A novel which questions our perceptions of friendship, family and sexuality, Notes on a Scandal is a read which reveals the weaknesses we expose ourselves to by trusting those who appear to be our confidant.
It is written in the first person in the voice of Barbara Covett, a cold, old-fashioned comprehensive school teacher and spinster, who is writing an account of the fate which befell her colleague and friend Sheba Hart. Early on, the reader is told that Sheba is in fact the infamous art teacher convicted of sexually assaulting her 15-year-old pupil Steven Connolly. The novel is an account of the circumstances that lead to the affair, its exposure and its effect on Sheba's life all from Barbara's skewed point of view.
From its first pages, the novel is dripping with malice thanks to Barbara's impossible standards, obsessional codes of conduct and complete contempt for every person around her. At first this contempt also extends to Sheba, who Barbara silently derides for her see-through skirts, her messy buns and, most importantly, her lack of control of her pupils. But this contempt ebbs away when she sees that Sheba distances herself from staff alliegances. It also disappears after Barbara's plot to reveal that Sheba's children are privately educated falls flat in the staff room when Sheba reveals her son Ben has Down Syndrome. After Barbara helps Sheba control a wild class, the women strike up an unlikely friendship. Sheba begins implicitly trusting the woman who will ultimately machinate her downfall.
As the novel progresses, it reveals snapshots of Barbara's meticulously structured and unhealthily intense lifestyle. She agonises over what to wear to Sheba's informal dinner and berates herself for buying lilac sandals with bows. When the sandals cause a blister which bleeds so badly Sheba gives her a plaster, Barbara sees it as a physical punishment for her vanity. Throughout the novel, Barbara is calculated, remote and often emotionless. But the biggest insight into her emotions happens when she discovers her cat Portia is dying. She is consumed with grief, lovingly cooking a sausages-in-butter last supper for her only companion for the past 12 years. The fact Barbara feels like this about a cat is significant. Unlike people, animals are constant, loyal and cannot infringe the layers of social codes she has constructed.
Through Barbara's eyes, Sheba is willowy, idealistic and ethereal, desperate to help her students and "make a difference". Married at 20 to an older man Richard, she put her dreams of being an artist on hold to raise her children Polly and Ben. Beautiful, tall and slim, Sheba is desperately frightened of losing her looks. She is intimidated by the blossoming beauty of her daughter Polly and feels flattered by Steven's crush and the attention he lavishes upon her. Desperate to feel young again, she gives into her sexual attraction to him and their illicit, illegal relationship blossoms. In her desperation, she overlooks his immaturities, focuses on his nearly-manly body and lets herself believe it is love to justify what she is doing. She retains this delusional almost holy perception of the relationship long after it is revealed, making a sculpture of the two of them together modelled like a Madonna and her child.
It is in the character of Steven that the novel forces the reader to ask many questions about sexuality and where the line between a legal and illegal relationship is drawn. In the court case, and its racy tabloid coverage, Sheba is the seducer, taking away Steven's innocence. But in Barbara's testimony, Steven is the pursuer. Sexually experienced, he makes the first move and seemingly lavishes in the relationship until he bores of her. But the reader has to ask whether this version of events can be trusted. The reader is only given an account from Sheba, which is transcribed by Barbara. There is no account from Steven himself. Even when the affair is revealed, it is Steven's mother who confronts Sheba, painting a tale of her son sobbing at his loss of innocence.
On the question of where the line between legal and illegal can be drawn, the reader must consider Sheba's relationship with her husband Richard. Richard was Sheba's lecturer and they married when she was just 20. Like Sheba, he was her teacher. Like Sheba's relationship with Connolly, there is a significant age gap. But by Sheba being a few years older and by being conducted outside of the context of school, their relationship is legal, accepted (although, significantly, not by Sheba's mother) and given the ultimate stamp of approval from society: marriage. Twenty years on, she feels bored, stifled and unappreciated and repeats the cycle herself with a much more dangerous affair.
