Edited by Steve Bamlett, Thursday, 11 Aug 2016, 20:07
Sometimes you come across a novel so stunning that words
fail you. This is such a novel. It can’t be said to be a joy to read – it has
that quality you find in both the Johns - Burnside and Banville - (who both revere this novel)
where reality can be apprehended only in images, themes and genre tracers of
the Gothic. Both the writers I mention disdain to be called 'Gothic' – claiming that
a true perception of reality would seem Gothic once the ideological layers are torn
away. I think this is true of this novel.
After retiring from a career some part of which was in
social work, this novel’s worst moments I have to admit – that I want as a
reader to read as brilliantly intertextually bound with the Gothic, the
psych-thriller and the murder novel - are actually AT THEIR WORST straight descriptions of real things. I remember Burnside at the Edinburgh Book Festival saying the same (or similar) of the treatment of
child abuse in his great under-rated novel, Glister.
I don’t want to tell any part of the story (you need to confront it) – only to point
out that the novel keeps fooling you about the kind of novel it is and the kind
of character it brings horribly to life. At times, I felt merely uncomfortable
with its ability to convey domestic decay and ‘dirt’ that you live in (even
embrace) and its tortured grasp of the importance to humans of images of human
excretion and attempts to cover them up – from sweat through vomit to
unbelievably accurately described bowel movements.
This play on the boundaries of the formation of the disgust
response and the games it plays in hiding realities is central to the novel. Such 'play' leave victims of true 'dirt' of life continually to bear the blame of other people’s inability to face the horrors
they are capable of inflicting and living with. People who turn away from the
true nature of institutional and familial abuse MUST read this novel. People who have opinions
about the value of ‘hard treatment’ for young offenders and children should also do that. People who feel adulthood has self-sustaining authority and rights - perhaps particularly. Not that, of course - there are easy answers. The value of 'Flight' (running away) is the only illusion this novel allows you to sustain as an answer - and it is the route taken increasingly in our society with rising 'disappearances' and suicides (an issue this novel is wise about).
So I can’t review this novel other than to say it is
probably the most amazing modern novel you will have read in a long time. So
far my bet for Booker winner – also nominated I see for the Gordon Burn Prize –
but that is by the by. This isn’t a book to like – though it is brilliantly written,
theatrically conceived as a plot and hurts like an icicle dropping by
happenstance and piercing your skin with aesthetic pleasure (this is a favourite image of the novel).
Lovers of a sentimental and false Christmas
as we know it now should probably leave the novel alone. It does not respect
the cover up involved: ‘My father and I had silently agreed to do away with Christmas
when my mother died’
You don’t need more. Here is a writer who knows the effects
she can achieve by a dead metaphor for ‘forgetting’ revived as a threat to
murder the illusory but an illusion absolutely necessary to so many - the necessity, of self-celebration by the
family. If I still taught social work, it would be compulsory reading on my
courses!
Steve’s Bookers: Ottessa Mossfegh EILEEN
Sometimes you come across a novel so stunning that words fail you. This is such a novel. It can’t be said to be a joy to read – it has that quality you find in both the Johns - Burnside and Banville - (who both revere this novel) where reality can be apprehended only in images, themes and genre tracers of the Gothic. Both the writers I mention disdain to be called 'Gothic' – claiming that a true perception of reality would seem Gothic once the ideological layers are torn away. I think this is true of this novel.
After retiring from a career some part of which was in social work, this novel’s worst moments I have to admit – that I want as a reader to read as brilliantly intertextually bound with the Gothic, the psych-thriller and the murder novel - are actually AT THEIR WORST straight descriptions of real things. I remember Burnside at the Edinburgh Book Festival saying the same (or similar) of the treatment of child abuse in his great under-rated novel, Glister.
I don’t want to tell any part of the story (you need to confront it) – only to point out that the novel keeps fooling you about the kind of novel it is and the kind of character it brings horribly to life. At times, I felt merely uncomfortable with its ability to convey domestic decay and ‘dirt’ that you live in (even embrace) and its tortured grasp of the importance to humans of images of human excretion and attempts to cover them up – from sweat through vomit to unbelievably accurately described bowel movements.
This play on the boundaries of the formation of the disgust response and the games it plays in hiding realities is central to the novel. Such 'play' leave victims of true 'dirt' of life continually to bear the blame of other people’s inability to face the horrors they are capable of inflicting and living with. People who turn away from the true nature of institutional and familial abuse MUST read this novel. People who have opinions about the value of ‘hard treatment’ for young offenders and children should also do that. People who feel adulthood has self-sustaining authority and rights - perhaps particularly. Not that, of course - there are easy answers. The value of 'Flight' (running away) is the only illusion this novel allows you to sustain as an answer - and it is the route taken increasingly in our society with rising 'disappearances' and suicides (an issue this novel is wise about).
So I can’t review this novel other than to say it is probably the most amazing modern novel you will have read in a long time. So far my bet for Booker winner – also nominated I see for the Gordon Burn Prize – but that is by the by. This isn’t a book to like – though it is brilliantly written, theatrically conceived as a plot and hurts like an icicle dropping by happenstance and piercing your skin with aesthetic pleasure (this is a favourite image of the novel).
Lovers of a sentimental and false Christmas as we know it now should probably leave the novel alone. It does not respect the cover up involved: ‘My father and I had silently agreed to do away with Christmas when my mother died’
You don’t need more. Here is a writer who knows the effects she can achieve by a dead metaphor for ‘forgetting’ revived as a threat to murder the illusory but an illusion absolutely necessary to so many - the necessity, of self-celebration by the family. If I still taught social work, it would be compulsory reading on my courses!
All the best
Steve