after ending for Maria and Henry. I can’t be the only reader who would have enjoyed reading about this affair so much more than the depressing scenes of Fanny moping around in Portsmouth?
As for Fanny’s marriage to Edmund, what can I say? He has always seen her as a younger sister, and by all accounts continues to do so. Fanny’s devotion helps him to recover from his disappointment in Mary , and
“Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well, or a great deal better: whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.
Loving, guiding, protecting her, as he had been doing ever since her being ten years old, her mind in so great a degree formed by his care, and her comfort depending on his kindness, an object to him of such close and peculiar interest, dearer by all his own importance with her than any one else at Mansfield, what was there now to add, but that he should learn to prefer soft light eyes to sparkling dark ones. (Chapter 48)
Cousin marriage remains to this day a sensitive issue, but here the relationship is effectively between adoptive siblings. Although Fanny is never formally adopted by the Bertrams, the distinction is a technical one – she is brought up by them and always turns to Edmund for brotherly support. He considers her his sister in all but name for 99% of the novel and it is not until his relationship with Mary Crawford breaks down and he turns to Fanny for consolation does he slowly begin to see her in another way. Admittedly close relatives marrying one another was not unheard of in nineteenth-century society (and fiction) and both George IV and Victoria married their cousins. Despite this Fanny and Edmund’s marriage seems simply inappropriate to many modern readers, sufficiently so to spoil any sense of romantic satisfaction at the novel’s conclusion.
The natural thing to do when faced with such a passive and dull central character is to look for interest elsewhere. The novel is not short on alternative heroines and heroes. There’s a Shakespearean element to the romantic comedy scenes in which sisters Maria (already engaged to Mr Rushworth) and Julia Bertram are competing for the affections of Henry Crawford, who ends up trying to marry Fanny. His sister Mary is attracted to younger brother Edmund Bertram for whom Fanny also secretly yearns. The complexities of these romances are narrated from Fanny’s watchful perspective. The echoes of Midsummer Night’s Dream in particular were for me reinforced by Henry Crawford comments about the preparations for a play they plan to put on:
“It is as a dream, a pleasant dream!” he exclaimed, breaking forth again, after a few minutes’ musing. “I shall always look back on our theatricals with exquisite pleasure.”
Two scenes stand out in the novel as examples of this subtle drawn romantic comedy – the visit to Sotherton, Mr Rushworth’s estate, and the preparations for the play, Lovers’ Vows.
Chapter 10 describes the visit to Sotherton. I think of this chapter as ‘The Curious Case of the Ha-Ha’, for reasons which will become obvious. By this point in the novel, Maria Bertram is engaged to the rich but dim Mr Rushworth. Despite this she is clearly becoming more and more attracted to the dashing Henry Crawford. She is young enough to want to have her cake and eat it, but seems close to breaking off her relatively recent engagement with Mr Rushworth if she gets a sign from Mr Crawford that this is more than just a flirtation.
Not a picture of Sotherton, which is fictional
Unusually, Fanny is included in the party to Sotherton. Normally she would be excluded from trips of this nature, but she is needed as an observer of the young people’s antics, to sit and quietly pass judgment on their behaviour. Both Julia and Maria have already been flirting with Henry prior to this day out, but the trip presents opportunities for a closer acquaintance away from the constraints of Mansfield Park and the watching eyes of Sir Thomas. After a tour of the house the party goes for a walk in the extensive grounds, which include a “wilderness” – an area of the park deliberately allowed to grow wild. There is a similar area in Pride and Prejudice (“a prettyish kind of little wilderness on one side of your lawn”) where Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth about the rumours of her engagement with Darcy. These areas of the grounds, contrasting with the well-manicured lawns and beds of the formal gardens, act as a mini-Eden, an area where some of the normal rules of social behaviour are disapplied, and people feel free to act on their more natural instincts without some of the constraints usually applied. Edmund and Miss Crawford are the first to set off into this area, leaving Fanny sitting on a bench. Maria Bertram, Mr Rushworth, and Henry Crawford join her. Miss Bertram sends Mr Rushworth back to the house to find a key for a gate locking them out of part of the park – this is a blatant excuse to get rid of him. As soon as he is gone, she starts to flirt with Mr Crawford. The flirting is obvious enough to make Fanny uncomfortable. Maria asks, “Do you not you find the place (Sotherton) altogether worse than you expected?” This is a not so subtle hint at her disappointment in her choice of fiancé in which the house represents the man. His reply continues the flirtation:
“No, indeed, far otherwise. I find it better, grander, more complete in its style, though that style may not be the best. And to tell you the truth,” speaking rather lower, “I do not think that I shall ever see Sotherton again with so much pleasure as I do now. Another summer will hardly improve it to me.”
Because within a year she will be married – in other words he derives pleasure from her company as an unmarried woman. He drops his voice to attempt to prevent Fanny from overhearing this compliment. Miss Bertram takes it as intended:
“After a moment’s embarrassment the lady replied, “You are too much a man of the world not to see with the eyes of the world. If other people think Sotherton improved, I have no doubt that you will.”
“I am afraid I am not quite so much the man of the world as might be good for me in some points. My feelings are not quite so evanescent, nor my memory of the past under such easy dominion as one finds to be the case with men of the world.”
This was followed by a short silence. Miss Bertram began again. “You seemed to enjoy your drive here very much this morning. I was glad to see you so well entertained. You and Julia were laughing the whole way.”
Miss Bertram teases him by suggesting he is attracted to her younger sister, Julia;
Your prospects, however, are too fair to justify want of spirits. You have a very smiling scene before you.”
“Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. ‘I cannot get out,’ as the starling said.” As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. “Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!”
