Unexploded by Alison Macleod – A book review

A melancholic song is playing in the background. It seeps into the aural sense. It affects but surprisingly I don’t want it to end. And it doesn’t; it goes on.

What is war? A conflict carried on by force of arms between nations or between parties within a nation. Force there is, arms there are – fire from the skies, fear there is, and war there is. And then there are other conflicts, within; there are wars in the head, in relationships; a sense of betrayal, there is hatred dripping, there is a tacit shelling of unspoken words, of feelings.

‘There is no invasion as fearful as love, no havoc like desire. Its fuse trembles in the human heart and runs through to the core of the world. What are our defences to it?’

It’s World War II, Germany is planning to invade Britain. George Beaumont is a bank manager but the war has voluntarily turned him into Superintendent of the infirmary. Evelyn is his wife, happy with him and their son Phillip. The war has bought a tremble in her life like everyone else’s. George’s decision to take up an assignment away from them, for the country, has imbibed a sense of betrayal in her that she can’t free herself of.

A feeling of abandonment engulfs her; George hasn’t left yet but the thought of him being able to leave them; her and her son, is killing her, is straining their normalcy. And the green pills of death lying there below the spade in their garden, kept by him, is an evidence of his torture; a death before dying. 

When relationships have been lived long and though the strands are strong, there is an inevitable abrasion due to circumstances. That is when the transparency turns to translucency, a slightly opaque layer shrouds and suddenly it becomes unimportant to reveal things. You ask and answer for yourself, ‘what difference will it make?’ – the first signs of a strain.

‘She had to look away. Sometimes, it was still an effort: to hate him so she would not love him. He’d always been such a good father.’

Otto Gottlieb, a prisoner of war, a Jew, an artist, finds himself in Geoffrey’s infirmary. But he’d been disowned even before he reached the infirmary, by the Germans. He’s an outcast; do we not know why.

Evelyn has decided to read at the infirmary to the prisoners; there are only two; the dying Italian and Otto. What starts as an indifference towards the confined Jew, unknowingly develops into love - time, situation, betrayal and most importantly, an imposed loneliness in the head play their roles. Can one infidelity justify another?

‘Life would hobble on. Indeed, perhaps it was only by accepting the inevitable failures of intimacy that one’s married life moved forward and passed into the muted successes upon which anniversary parties, retirement dinners and obituaries ultimately depended.’

According to the biblical narrative, Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, was summoned by King David, who had seen her bathing and lusted after her. David had Uriah himself carry the message to be placed on the front lines of the battle that led to his death.

This disturbing piece of Bathsheba’s story has an apparent influence on ‘Unexploded’s’ central theme, both literally and otherwise. As the story unfolds, the writer unveils the characters to the yearning reader as they wince and gasp in anticipation. 

‘Yes’, he (Otto) told the young critic, ‘I think that is fair to say. One is always, also, painting oneself. It’s inevitable, though one’s focus is necessarily trained upon the subject. I suppose all of life, whether off the canvas or on it, is made from’ – he’d allowed himself to smile carelessly for the first time that opening night – ‘the intercourse of two things.’

Through Ms. Macleod’s chisel arises another grotesque effigy of hatred which represents the thoughts of children in war; their perspective. A nation is probably already dead when its children fall prey to hatred, when their minds are polluted, when their innocence is no more the innocence of harmless sport but becomes a criminalized innocence; the innocence remains but is veneered in pure hatred. 

What is more disturbing - the everyday anticipation of war or the war itself? Which is more tiring?

‘She wanted life, she wanted it badly. She needed the world to burst open. To go up in smoke. She wanted the enemy to invade the shore and be done with it. Fear was exhausting, but nothing tired a body like hope.’

‘Then, as if in reply to some reckless act of the collective will or an unspeakable communal wish, something in the atmosphere gave way that July night. Squalls and showers blew in from the west. The lid of summer came off. And in a moment that was, after so many months of waiting, as much longed for (secretly, ashamedly) as it was dreaded, the first bomb was tipped into the early morning of the new day: a fifty-kilogram falling star, gravid, lethal and indifferent.'

When you see a plane firing bullets in the distance, a character says in one of the paragraphs, never run away from it; run towards it if you want a chance to survive. And run towards disaster is what every character in this story does but does anyone survive?

It’s a well crafted, intelligently written story; I loved the simplicity of the narrative. It struck a chord and it’ll stay with me for a long time. The melancholic tune still resonates as Evelyn visits Otto’s representation of Bathsheba in his painting on the church dome. 

And as a tear finally falls, I am there to witness it.