Alongside the issue of what society deems sexually unacceptable is the issue of class. It is a central theme throughout the novel. Sheba is the daughter of a world-famous economist. She lives in a massive Victorian house and enjoys a never-a-care middle class lifestyle. Being the model of careful budgeting and prudence, Barbara envies Sheba's wealth and the apparent carefree lifestyle it has given her. For all her envy, Barbara is the perpetual snob, looking down on her colleagues and the students she teachers. She feels she is socially, intellectually and morally superior. Class is important in Sheba's relationship with Steven. With little experience of "working class" people, Sheba believes she has found a diamond in the rough. A sensitive, artistic boy she can mould and encourage. It adds to her general sympathy for him and the delusion she has surrounding their relationship.
While the balance of power teeters between Barbara and Sheba throughout the novel, by its conclusion it is solely Barbara in the driving seat. The clues to their personalities which lead to the conclusion are in their surname. Sheba is a Hart, a sensitive woman who thinks with her heart and sees the good in people to her own detriment. Barbara is a Covett, a woman who desires something intensely. This something is kinship, human love and affection. But the exact motiviation for this desire - purely friendship or sexual - is never entirely clear. A sexual motive is hinted at in her jealousy of Richard and Steven and her attempt to stroke Sheba's arm to comfort her, like she did with the girls at school.
A dark, witty and wonderfully observed novel, Notes on a Scandal is a perfectly conceived psychological thriller that shows your enemies may be much closer than you could ever imagine.
My next read: My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Thursday, 20 August 2009
The Visible World - Mark Slouka
A novel documenting one man's quest to find out the truth about the mysterious man his mother truly loved, The Visible World is a sweeping, poetic tale encompassing war and the unyeilding strength of wartime love.
Split into three parts, the novel begins with the unnamed narrator remembering growing up in New York after leaving his parents' native Czechoslovakia. After his mother's suicide, it then documents his journey to Prague to find out the truth about his mother's lover before she married his father. When he doesn't find the answers he seeks, in the third part the narrator then imagines the story of the love affair, envisioning his mother's lover as Tomas, one of the men involved with the assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.
Using long, winding prose, The Visible World unfurls slowly, scattering the horrendous tales of World War Two Czechoslovakia among stunning observations about love and relationships. In its first section, the narrator remembers his parents entertaining fellow Czechs in New York. They swap folk tales and play traditional music to keep memories of their homeland alive. His parents' relationship is seemingly based on compromise and the narrator is infuriated by his father's quiet acceptance of his mother's love for this mysterious, absent man.
In its first part, the novel builds up appearances of contentment, which are quickly punctured by events bubbling under the surface. The facade of happiness is shattered with mini parables dotted throughout the narrative, such as his parents' aquaintance Mr Chalupa, a suspected Nazi conspiritor, who dies quickly of cancer and his mother's flowers in the garden, which, after an excited buying frenzy, wither and die after she stops tending to them, replaced with weeds.
When the narrator travels to Prague in the novel's second section, he hopes to find the truth about his mother's love. Instead, he finds war veterans whose scraps of memories intersect with his mother's life. There is no definite, concrete answer to this man, how they met, why they parted and what happened to him, much to the narrator's frustration. It leads to the book's third section, his fictional account of what may have been.
It is here that Slouka's writing truly comes into being. With his never-ending sentences and catch-a-breath images he creates and imagines a blistering wartime love affair doomed from the start. In this popular genre of fiction, it would be easy to verge on cliches and tired characters. But Slouka gives it an entire new dimension, writing a relationship which is so true to life it's easy to forget it is fiction.