The iron-gate has by this point assumed a symbolic significance. It represents a barrier between their current constrained behaviour and lives, and a more unrestrained, freer life beyond, without barriers or rules. It is also Mr Rushworth personified – he is the barrier to their future together. But they have to make a conscious decision to pass this barrier – and face the dangers it represents.
“And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth’s authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.”
He is goading her here – with his assistance, he says she will be able to circumvent the barriers between them. It can be done if she wants it enough.
Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to prevent it. “You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram,” she cried; “you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes; you will tear your gown; you will be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. You had better not go.”
Fanny sets out the series of dangers facing Miss Bertram – she will hurt herself on the spikes of the gate, she will damage her gown, and she might fall into the ha-ha. If Miss Bertram abandons her engagement with Mr Rushworth she will potentially expose herself to similar dangers – physical harm, economic harm, and a metaphorical fall – the fall from grace that Adam and Eve experienced. A fallen woman was a common usually term to describe someone who had sex outside of marriage, and was often used as a euphemism for prostitute. Of course this warning is unheeded, and eventually Maria and Henry face the fate they have been warned against. Young people are not very good at listening to words of warning when they stand in the way of something they want:
“Her cousin was safe on the other side while these words were spoken, and, smiling with all the good-humour of success, she said, “Thank you, my dear Fanny, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so good-bye.”
Julia, the younger sister arrives, and is vexed when Fanny tells her what has happened. She describes Maria’s behaviour as sinful “I am not obliged to punish myself for her sins.” This is a clear acknowledgement that Maria and Henry are contemplating sinfulness if not exactly behaving sinfully at this point. In quick and undignified order (“she immediately scrambled across the fence”) she heads off after them – she has not given up in her quest to snare Mr Crawford.
Mr Rushworth arrives with the key. Fanny tells him what has happened, and
“though she made the best of the story, he was evidently mortified and displeased in no common degree. At first he scarcely said anything; his looks only expressed his extreme surprise and vexation, and he walked to the gate and stood there, without seeming to know what to do.
…. “I do not believe I shall go any farther,” said he sullenly; “I see nothing of them. By the time I get to the knoll they may be gone somewhere else. I have had walking enough.” And he sat down with a most gloomy countenance by Fanny.”
Mr Rushworth may be slow-witted but even he is aware that Mr Crawford is a rival for his fiancé’s affections, hence his gloominess. He takes petty revenge by insulting Henry’s stature and appearance:
“Pray, Miss Price, are you such a great admirer of this Mr. Crawford as some people are? For my part, I can see nothing in him.”
Fanny is happy to agree: “I do not think him at all handsome.”
“Handsome! Nobody can call such an undersized man handsome. He is not five foot nine. I should not wonder if he is not more than five foot eight. I think he is an ill-looking fellow. In my opinion, these Crawfords are no addition at all. We did very well without them.”
A small sigh escaped Fanny here, and she did not know how to contradict him.
She feels the same way, perceiving Miss Crawford as a rival for her affection for Edmund.
This is all masterfully done. Fanny knows full well what is going on – the various flirtations and rivalries – and is appalled by it all. She does not need to narrate her reactions – the narrator lets us know through simply describing the scenes with the occasional sigh or adjective to guide the reader through. There is no sympathy shown for Maria, trapped in an early engagement with a man she no longer respects, and now attracted to the charismatic Henry. Fanny sees what is going on, thinks it is appalling and immoral, but the other characters either understand the various attractions in play and believe them to be harmless, or simply don’t notice.
Not long after the trip at Sotherton, the young people are joined by a friend of Tom Bertram, Mr Yates, and decide to put on a play at Mansfield Park. This is for their own amusement – they are bored. Sir Thomas has been away in the West Indies looking after his mysterious business affairs there, and his children and their friends feel a freedom from paternal restraint they would not otherwise enjoy. The play they eventually settle on, Lovers’ Vows, is a romance, and gives them the opportunity to build upon the flirtations started at Sotherton. Henry and Maria manipulate matters so that they play lovers in the performance, leaving Mr Rushworth feeling rejected and confused. Edmund is persuaded against his better judgment to play opposite Mary Crawford, leaving Fanny equally jealous and resentful. She condemns the whole affair, and is horrified when they try to get her involved. Soon the romance between Maria and Henry is spoken of openly between Mrs Grant (Henry’s older sister) and Mary:
“I would not give much for Mr. Rushworth’s chance if Henry stept in before the articles were signed.”
“If you have such a suspicion, something must be done; and as soon as the play is all over, we will talk to him seriously and make him know his own mind; and if he means nothing, we will send him off, though he is Henry, for a time.”
Sir Thomas’s unexpected return means the well-advanced plans for the performance have to be abandoned, but the damage in terms of the romantic attraction between Henry and Maria and Edmund and Mary is done. However, Henry leaves Mansfield Park without declaring his feelings towards Maria, as she had been hoping he would. For one of the very few times in the novel the narrative point of view switches from Fanny to Maria. We are told of not only her actions and words, but also her feelings:
“Maria was in a good deal of agitation. It was of the utmost consequence to her that Crawford should now lose no time in declaring himself, and she was disturbed that even a day should be gone by without seeming to advance that point.”
Henry is described as “the man she loved”
As the Crawfords leave Mansfield, the narration is entirely from Maria’s point of view: (note the emphasis on his hands and his touch:
To her he soon turned, repeating much of what he had already said, with only a softened air and stronger expressions of regret. But what availed his expressions or his air? He was going…the hand which had so pressed hers to his heart! the hand and the heart were alike motionless and passive now! Her spirit supported her, but the agony of her mind was severe…He was gone—he had touched her hand for the last time, he had made his parting bow, and she might seek directly all that solitude could do for her. Henry Crawford was gone.