My rating - 8/10

Picture courtesy:

Alison Macleod - https://www.penguin.co.nz/authors/alison-macleod

‘Unexploded’ book cover - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18212386-unexploded

A fairly honourable defeat by Iris Murdoch - A book review

Goodness is a virtue. And Iris Murdoch seems to be possessed with it. Be it this particular book or ‘The Nice and the Good’, she seems to be amazed and possibly irritated by the varieties of it. Her characters drip of this disparateness as her brush strokes the story. But goodness cannot exist by itself, it inevitably co-exists; with love, friendship, innocence, sacrifice and more importantly power.

There’s a strong connection between goodness and power and most of the times we don’t realize we’re donning this invisible cloak. We, in all our nonchalance, make ourselves believe in the goodness in us but conveniently ignore the power demon lurking behind the veil. But do we make ourselves believe at all? Or is it an inane innate defect of humanity. Murdoch cruelly makes us chant, pushing each bead of nicety, love, friendship, relationship, deceit, anxiety, despair and many others against the disturbing string of dominance.

Characters in this story are few but intense; the intensity lies in their strength and for a few in their timidity and weaknesses. Morgan, an eccentric, shallow and hopelessly callous person shelters herself at her sister Hilda’s house. She’s running away from relationships, she wants to find herself she says. She doesn’t want to let go of Tallis, her haunting husband, who she hasn’t met for two years because she’s been in an illicit relationship with Julius King and now she’s left Julius too. Hilda and her husband Rupert, the epitome of goodness and morality, don’t know what they are getting into as they harbor the wild mare into their stable; their lives are about to change because of her frivolity. Axel and Simon are the other two essential parts. Simon, Rupert’s brother is gay and madly in love with the guileless Axel.

Murdoch improvises on the proverb ‘What you give, you get back’, the reader experiences strong renderings of ‘What you get, you give back’. The deranged Morgan is treated like dirt as she tries to go back to Julius. She amuses herself in the most lowering and disgusting manner to Julius’s apathy. And then she becomes Julius with her husband Tallis, she treats him like a well tamed animal showing that offence is the best defense while sulking and playing the victim all along; how cute!

As Morgan displays her histrionics by introducing the unique concept of ‘loving innocently’ and making herself and others gulp this potion, Julius King, to challenge her nonsense and expose the fragility of relationships, plays Shakespeare and writes and directs the screenplay for an horrendous act. But should we blame Julius, or Murdoch for that matter? Murdoch’s eloquence portrays the strongest of characters crumbling to the feeblest of cunningness and it sounds so believable that one wonders – are all relationships in such a latent and decrepit state that a single blow can shatter the opaque glass of misrepresented conscience. Do we humour ourselves by believing in what we are; are we that, or are we the magician’s rabbit that pops out of the intricate and unsettling mesh of the brain and the heart each time, every time?

Murdoch plays around with the power that holds and with the powerlessness that yields. Her characters like most of us are so full of themselves, though in different ways. She shows how easy it is to pull a single strand of doubt or suspicion to create a mess of relationships, how easy it is to fall, to get lost in the meandering light of a new pleasing and refreshing something. She reinforces the effortlessness of inducing fear where the heart is timid; she mocks at the vulnerability of what we call the strength of love, of belief and trust. The plot shows how ugly people can get or probably are deep inside, beyond the ostentatious façade of goodness. She probes into the cause of goodness and derides its fragility.

It’ll be wrong to end without putting Murdoch’s characters on a pedestal for their amazing mental strength; or is it hard heartedness! Even in the wiliest of infidelity, or a treacherous contrivance, they are large hearted enough to understand, to let go and at times to find innocence in the act; a fairly honourable defeat indeed. Wow! I wish I meet more of this kind in real life, the forgiving ones. This book did make me think of the so called goodness of many people, and analyze them, it; such an ugly thing to do, isn’t it!

Loved the book, loved the mockery.

My rating: 8/10

Picture courtesy:

Book cover: https://www.jasonbooks.co.nz/p/literary-fiction-a-fairly-honourable-defeat

Irisi Murdoch image: https://www.newstatesman.com/iris-murdoch-novels-reissued-criticism-biography-100-years

Silas Marner by George Eliot – A book review

Silas Marner is a weaver. And so is George Eliot. 

As Marner relentlessly, dedicatedly and dolefully weaves for the village folk, so does not Eliot; she pauses every now and then, she smells the blossom, she listens to the gossip of the multitude, she gives in to the blind faith of the rustic brethren, she runs her hand lovingly over the simplicity of neighbours, through her needle she looks into the cunningness and heartlessness of the affluently powerful and while doing so, infuses in the pages, one after the other, a warmth the reader isn’t ready to forsake.