Tomas and Ivana quickly fall for each other and it is a world-stops-turning romance. Ivana turns her back on her boyfriend and her family for just a few days with Tomas. They creep away from the real world, inhabiting their own space in a forest, foraging for food and living in dream-like bliss. After those few days, what time they have left together happens in snatches and shadows - a chance encounter at a tram, a day walking the streets and hiding together in a cemetary. It is convincing and engrossing, showing just how far reaching war and its consequences are. Slouka writes like an angel, describing Tomas's fears, weaknesses and terrors as perfectly as he conjures up his love for Ivana.
A novel which brings to life the sheer madness of war as expertly as it captures the obssessive way love can make nothing else matter, The Visible World is a magnificent read which shows how love can stifle and ruin lives once it is snatched away.
My next read: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.
Split into three parts, the novel begins with the unnamed narrator remembering growing up in New York after leaving his parents' native Czechoslovakia. After his mother's suicide, it then documents his journey to Prague to find out the truth about his mother's lover before she married his father. When he doesn't find the answers he seeks, in the third part the narrator then imagines the story of the love affair, envisioning his mother's lover as Tomas, one of the men involved with the assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.
Using long, winding prose, The Visible World unfurls slowly, scattering the horrendous tales of World War Two Czechoslovakia among stunning observations about love and relationships. In its first section, the narrator remembers his parents entertaining fellow Czechs in New York. They swap folk tales and play traditional music to keep memories of their homeland alive. His parents' relationship is seemingly based on compromise and the narrator is infuriated by his father's quiet acceptance of his mother's love for this mysterious, absent man.
In its first part, the novel builds up appearances of contentment, which are quickly punctured by events bubbling under the surface. The facade of happiness is shattered with mini parables dotted throughout the narrative, such as his parents' aquaintance Mr Chalupa, a suspected Nazi conspiritor, who dies quickly of cancer and his mother's flowers in the garden, which, after an excited buying frenzy, wither and die after she stops tending to them, replaced with weeds.
When the narrator travels to Prague in the novel's second section, he hopes to find the truth about his mother's love. Instead, he finds war veterans whose scraps of memories intersect with his mother's life. There is no definite, concrete answer to this man, how they met, why they parted and what happened to him, much to the narrator's frustration. It leads to the book's third section, his fictional account of what may have been.
It is here that Slouka's writing truly comes into being. With his never-ending sentences and catch-a-breath images he creates and imagines a blistering wartime love affair doomed from the start. In this popular genre of fiction, it would be easy to verge on cliches and tired characters. But Slouka gives it an entire new dimension, writing a relationship which is so true to life it's easy to forget it is fiction.
Tomas and Ivana quickly fall for each other and it is a world-stops-turning romance. Ivana turns her back on her boyfriend and her family for just a few days with Tomas. They creep away from the real world, inhabiting their own space in a forest, foraging for food and living in dream-like bliss. After those few days, what time they have left together happens in snatches and shadows - a chance encounter at a tram, a day walking the streets and hiding together in a cemetary. It is convincing and engrossing, showing just how far reaching war and its consequences are. Slouka writes like an angel, describing Tomas's fears, weaknesses and terrors as perfectly as he conjures up his love for Ivana.
A novel which brings to life the sheer madness of war as expertly as it captures the obssessive way love can make nothing else matter, The Visible World is a magnificent read which shows how love can stifle and ruin lives once it is snatched away.
My next read: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Poppy Shakespeare - Clare Allan
Set in a mental health hospital's day centre, Poppy Shakespeare is an enlightening vision of modern British mental health services and how they ultimately fail people. It shows how very thin and fragile the line between 'madness' and sanity and how the poor service itself can drive people over the edge.
It tells the tale of N, a young woman who has lost the majority of her family to suicide and has been a day patient at the Dorothy Fish hospital for 13 years. N is very happy in her world at Dorothy Fish, plodding along taking tablets for an impresive list of mental health problems she appears to have. N splits her life between the Dorothy Fish and her flat in the Darkwoods Estate. She knows the mental health system inside out, getting the most "MAD money" by playing her therapists in assessments and filling out application forms with creative and inventive lies.