These are just two of the fine, carefully crafted scenes in Mansfield Park. There are others, and some of the character portraits are wonderful, not least the monstrous Mrs Norris (after whom J.K. Rowling named Argus Filch’s cat). Jane Austen was an extraordinary writer and I so wanted to like this novel, but ultimately its strengths couldn’t for me overcome the central flaws. Even the contemporary responses to the novel that Jane collected from family and friends (who would after all be expected to pull their punches!) recognise clearly that this is not her best work (I agree with her mother that Fanny is “insipid”. If you can’t bring yourself to love Fanny you will struggle to love Mansfield Park.
*With thanks and love to Mr Flay the Cat thrower for editorial and proof-reading assistance.
I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth in the series of Discworld novels that focus on the earlier years of witch in training Tiffany Aching. The wonderfully poetic title of the novel is Tiffany’s defiant statement that she will be her own witch, not conforming to the convention that witches of all ages wear black (i.e. ‘midnight’) and is first referenced in Tiffany’s story at the end of A Hat Full of Sky, when she says “When I’m old I shall wear midnight”.
It is fair to say that each of Tiffany’s novels follow roughly the same pattern, albeit in each new book she is progressively a little older, a little more mature, and a more proficient witch. Here she is almost fully qualified (insofar as witches are ever qualified) and is working on her own as the Chalk’s witch, the Chalk being a sheep-farming area of Discworld somewhere between Lancre and Ankh-Morpork, which is admittedly a very large area. The novel opens at the Scouring Fair, a traditional Chalk celebration which includes maintenance of the massive hillside chalk carving which bears a striking resemblance to the Cerne Abbas giant. If you haven’t heard of the Cerne Abbas giant then a few minutes on Google will be instructive in terms of country folk’s attitudes to fertility and related issues…
But the celebration doesn’t last long because the second chapter opens with one of the most vivid and distressing scenes I can recall in the Discworld series. Thirteen year old Amber Petty has been beaten so badly by her drunken father that she has miscarried. Word has reached drinkers at the local pub, and a group of villagers is coming to exact ‘justice’ on Mr Petty. Here Pratchett references the rural tradition of “rough music” in which a community takes the law into its own hands.
“Rough Music… o one controls the music, Mr. Pretty – you know that. It just turns up when people have had enough. No one knows where it starts. People look around, and catch on another’s eye, and give each other a little nod, and other people see that. Other people catch their eye and so, very slowly, the music starts and somebody picks up a spoon and bangs it on a plate, and then somebody else bangs a jug on the table and boots starts to stamp on the floor, louder and louder. It is the sound of anger, it is the sound of people who have had enough. Do you want to face the music?
Tiffany drags Mr Petty out of bed and tries to persuade him to run for his life and then takes Amber to be cared by Jeannie, the Kelda (queen) of the Nac Mac Feegles.
The fly-leaf of the hardback edition describes I Shall Wear Midnight as a Discworld book for “young readers”. It is not, not by any measure. It is not even a novel for younger readers, if I have understood the distinction correctly. I reject the meaningfulness of the classification, but any novel that deals so directly with domestic abuse in this honest and open way is not just for young readers. Young readers are perfectly capable of reading about these issues, of course they are, but there’s no sugar coating here, no turning away or euphemisms, unless you count Tiffany’s description of Amber being beaten so hard “that she bled from places where no-one should bleed”.
Shortly later, the local Baron, for whom Tiffany has been caring, dies after a long and painful unspecified illness. Tiff travels by broomstick (accompanied by her bodyguard of Feegles) to Ankh-Morpork to tells his son, Roland. Tiffany and Roland had previously been ‘walking out’ together, and everyone assumes that she is upset that he is now engaged to someone else, but she is actually taking the disappointment in her stride. On the way to the city she has her first encounter with the novel’s protagonist, the Cunning Man, a foul-smelling figure of nightmares who has holes for eyes. The Cunning Man is able to turn people’s minds against witches, which explains why Tiffany’s normally supportive community has started suspecting her of abducting Amber and killing the Baron and stealing from him.
The Feegles cause chaos in the city, but help her find Roland, to whom she breaks her sad news. With the help of Mrs Proust, a local witch who runs the Boffo Novelty and Joke shop, in Tenth Egg Street, ‘the spiritual home for all those who consider that fart powder is the last word in humour’, Tiffany looks for answers as to what the Cunning Man is, and how to defeat him. She meets Eskarina Smith, Discworld’s first and apparently only female wizard, not seen since the events of the third Discworld novel, Equal Rites, who tells her the Cunning Man’s origin story. After a walk-on appearance by some of the Watch’s regulars and an overnight stay in the police cells, Tiffany hurries back to the Chalk to confront the Cunning Man and restore some balance to her community. In doing so she meets two important new allies – Letitia, Roland’s fiancé, who is without realising it a powerful witch, and the charming Preston, one of the Baron’s guards. Back at the Chalk there is time for the Baron’s funeral and the new Baron’s wedding, guest appearances by Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax (the highlight of any Discworld novel!) before the inevitable climatic showdown with the Cunning Man.
