Novel Relationships

Alongside Colm Toibin and Colum McCann Sebastian Barry enjoys a high reputation as a contemporary Irish writer. Unlike these other 2 authors this work is firmly grounded in Ireland.Roseanne Mcnulty an inmate of an asylum in Roscommon is keeping a diary of her 100 years The doctor in charge William Grene also keeps a commonplace book. As the asylum is shortly to be shut down and the patients relocated he is reexamining the obscure circumstances in which Roseanne was sectioned. The background is the history of Ireland from the Civil war to the present day. He presents a rather sad commentary of a cruel theocracy in which absolute power turned into corruption and abuse .The cleric Father Gaunt is uncompromisingly cruel and severe.

The novel moves along at slow pace as Roseanne ruminates on her past and the troubled Dr Grene reflects on his marriage,psychiatry and Roseanne. However the ending has many head spinning revelations and perhaps lsuffers from too much information. Having recently reread A Sens of an Ending I compared Barry’s florid  style unfavourably to Julian Barnes’ compactness but both share a melodramatic denouement

Around Xmas a popular page filler if not stocking filler is to ask well know writers and other literati to list their books of the year. Alan Holinghurst’s ‘A Secret Son’  featured strongly . However 2 contributors to this site and myself read it at the same time time and found it dull. Our general view was that is was  a mish- mash of the country house novel wrapped up in homo- eroticism. As a history of gay perceptions in the twentieth century I found it more engaging than a tale of 2 houses.

Two books I enjoyed greatly ‘A Sense of an Endin’g and A Visit frrm the goon Squad made several lists. I would have found a place for ‘ The Map and The Territory by Pierre Houllebecq and the beautiful translation of Stefan Zweig’s only completed novel ‘Beware of Pity’. In The non-fiction section I also enjoyed and admired Roger Crowley’s City of Fortune a captivating account of the mercantile and maritime Venetian Empire from 1000-1500.

As I write this its unclear whether Julian Barnes unsettling novel  will win  the Booker Prize but it certainly deserves to. Its a compact novel of 150 pages but notwithstanding its brevity is profoubd and satisfying in its themes.

These cover history briliantly described as ” the certainty produced at the point where the imperfection of memorymeet the inadequacies of documentation.” ; the selective quality of recollection; all set in the  story of an unreliable narrator  Tony Webster who late in life is forced to confront certain assumptions he made much earlier. Fans of Julian Barnes will note certain recurrent themes : triangular relationships, masturbation and a humourous reference to the automobile industry.. In som ways it is similar to Metroland  for its emphasis on adolescent sexuality and in others Before She Met Me with a a similarly unassertive leading male character and vicious twist at the end.

Certainly its a novel that repays careful reading as you cannot always accept the narrator’s version and you can never be sure how random his recollections are. Its a novel that you would wish to reread .My reaction to the twist was immediately to revisit certain parts of the book.

He also has a gift for pithy characterisation , ready wit and maintaining  the tempoof the story. One hastens to call it a novella  but my only minor critique would be that the ending might have been more fully clarified.

This is neglected classic. I have never heard of Derek Raymond  an old Etonian whose real name is Robert Cook. He appeared to be a sixties low life drop out and as the copyright is in the estate must have died .

The novel was published in 1970 and depicts England as totalitarian state under the dictatorship of Jobling. The narrator Richard Watt, a journalist,  has humiliated Jobling on television and now farms in Roccamaritima in Tuscany with his partner Magda. The long tentacles of Jobling and his New Pace party attempt his extradition. England is under the iron grip of  a state where identity cards have 3 categories of privilege,namely  : red:  party officials, white: ordinary citizens and black: no rights. Scotland and Wales have seceded .

Comparison will be made with 1984 but the novel is quite different. The first part is set in Tuscany where Watt farms olives and grows wine and is part of the Roccamaritima community. He believes he is secure from the grasp of New Pace even when the first investigatons begin. Although he author has renounced his background, you still feel traces of it in his contempt for the appearance  dress of the lower middle class functionaries that embrace the New Pace  party.

Although described on my book cover as a “dark satire” I felt it was more a chilling reminder how a complacent democracy can transform into a dictorship where there is one newspaper, The English Times, all non-whites  have been deported and  an institutionalised and ruthless system exists to suppress any opposition.

Like many upper class English novelists  Raymond writes easily and elegantly.The emotional side of the novel , his relationship with Magda and the village community in particular, is  described with feeling . The story moves well with an oppressive tension and resolution. Like the best political thrillers set in a dictatorship it begs the question of ” could it really happen?” Certainly my belief was not suspended and I had thoroughly good read as well. My onlly bone of contention is I cannot understand the title: is it intended as a quote from Hamlet?