Sometimes you just have to admit that there are some
seriously good novelists (to say nothing of their seriously sweet novels) that
are not for you. A.L. Kennedy has always been one of those novelists to me and
though I tried it and admire it, I cannot read it through and scanned too often
to claim that I have read this novel.
Perhaps it is because I find novels about relationships
between the well-heeled but tragic London middle-classes hard to take, however
serious the underlying themes – as these most definitely are. Such novels are
needed, have and deserve a strong and committed readership though and A.L.
Kennedy clearly WRITES very well indeed. Any number if quotations would show
this.
Plus, this is a novel that makes serious claim to innovate –
although again perhaps in an arena I find (in novels if NOT in other media)
unpalatable. I am a great fan of multi-modal communication and of the
functional grammar of such forms of ‘making’ (see the scholar M. Sindoni for an
example of the kind of analysis I mean). However, I prefer my literary effects
(and here is a serious self-limitation) confined to normative written syntax –
that does not mean normative grammar – else one would exclude favourites like
James Kelman. I don’t mean poetry either – that would exclude the wonderful Tom
Leonard.
But in novels, I
don’t want many effects to be carried in the grammar of spatial location,
text-chunk size (although Sterne did this in the eighteenth century - Fielding
did it too in Joseph Andrews),
font-size and font-style as is clearly the self-conscious case in this novel.
Sometimes major effects are carried ‘wittily’ and pertinently in font variation
(103 – 5, 175), others – especially of font size are more subtle at evoking
register changes (see pp 48 – 49). I dislike the over-use of italics in this
novel to register consciousness changes within character though – they creak like
old-fashioned stage scenery.
There is aching agony even in Kennedy’s long stretches of ‘witty’
(perhaps in the sense it is used in Metaphysical poetry criticism) prose. It
reminds me of her skills as a stand-up comedian and the seriousness available
to skilful use of shaggy-dog stories too. It reminds me that Kennedy is a
seriously good tragi-comic actress and of the gestural embodiment that she
captures in some vignettes – that WONDERFUL story of the baby blackbird trapped
in a mistress’ improper garden netting with which it opens, for instance. There
are endless varieties of ways in which human pain (in experience or empathetic
projection) are beautifully and seriously conveyed.
But all these wonders I see but cannot feel – am I trapped
in a moment of Coleridge’s ‘Dejection: An
Ode’ or are these artistic techniques not as grounded as I want (even
demand them to be) in something more than a passively tragically-humorous take
on human dilemmas. If anything, I want the kind of generic play in the Gothic
elements of Mossfegh’s Eileen or
McGuire’s The North Water, that show
us that self-consciously constructed worlds can be reconstructed.
They thus offer us opportunity for difficult kinds of re-engagement
with our worlds and our perceptions of them. At bottom – I can’t but feel that
this is just another, if VERY CLEVER, heterosexual romance novel, in which a
couple measure changes in themselves primarily against each other – whatever
the possibility for other kinds of social engagement arising from these changes.
That puts me off – whatever my empathy with the writer’s
politics. Of course, these opinions aren’t much intended to be read by others
or likely to be so, but it is possible that that may happen. I can but
apologise in that event – the failure to appreciate here is very probably ALL
MINE!!!!!!
Steve’s Bookers – A.L. Kennedy SERIOUS SWEET.
Sometimes you just have to admit that there are some seriously good novelists (to say nothing of their seriously sweet novels) that are not for you. A.L. Kennedy has always been one of those novelists to me and though I tried it and admire it, I cannot read it through and scanned too often to claim that I have read this novel.
Perhaps it is because I find novels about relationships between the well-heeled but tragic London middle-classes hard to take, however serious the underlying themes – as these most definitely are. Such novels are needed, have and deserve a strong and committed readership though and A.L. Kennedy clearly WRITES very well indeed. Any number if quotations would show this.
Plus, this is a novel that makes serious claim to innovate – although again perhaps in an arena I find (in novels if NOT in other media) unpalatable. I am a great fan of multi-modal communication and of the functional grammar of such forms of ‘making’ (see the scholar M. Sindoni for an example of the kind of analysis I mean). However, I prefer my literary effects (and here is a serious self-limitation) confined to normative written syntax – that does not mean normative grammar – else one would exclude favourites like James Kelman. I don’t mean poetry either – that would exclude the wonderful Tom Leonard.
But in novels, I don’t want many effects to be carried in the grammar of spatial location, text-chunk size (although Sterne did this in the eighteenth century - Fielding did it too in Joseph Andrews), font-size and font-style as is clearly the self-conscious case in this novel. Sometimes major effects are carried ‘wittily’ and pertinently in font variation (103 – 5, 175), others – especially of font size are more subtle at evoking register changes (see pp 48 – 49). I dislike the over-use of italics in this novel to register consciousness changes within character though – they creak like old-fashioned stage scenery.
There is aching agony even in Kennedy’s long stretches of ‘witty’ (perhaps in the sense it is used in Metaphysical poetry criticism) prose. It reminds me of her skills as a stand-up comedian and the seriousness available to skilful use of shaggy-dog stories too. It reminds me that Kennedy is a seriously good tragi-comic actress and of the gestural embodiment that she captures in some vignettes – that WONDERFUL story of the baby blackbird trapped in a mistress’ improper garden netting with which it opens, for instance. There are endless varieties of ways in which human pain (in experience or empathetic projection) are beautifully and seriously conveyed.
But all these wonders I see but cannot feel – am I trapped in a moment of Coleridge’s ‘Dejection: An Ode’ or are these artistic techniques not as grounded as I want (even demand them to be) in something more than a passively tragically-humorous take on human dilemmas. If anything, I want the kind of generic play in the Gothic elements of Mossfegh’s Eileen or McGuire’s The North Water, that show us that self-consciously constructed worlds can be reconstructed.
They thus offer us opportunity for difficult kinds of re-engagement with our worlds and our perceptions of them. At bottom – I can’t but feel that this is just another, if VERY CLEVER, heterosexual romance novel, in which a couple measure changes in themselves primarily against each other – whatever the possibility for other kinds of social engagement arising from these changes.
That puts me off – whatever my empathy with the writer’s politics. Of course, these opinions aren’t much intended to be read by others or likely to be so, but it is possible that that may happen. I can but apologise in that event – the failure to appreciate here is very probably ALL MINE!!!!!!
All the best
Steve