This is an important book. As with all Pratchett’s work it is suffused with good sense, compassion and kindness. Tiffany is a good person working tirelessly to make the world just a little bit better. She doesn’t do it for personal gain or glory, just because it needs doing. In a world where there are too many people doing the exact opposite, we could all be a bit more like Tiffany. But that’s not all Pratchett has to say. This is a novel about how people are prepared to believe bad things about outsiders, about ‘others’. The key quote (and it is rare that Discworld novels have just one key quote, but I think this one does) is “Poison goes where poison’s welcome.” In other words the lies told about Tiffany and other witches would not be believed unless people wanted to believe them. In a world in which outsiders and immigrants are demonised we need to realise that the poisonous words spread about them by newspapers, websites and politicians cannot harm us if we do not welcome them in. The people of the Chalk are Tiffany’s friends and relatives, normal hard-working folk, but they are not immune to the harsh words and thoughts spoken about witches or wise-women:
“everybody knew, in some mysterious way, that witches ran away with babies and blighted crops, and all the other nonsense. And at the same time, they would come running to the witch when they needed help.”
Volume 2 in the Sword of Honour trilogy, and sequel to Men At Arms, Officers and Gentlemen sees our hero and Waugh avatar Guy Crouchback returning to London following the debacle at the end of the first novel. Despite the capital suffering from the worst weeks of the Blitz, aristocratic young men try their best to ignore the bombings and continue their social lives – dinner at the club, cocktails, etc – as normally as possible. Guy however is just passing through, on the search for a continuing role in which he can contribute to the war effort. He is also burdened by the responsibility of having to return the possessions of Apthorpe to a fellow officer, Trimmer McTavish.
Guy reports back to his battalion, but nobody expects him nor knows what to do with him. Eventually he is posted to an island in the north of Scotland to join a newly formed commando unit – more to get him out of the way it seems than find him something useful to do. On the Isle of Mugg he finally tracks down McTavish and with relief hands over Apthorpe’s burdensome possessions. Waugh peoples his narrative with absurd but believable caricatures such as the explosives obsessed Laird of Mugg and his Nazi-supporting niece. Trimmer is another example – we find out that he was once a hairdresser using the name ‘Gustave’ working on the Aquitainia where one of his regular customers was Virginia (formerly Guy’s wife).
More shambolic ‘training’ and preparation for combat follows, of a sort very similar to that endured in the first novel. Waugh captures the absurdity of this stage of the war – orders issued and then immediately countermanded, an obsession with who salutes who, petty deference to authority and where administration is more important than military fitness for duty – the unit is profoundly unprepared for combat:
They had no transport, they had no cooks, they had far too many officers and sergeants, they wore a variety of uniforms and followed a multitude of conflicting regimental customs, they bore strange arms, daggers and toggle-ropes and tommy-guns.
Eventually the unit, now dubbed Operation Hookforce, after many false starts sets off Egypt, Back in the UK a morale-boosting commando raid to the occupied Channel Islands surfaces in German-occupied France. The army can’t afford another fiasco so the operation is presented as a success and its senior officer, Trimmer, is feted as a patriotic hero.
This operation presages another more serious military disaster, the evacuation of Crete, Hookforce is sent to help with the campaign, but it is utterly chaotic and the troops are quickly overwhelmed. Guy manages to get out at the very last minute, and awakes in hospital, recovering from sunstroke and a serious case of PTSD. Despite having had a decade or more to reflect on the fact, Waugh is clearly still bemused by the fact that the Allies won the war, given their extraordinary levels of incompetence. It’s no coincidence that in both this novel and Men at Arms people blow themselves up accidentally. Senior officers are obsessive and slightly deranged – Ritchie-Hook decapitates a guard in the earlier novel and in this Major Fido Hound steals his own troops rations, and Ivor Claire deserts his post and is sent to India to avoid the disgrace of a court martial.
Several scenes from Officers and Gentlemen closely follow those of Waugh’s experiences in the Second World War, with a good mixture of creative and comedic licence thrown in: “I have been in a serious battle and have decided I abominate military life,” he wrote to his wife Laura from Egypt in June 1941, after the evacuation of Crete. “It was tedious and futile & fatiguing. I found I was not at all frightened; only very bored and very weary.” This may have been bravado – many men lost their lives in Crete, and many others were taken prisoner, and Waugh was fortunate to escape unscathed. But the novel does reflect the chaotic nature of Waugh’s training and combat experience, even if Guy is a pared-back version of Waugh, more respectful of authority, trying to do the right thing while others around him are panicking or looking after number one.
At times Waugh writes like an old man looking back with bitterness across the years to a long-forgotten, ignominious war. He was only in his early fifties when he published this novel, had experienced huge success with, amongst other worksBrideshead Revisited (1945) and had what would generally be described as a ‘good war’. It’s hard to understand quite what made him so embittered. We do know that he was suffering from bromide poisoning when he was writing Officers and Gentlemen, apparently taking it as a cure-all for among other things insomnia. However I don’t think one would be able to diagnose this from the text alone. On reflection I probably should have built more of a break between the first two volumes of the trilogy because close-up they felt very similar in structure and style, and I am not sure I will be able to distinguish between them in a year or two. However I will push on and finish the trilogy with Unconditional Surrender when and if the bookshops finally reopen!
Men at Arms (not to be confused with the Terry Pratchett Discworld novel of the same name) is the first in Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy of novels about his experiences in
the Second World War. His avatar for the purposes of this semi-autobiographical novel is the urbane Guy Crouchback. Guy is in his mid-thirties, has a failed marriage behind him, and his strict Catholicism means he cannot remarry. Hiding away in the family villa in Italy, Guy is moved to volunteer and join the army on the declaration of war in 1939. Being in his thirties he is considered rather old for active service and his extensive efforts to find a posting come to nothing. Nothing that is until a chance encounter leads to a role as an officer in eccentric and ancient Royal Corps of Halberdiers. In real life Waugh was in the Marines (initially at least) and it is clear that many of the experiences and challenges of army life are drawn from Waugh’s own life. Much of the novel focuses on his desultory training as an officer and the various random postings around the country, while the real events of the war take place off-stage, filtered back to the UK in a slowly descending spiral of bad news. Guy’s fellow officers are a series of fellow eccentrics and outcasts, particularly Apthorpe whose large and burdensome collection of personal possessions follows him around the country and becomes a running joke.