N's life is changed when she is asked to be a tour guide to new patient Poppy Shakespeare, a young mum who insists she is not mentally ill and doesn't need to be at the Dorothy Fish. Poppy sticks out from the other patients. She is glossy, well-presented and eloquent, insisting she has been admitted as a day patient by mistake. Soon N becomes much more than a tour guide, assisting Poppy on her quest to prove she is sane.
Written in the first person using N's colloquial tongue, Poppy Shakespeare quickly draws the reader in to the life at Dorothy Fish, where patients are equally terrified of being discharged and being moved into 24/7 wards. The patients are categorised alphabetically, each assigned a seat according to the first letter of their name. New patients with names starting with the same initial are only admitted after the demise or exit of the last patient. They are constantly trying to outdo each other, without tipping over to the point of appearing too mad. They barter their pills for other medication and know when to join the queue precisely to ensure they don't miss out on their free lunch of fatty lamb.
Allan's writing is earthy and realistic, making Poppy's plight even more harsh. She is met with impossible conundrums and closed doors. She cannot fight her treatment as she doesn't receive MAD money, but she is refused MAD money because she isn't mad enough. Her presence at the Dorothy Fish isn't compulsary, but if she doesn't attend she will be made to attend.
As Poppy's quest to prove she isn't mentally ill becomes increasingly futile, we see her confidence and belief in her cause ebb away as N's strength and confidence flourishes. This contrast is shown most markedly in their physical appearances. Poppy slowly becomes unkempt and uncaring as N is transformed using Poppy's unwanted clothes and make up. By the novel's devastating end, they have swapped places and positions. N is discharged from the Dorothy Fish; Poppy is committed after seemingly descend into mental illness.
Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Poppy Shakespeare is a terrifying vision of mental health services in Britain. The drive for targets and quantifiable results allows people to be used and slip through the net. Poppy is a guinea pig, a human yardstick used to measure the apparent madness of the hospital's patients. But in the process, she loses her life, her daughter and her sanity. Patients discharged throughout the novel commit suicide, unable to cope with being released for no real reason. And N, the patient so adept at showing others how mad she is, doesn't seem to be mentally ill at all.
Poppy Shakespeare is an angry and damning vision of how targets and efficiency can overshadow the real mission of mental health care: giving people appropriate care and support for their needs. A shocking yet oddly funny read, it uses traditional perceptions of mental illness to show how people can play the role of the "mad man" when the ones who really need help are sitting quietly in the sidelines.
My next read: The Visible World by Mark Slouka.
It tells the tale of N, a young woman who has lost the majority of her family to suicide and has been a day patient at the Dorothy Fish hospital for 13 years. N is very happy in her world at Dorothy Fish, plodding along taking tablets for an impresive list of mental health problems she appears to have. N splits her life between the Dorothy Fish and her flat in the Darkwoods Estate. She knows the mental health system inside out, getting the most "MAD money" by playing her therapists in assessments and filling out application forms with creative and inventive lies.
N's life is changed when she is asked to be a tour guide to new patient Poppy Shakespeare, a young mum who insists she is not mentally ill and doesn't need to be at the Dorothy Fish. Poppy sticks out from the other patients. She is glossy, well-presented and eloquent, insisting she has been admitted as a day patient by mistake. Soon N becomes much more than a tour guide, assisting Poppy on her quest to prove she is sane.
Written in the first person using N's colloquial tongue, Poppy Shakespeare quickly draws the reader in to the life at Dorothy Fish, where patients are equally terrified of being discharged and being moved into 24/7 wards. The patients are categorised alphabetically, each assigned a seat according to the first letter of their name. New patients with names starting with the same initial are only admitted after the demise or exit of the last patient. They are constantly trying to outdo each other, without tipping over to the point of appearing too mad. They barter their pills for other medication and know when to join the queue precisely to ensure they don't miss out on their free lunch of fatty lamb.