Stabbed in the back by one considered closest, Marner takes his craft to the village of Raveloe where he lives a life of solitude. In the village, where being neighbourly isn’t an option, Marner has made himself an outcast; the village folk leave him alone. At intervals, incidents happen that not only change the course of his life but also the way he lives it and the way people change their thoughts about him. From losing his money to theft - the sole happiness in his life then, to the finding, keeping and making of Eppie his daughter, Marner’s life transcends his misfortune.

Silas Marner is pure in his thoughts. And so is George Eliot with her characters.

Eliot effortlessly contrasts beliefs of the poor and the rich, of the simple and the powerful. Is it naivety, ignorance or goodness in Mrs.Winthrop, one of Marner’s uneducated neighbors to declare that she hardly understands anything that the priest preaches in church but has the thought that it definitely has to be good? In fact, she goads Marner to go to church, to listen, to be accepted, for Eppie to be accepted.

On the other hand, the design of thoughts of the elite Casses are so hurtful but deemed pragmatic by them. How easily the frivolous Dunsey Cass starts thinking about Marner’s money, to beguile him out of it and starts anticipating what he’ll do with it even when it’s not his. What gives him the right to think and decide for others? And how different is Godfrey Cass, the sensible son, who reprimands himself for lying, believes he has a conscience but lays his entire life on deceit? And he too attacks Marner; this time unlike his brother, the imposition is for much more than money. Eliot unveils the rich class to show how money brings in complacency, an inevitable confidence and an ego which ridicules their thoughts and carries them away from being sensible.

I found a strange purity, simplicity and calmness in Eliot’s writing. The reader is never kept in suspense, though the characters are. It’s there and you know it but still keep reading for the joy of it, to feel, to laugh, to shame, to feel sorry, to despise and ultimately, to rejoice in the plainness of Marner’s life.

The edition I read has an introduction by Q. D.Leavis which is equally interesting and full of thoughts on the lives in and around the times of the story and the author.

My rating: * * * * * * * * * * - 8/10

Pictures courtesy of:

George Eliot picture - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot

Book cover - https://www.pinterest.com/pin/480900066436057124/

'The woman who walked into doors' by Roddy Doyle – A book review

A lady on a swing, a full smile, a happy one. Night time for sure, a disappearing tinge of blue in the black. Probably the moonlight, probably not. There’s something eerie about the cover. And it makes me wonder, walk into or walk through; is it to do with the supernatural? And then I read praises written on the back cover and they put my mind to rest and I venture on.

‘Walk into’ it is! Bang! Again. And again. And again. Battered, bruised, shattered, broken, bleeding, hurt – inside and out, dead – almost – inside, not out. But unnoticed. No veil, yet unnoticed. Invisible.

How did you get that? – I walked into a door. So sad. Ha ha ha.

Paula was born an O’Leary, had to fall in love to be a Spencer. Married at 18 to Charlo, this the story of Paula’s married life. If it can be called one. Married - yeah, life – not very sure. Set up in a suburb of Dublin where girls were either sluts or not, and boys were either a good ride or not.

Paula is a good ride, thinks Charlo. Charlo is a good ride, thinks Paula.

And one day Paula is there on the floor. And the next day too. And as Paula lies curled up, whimpering on the floor almost every day, or night, or the times in between, the author writes on. He takes you there; in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. You look and that’s all you can do. All you can do is nod grievously as the bottle takes over her.

Roddy Doyle’s brilliance is evident in Paula’s humoring herself and her life. Please don’t tell me she actually believed love still existed; till the very end. Did it, Mr. Doyle? Or is it that unseen, empowering shit called positive thinking where you train your mind to believe things. “He loves me. He can’t live without me. He said that.”

The gory violence is only subdued by her relentless pursuit for normalcy, a hope that negates despair. And in the end it is the mother in her that fights back; the wife is merely a believer, the mother thankfully treads the path beyond the realm of belief. The beast is finally put in place.

Roddy Doyle is a powerful writer. He’s drilled a hole into Paula’s mind. He’s managed to connect the wires to a giant screen and he sees and he writes. There is no tarnishing, there are no blemishes as he captures the ramblings. Paula talks to you; she does. And more often than once you want to scream, ‘Get up bitch, get a life. Wake up, wash your face, lose your pain, lose him’. And you do. Compelling!

And I look at the cover again. Is that a toothless smile I see? Is that a black eye hidden by a shadow? Let’s see, no, can’t be a broken finger curling on to the chains. Or is it?

My rating : * * * * * * * * * * (9/10)

Cover image - https://blankbooks.co.za/obz/20182-the-woman-who-walked-into-doors.html

Roddy Doyle image - https://www.rte.ie/culture/2017/0901/900835-reviewed-smile-by-roddy-doyle/