On leave in London during a short break in training Guy bumps into his ex-wife and her second husband Tommy Blackhouse, from whom she is also divorced. This is the kind of novel where characters are constantly bumping into friends and former lovers in unlikely circumstances, always responding in a low-key, fancy meeting you here old chap way. This motif is one of the few stylistic remnants from Waugh’s earlier comic novels where London and life was one big party for the rich and fabulous. As Guy is desperate to produce an heir to the Crouchback name, his brothers having pre-deceased him, he conceives an absurd plan to seduce and impregnate his ex-wife. Despite his efforts to get her drunk and into bed, his clumsy execution of his plan, not to mention the constant interruptions, frustrate him.
Back in training, a new officer, Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, takes command of the halberdiers, and threatens to bring some order to the chaos. While a sense of purpose is introduced the brigade seems no nearer to being combat-ready or to actually going into action, despite the steadily deteriorating position in Europe at the front. At this point in the novel there is an extended comic scene revolving round a chemical toilet, also known as a thunderbox. Quite why they need a chemical toilet when they are billeted in a school building is not explained and probably not relevant. This scene was well done and illustrated the ridiculousness of the modern army, with echoes of earlier, much more light-hearted Waugh. The feud between Apthorpe and Ritchie-Hook over ownership and exclusive access to the toilet culminates in it being sabotaged and destroyed in an explosion. Toilet humour may seem a bit out of place in this stiff-upper-lip novel of army life; the Halberdiers is an ancient brigade governed by a strict and sometimes apparently arbitrary set of rules, rituals, conventions and codes. But it is a welcome comic relief from army routine. These scenes reminded me of some chapters in Spike Milligan’s war memoirs such as Adolf Hitler, my part in his downfall, with which Men at Arms shares some dna – the extended and chaotic time spent preparing for conflict, pointless exercises, long journeys around the country ending up back in the same location, and moments of high farce.
Eventually the brigade sets sail for Dakar in Vichy French Senegal. Waugh was involved in a similar expedition to Senegal, which had a similar outcome. Having travelled all this way it comes as no surprise as the attack is called off. Nevertheless a frustrated Ritchie-Hook organises a clandestine raid on the coast, led by Guy, and returns with the severed head of an African soldier as a grisly trophy. For Ritchie-Hook this is all a gruesome game, another anecdote for when he is eventually decommissioned, but the consequences for Guy (for the unofficial raid, not for the decapitation of the guard) are serious, and he leave Senegal under a cloud. The brigade moves on to Sierra Leone where Apthorpe is hospitalised with an unspecified fever, his end hastened by a well-meaning gift of a bottle of whisky from Guy.
I’ve read quite a lot of Waugh in the past, and I am not sure how I haven’t got round to the Sword of Honour trilogy before. It is markedly different in tone from the dark comedy of his pre-war novels. Men at Arms is much closer to a straightforward memoir, with some exaggeration thrown in for comic effect. It is not a plot driven novel – the narrative meanders along at a relaxed pace. It’s also not really a war novel – the amount of combat involved in very limited and Waugh is in no way a triumphalist (the references to Churchill are pretty unflattering). Guy is something of an anti-hero, even of his own novel – he is determined to do the right thing when his country needs him and fully resigned to the discomforts and danger that military service will involve. But at the same time he tries to seduce his ex-wife, causes the death of a colleague, and the only action he sees is farcically unsuccessful. There is an honesty to this account of the early years of the war, when shambolic defeat follows defeat and only the Channel saves the country from invasion. I am pretty sure I’ll push on and read the other two novels in the trilogy to see how things pan out and try to decide whether I would recommend this to anyone other than Waugh completists or not.
About a third of the way through Shuggie Bain I found myself once again questioning the wisdom of the Booker Prize panel, concerned that this 2020 winning novel was not much more than a standard misery memoir. Because it certainly starts that way. This openly autobiographical novel tells the story of the author’s distressingly difficult childhood in all its awful detail. All the traditional features of the misery memoir genre appear in quick succession. Young Shuggie Bain’s family is desperately poor (although arguably no poorer than the rest of his decimated working class Glaswegian community). His father is a philanderer and his mother is an alcoholic. Shuggie is gay, well spoken (mysteriously missing the broad Glaswegian accent of his family and neighbours) and artistic, and bullied relentlessly at school. The urban environment is empathetically grim:
“So Shuggie sat in stilted silence as the taxi rounded the corners of a brutal-looking council scheme. Each street was a scarred field of burnt-out off-licences dirty canals, and cars on bricks…Five or six tall high-rises pinned the heavy sky in place…the high-rises were ringed with low, boxy concrete houses… What was once built to be new and healthful now looked sick with a poverty of hope. There was no grass and no greenery; every flat surface was concreted over or covered in large, smooth round boulders.”
As is the weather:
“Rain was a natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial.”
Child, domestic and sexual abuse is so common it is not even recognised as such, or more precisely that there is not the language to describe it as such. Unemployment is almost universal, the mines and dockyards having been closed by the Thatcher Government. When the family moves to a grimy pit village outside of Glasgow in a futile attempt to escape, the community are hostile and unwelcoming. His father leaves home for another woman and his mother descends into even further alcoholic abuse. Catholic and Protestant sectarianism provides a final layer of nastiness to daily life. Shuggie’s sister leaves home as soon as she can, and his older brother can do little to help. He goes hungry most days and becomes his mother’s primary carer. It was a hard, depressing, unrelenting read, and I worried what else could go wrong for Shuggie, especially as the novel had opened with a chapter showing him living alone and having left school before his sixteenth birthday.
But then, amazingly, I found myself slowly coming to admire Shuggie’s extraordinary resilience. Despite the overwhelming challenges he faces everyday, he does his best to care for his alcoholic single-parent mother, goes to school when he can, keeps himself smart and ignores the bullies. Look most young carers he grows up quickly, learning to dress and undress his mother when she is in an alcoholic stupor:
“Shuggie gently lifted her foot, first unbuckling the tiny ankle clasp and slipping off each high heel and then carefully pulling the hard seam of her black tights out from between her toes. He rubbed the balls of her cold feet tenderly, and then he set each foot gently back on the floor. He talked to her quietly as he did…He set her high heels to the side of her chair and stood over her again. With skill he searched under the soft sag of her breasts until he found the centre of her chest, and through her thin jumper he undid the butterfly hook of her bra… Hooking his fingers he found each bra strap. He moved them on her shoulder line and freed her burdened flesh from the digging pressure of the nylon. Agnes stirred but did not wake. She coughed again, a deep damp cough that was the miners’ houses and mould, warm lager and now a cold night by the river.”
This scene jumped out at me, not just because of how it is resolved. Shuggie looks after his mother with such care – “gently, carefully, tenderly, with skill” – and has obviously done this many times before. More, it is written with an attention to detail that tells me the author has almost certainly had to do the same thing himself – sometimes scenes have an authenticity that is more than just a careful imagining of an event.
Agnes, his alcoholic mother, is in many ways the central tragic figure of this novel. She battles with her demons, and for one brief period seems to recover from her addiction, succumbing only to prove to her latest boyfriend that she is not the slave to alcohol she most obviously is. She is unable to give her children the care they need, but Shuggie’s love for her is indomitable. He is not perfect – he loses his temper and lies to her, but these are moments in years of devotion. And although Shuggie can’t in the end rescue his mother from her demons and comes to terms with the hopelessness of his task, the novel closes with scenes of him caring for another seemingly lost cause.
The New York Times described Shuggie as living in a “world of pain made bearable by love” which I think captures it right.
Finally, just a quick word about the novel’s cover images. The cover of the Picador hard back edition carries an extraordinary image (left) of a young boy perched on a cross-shaped post, a vivid crucifixion metaphor set against the backdrop of a desolate urban landscape. The first edition used this (right) tender picture of a young son cradling his mother’s head, locking eyes with her, both characters with a half-smile of recognition, his bare stick-thin arms showing his young age. It’s rare for an author to be so well served by such inspired and at the same time very different choices.
The Underground Railroad is a powerful exploration of the experiences of slaves in the USA in the first decades of the nineteenth century. It vividly brings to life the brutality of that period in images that will be hard for some readers to stomach.
The history of the real underground railroad has been extensively documented, so the challenge for any author is how to bring the lives of the slaves and those that assisted them to life. Whitehead’s ingenious idea is to conceive of the railroad as a literal, physical underground railroad, with engines and tracks running from the Southern states to the free North.
“The stairs led onto a small platform. The black mouths of the gigantic tunnel opened at either end. It must have been twenty feet tall, walls lined with dark and light colored stones in an alternating pattern. The sheer industry that had made such a project possible. Cora and Caesar noticed the rails. Two steel rails ran the visible length of the tunnel, pinned into the dirt by wooden cross-ties. The steel ran south and north presumably, springing from some inconceivable source and shooting toward a miraculous terminus.”
The story is told by the third-generation slave Cora, who has been born and brought up on a cotton plantation in deep South Georgia. There are one or two chapters narrated by other characters – Cora’s mother Mabel, and the slavecatcher Ridgeway, for example – but Cora’s is the predominant voice. Escape from the plantation is thought to be extremely improbable and dangerous – it is believed (wrongly, as it happens) to have been achieved only once before, and the punishments meted out to anyone who even tries to escape are barbaric in the extreme. Bounty hunters roam the land tracking down escaping slaves and recapturing them even years after their escape. But the advent of a new plantation owner, and the prospect of even more vicious abuse leads Cora to reconsider the escape plans of fellow slave Caesar. Caesar believes he knows how to make contact with a station manager on the fabled underground railroad.
Although their escape is beset with challenges, Cora and Caesar eventually make it to South Carolina, and begin life as free people for the first time in their lives. In this version of American history South Carolina is the site of an enormous and complex social experiment. Here the benevolent state government buys the freedom of slaves and then gives them jobs, medical treatment and social housing. While this seems utopian compared to the bloodthirsty existence on the plantation back in Georgia, there is a sinister element to this approach to the slavery question. Concerned that blacks are beginning to outnumber whites, the State government is sterilising black women and using black men to track the spread of syphilis. This is one of a number of theoretical approaches to slavery and the social problems it caused that are explored in the novel. How could a society dependent on black labour for the basis of its agrarian economy transition to a new model while preserving its prosperity? Although there were forced sterilization programmes across the USA in the twentieth century, evidence of this being an approach to slavery is hard to find. In fact quite the opposite happened – because slaves were so valuable, particularly after restrictions began to be applied to the transatlantic slave trade, female slaves were given fertility treatment to increase the number of children they had. Just to be clear, this is not a criticism of the novel’s exploration of this issue. It is in many ways best seen as an alternative history approach to considering the experience of slavery, even if many of the events described are drawn from real-life testimonies.
Throughout the novel Cora is relentlessly pursued by a bounty hunter named Ridgeway. Ridgeway failed to catch Cora’s mother, Mabel, and is determined to right this wrong by recapturing Cora, whatever the cost. He tracks her to South Carolina where she escapes at the last minute, leaving Caesar behind to be lynched by a mob. She ends up in North Carolina and is offered refuge by the son of a former railroad station operator. North Carolina has a different approach to slavery from its southern neighbour. Seeing the growing black population as a threat, North Carolina has launched what amounts to a holocaust against all black people, together with any who support or shelter them. Slaves have been replaced with mainly Irish indentured servants instead, just one step above slaves themselves. Any black people found in the State, irrespective of their legal status, are summarily executed, with a long series of bodies displayed across the State in a so-called Freedom Trail. (I had to look up whether this was a real thing or not – the brutality of slavery was such that it wouldn’t have surprised me if it was, although it is more an image drawn from Ancient Rome than the American South). Lynching black people has become a ritualised part of North Carolina’s society. Cora hides in the former station-master’s attic for several months, but is once again captured by Ridgeway when her presence is betrayed by the family servant. (The echoes between Cora’s time in the attic and the experiences of Anne Frank are clear, as are the wider points of reference between the slave-owners and the Nazis.)
Ridgeway tries to take Cora back to her owner in Georgia, but en-route she is rescued by some escaped slaves and taken to a free black farming community in Indiana. This is another, more positive alternative to life under slavery. Living on land once stolen from native Americans, freed and runaway slaves supported by abolitionists live in a community of equals.
“The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib. Stolen babies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.”
But it is clear this success cannot last, threatened from without by worried white neighbours, alarmed at the growing number of people living on the farm, and from within by nervous residents who disagree with the policy of offering sanctuary to runaways. This debate – whether progress in the fight for freedom for slaves can be achieved by radical challenges to the status quo or a gradualist, legal approach – was one of the many discussions in the novel that echoes the issues faced by modern African Americans .
This was a compelling read. The elements of magical realism in the novel, in particular the vision of the railway itself, and the discussions of some of the alternative responses to slavery, blending compellingly realistic descriptions with more fantastical concepts to make a gripping whole. In writing about this shameful period of American history a fine line has to be navigated between under-stating the barbaric nature of the treatment of slaves and exploiting those experiences for their shock value (in the way that, for example, Django Unchained does). Whitehead strikes that balance carefully – he doesn’t look away from some of the distressing scenes, but neither does he linger upon them. His characters are all well-rounded, believable individuals, even Ridgeway the remorseless Ahab-like bounty hunter.
If you enjoy murder mysteries but aren’t a fan of the more gory, bloody thirsty variety of the genre, you will love Richard Osman’s intelligent but ever so slightly sedate ‘The Thursday Murder Club’. Set in a retirement village, four friends gather once a week (“It was Thursday because there was a two-hour slot free in the Jigsaw Room, between Art History and Conversational French”) to discuss unsolved murder cases. One of the club members, Penny, has recently fallen seriously ill and is no longer unable to attend, so the club has decided to recruit a new member. Joyce is the voice of naivete in the narrative, breathlessly excited about her new adventures. (“I’m afraid I don’t know WTF. I only discovered LOL last week”). The other, more experienced members all bring their own particular set of skills to this most unlikely A-team. They are Elizabeth, who was an intelligence agent before never really quite retiring, Ibrahim, a psychiatrist, and Ron, a trade union leader.
The cynic in me suspects that Osman has had some excellent advice on how to sell books. Rule one must surely be “know your audience”. I haven’t taken the time to look it up, but I am believe the main buyers of murder mystery novels written by television celebrities are senior citizens, and it looks as if Osman has constructed his story with that market in mind. The heroes of his novel are the club members who defy all negative stereotypes about the aged. They are energetic, intelligent, and navigate the modern world with ease. The murder club amateur detectives are always one step ahead of the police and break rules (and laws!) with impunity. Jokes about the challenges of modern technology are kept to a minimum. This adds up to create an immensely likeable story despite some of the more conspicuous evidence of its construction. At 377 pages across 115 chapters the pages slip by quickly, and the contrasting narrative voices and cliff-hanging endings all give the story considerable pace. All these elements make this a very easy novel to read. Is it patronising to suggest that this is all intended to make the book more popular with older readers?
I’m not going to summarise the plot, for the obvious reason of avoiding spoilers, but also because it is quite byzantine. There are lots of red herrings, sub-plots and other diversions which add to the page count but at times felt like padding. The ending won’t come as a massive shock, but I don’t think it is mean to – after a while there are only so many suspects left standing!
Despite some of the media coverage of this novel it is anything but ground breaking in its treatment of the old. Miss Marple is an obvious template for the senior citizen amateur detective, using her age to ensure people under-estimate and overlook her while she doggedly pursues her investigations. Having said that, the setting is original (so far as my limited knowledge of murder mysteries can account for). Osman acknowledges that many people living in a retirement home will either have lost a life-partner, or be in the process of losing them, to dementia or other illnesses. Grief is shown as part of everyday life for this community.
It’s hard to avoid the fact that even the very best murder mysteries are written within a fairly rigid set of conventions. It follows that it is not a criticism of this author to say that his first novel seems to be consciously laying down a template for future novels in the series to follow. Why wouldn’t it? I understand he has already written the sequel to this novel, and I think I can hazard a couple of guesses about what will happen in The Thursday Mystery Club 2. The central structure of a suspicious death being investigated by the club members will of course be retained. I think we will learn a lot more about the back-story of Elizabeth and Ibrahim, two key members of the club who so far we only know little about. There’s a lot more to come there if the history of some of the other residents is anything to go by. I also think one of the club members will die – my money is on retired trade union leader Ron – allowing fresh blood to join the club and new characters to be introduced. I also suspect there will be more explicit romantic complications between the retirement village residents, and that PC Donna De Freitas and her boss, DCI Chris Hudson will return for the next set of murders.
Just as an aside, the attitude to death in this novel is interesting. Of course murder mysteries by their nature need to confront death, and one set in a retirement village probably all the more so. But here two characters take their own lives in quite a casual manner, as if for the old death is less of an issue that it would be for younger characters. That might be the case but it doesn’t really square with the zest for life shown elsewhere in the novel. Some old people might be blasé about death and check out willingly when the time comes, but I suspect many others will fight it to the last – certainly Ron, Elizabeth, Joyce and Ibrahim would.
It’s good to see one of the more thoughtful, intelligent television personalities have success as an author. I await the inevitable television adaptations of his novels with interest.
I decided to end 2020 with a final Booker Prize winner, Anna Burns’ Milkman, which won the prize in 2018. It won from what seems a fairly weak long and shortlist, missing many of the big-hitters in English fiction in recent years, although I would freely admit to not having read any of the short-listed novels, nor indeed anything by any of the short-listed authors.
Set in Northern Ireland during the peak of what was euphemistically called “the Troubles” – that is to say the bitter sectarian violence that dominated daily life for much of the population of Northern Ireland in this period – Milkman is a first person narrative describing a few traumatic weeks in the life of the unnamed narrator.
This narrator is an eighteen year old woman who lives in the heart of the Catholic community in a large town in Northern Ireland. It (along with everything else) is never named, but i think it is safe to assume it is based on Belfast. She is in a relationship of sorts with her “maybe boyfriend” although she tries to keep this relationship secret from her mother and siblings. She has a large family – as it seems do all her friends and neighbours – who are all referred to by their relationships rather than their names – third brother-in-law, oldest sister, etc. Friends and neighbours are also nameless and referred to by their occupation or some other defining feature. This is a world of euphemisms and coded references where proper nouns are forbidden – so the Protestant community is “the other side”, the Irish Republic is “the country down there” and Britain is “the country over the water”.
The Troubles form a backdrop to our protagonist’s daily life, but she does her best to navigate some form of normality despite the rigid code of conduct imposed by her community. This means that some types of rule-breaking are allowed – for example she sleeps over with her maybe-boyfriend without apparently attracting the censure of the community – but other activities such as going to hospital for medical treatment (it might allow the authorities an opportunity to force you into becoming an informer, or worse throw suspicion on you that you are an informer) even when seriously unwell are forbidden.
The narrator’s attempts to get on with her life are disrupted when she meets the Milkman. He does not deliver milk or any other dairy products, and the source of this soubriquet is unclear. He is much older than her and already married. Milkmen are usually perceived as a welcome presence, and a positive part of the daily life of a community. However this milkman however is anything but. He is a senior member of the Provisional IRA (again never mentioned directly) and as such he has certain privileges in this society, one of which appears to be the right to pick a consort of his choosing, irrespective of her wishes in the matter. The narrator is alarmed at being singled out in this way, and doesn’t know how to react. A robust rejection would be dangerous, for her maybe-boyfriend if no-one else, but she has no interest in this creepy figure. She doesn’t know who to turn to for help:
“At the time, age eighteen, having been brought up in a hair-trigger society where the ground rules were – if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn’t there? At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment.”
She goes jogging with one of her many brothers-in-law, walks to her evening classes, socialises with maybe-boyfriend, but all the while is conscious of the menacing presence of the Milkman. Her relationship with maybe-boyfriend suffers under this strain, until she discovers his secret relationship with his friend, chef. Chef is bullied for his interest in cooking, which is widely perceived as indicating he is gay – although he is able to put his chef knives to use when the time comes.
The claustrophobic atmosphere of the city, where the authorities lurk behind every bush, snapping pictures of people going about their lives, is profoundly oppressive, and distorts all normal relationships. People accept punishment beatings and shootings as normal, and choose unhappy relationships to avoid the disappointment when happy relationships fail, as they surely must. The control of the terrorist groups and their supporters is however tenuous – freedom seems to be seeping out all over the place, from the children and their embrace of ballroom dancing (when written in this context I know that must appear implausible, but the author does a much better job of making it seem convincing) to romantic relationships being restored, including maybe-boyfriend and his long-standing romantic feelings for chef.
This wasn’t an easy novel to read – the refusal to use any proper nouns combined with the dense paragraphs and complex family relationships made it hard to push through at times. Conveying how language is breaking down with using fractured sentences is difficult, leaving the reader with paragraphs like this:
“Still,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach nothing,’ he said. ‘Ach sure,’ I said. ‘Ach sure what?’ he said. ‘Ach sure, if that’s how you feel.’ ‘Ach sure, of course that’s how I feel.’ ‘Ach all right then.’ ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach.’
But despite this Milkman made a strong impression on me. There are many surprising, almost charming elements, such as the narrator’s young sisters, who are exceedingly intelligent and curious, and blossom in the most difficult of circumstances. Love also finds a way – the narrator’s mother rekindles a childhood romance with the real milkman, her brother runs away with a former girlfriend, and chef and maybe-boyfriend edge towards declaring their feelings for one another. Initially the small-mindedness of the tight-knit community initially seems invincible – no dissent is allowed, and anyone who behaves unconventionally is considered “beyond the pale”, including the narrator. But this begrudging, limited tolerance of unconventional behaviour, such as the “issue women”, a feminist group, and the real milkman himself, who refuses to allow the IRA to bury weapons in his garden, are the seeds for a wider resistance. From such a grim premise Milkman turned out to be surprisingly optimistic.
The Reading Bug 