Allan's writing is earthy and realistic, making Poppy's plight even more harsh. She is met with impossible conundrums and closed doors. She cannot fight her treatment as she doesn't receive MAD money, but she is refused MAD money because she isn't mad enough. Her presence at the Dorothy Fish isn't compulsary, but if she doesn't attend she will be made to attend.
As Poppy's quest to prove she isn't mentally ill becomes increasingly futile, we see her confidence and belief in her cause ebb away as N's strength and confidence flourishes. This contrast is shown most markedly in their physical appearances. Poppy slowly becomes unkempt and uncaring as N is transformed using Poppy's unwanted clothes and make up. By the novel's devastating end, they have swapped places and positions. N is discharged from the Dorothy Fish; Poppy is committed after seemingly descend into mental illness.
Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Poppy Shakespeare is a terrifying vision of mental health services in Britain. The drive for targets and quantifiable results allows people to be used and slip through the net. Poppy is a guinea pig, a human yardstick used to measure the apparent madness of the hospital's patients. But in the process, she loses her life, her daughter and her sanity. Patients discharged throughout the novel commit suicide, unable to cope with being released for no real reason. And N, the patient so adept at showing others how mad she is, doesn't seem to be mentally ill at all.
Poppy Shakespeare is an angry and damning vision of how targets and efficiency can overshadow the real mission of mental health care: giving people appropriate care and support for their needs. A shocking yet oddly funny read, it uses traditional perceptions of mental illness to show how people can play the role of the "mad man" when the ones who really need help are sitting quietly in the sidelines.
My next read: The Visible World by Mark Slouka.
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
One Day - David Nicholls
A novel telling two sides of a love affair that never quite seems to happen, One Day is a refreshing and gut-wrenchingly honest tale of love in modern times.
Set on the same day, July 15, over 20 years, the novel flips between the perspective of Em, a bright, witty feminist dreamer and Dex, a spoilt self-centred rich boy who has a soul well-hidden under his looks and designer clothes. The couple meet on the final day of university and the novel tracks their lives in the 20 years after their graduation day.
With this premise, the unlikely coupling could have been a corny, trashy romance. But with Nicholls's masterful touch and ability to perfectly capture the realities of relationships One Day is a hauntingly honest portrayal of how our prejudices, insecurities and day-to-day lives can delay and get in the way of what really matters: love.
Em is insecure, afraid and disappointed by the reality of life after university, finding herself working in a Mexican restaurant chain despite her first class degree. She believes Dex is too good for her. Dex is rich and without direction, travelling the world before landing a job in TV. Handsome and vain, he is too busy sleeping around to confront his real feelings for Em.
By treating the reader to both characters' thoughts and a life-changing letter which is never posted, Nicholls shares the nearly-said and nearly-happened moments that make putting down the book impossible. From the unspoken feelings on a holiday together and during a painfully horrendous meal during Dex's drug and alcohol addiction, the book charts how our fears of being rejected delay world-stops-turning romances. Em and Dex are divided by their unsaid feelings and class differences. Dex has the swagger and confidence of the perpetually rich; Em is obssessed with being downtrodden and feels inadequate.
Nicholls writing isn't wordy, worthy prose packed with metaphors; it is quietly observed, finding the love in people's flaws, however big or small. Dex is easy to hate with his selfish demands, his ruthless promiscuity and emotional dependence on Em. He is an alcoholic drug user who pushes away everyone around him and leaves his baby screaming upstairs when he decides he can't cope with her. But despite his list of flaws, he is written so well, the reader can't stop loving him. The same goes for Em and her chronic insecurities. They are both so well-drawn and realistic the reader roots for them even more.
The book is also packed with loves that never quite match up. Ian is a not-very-funny stand up comedian, who would do anything and everything for the smallest piece of Em's heart. On paper, he's the perfect man - but he's just not the man she loves. Sylvie is Dex's beautiful, cold and unnerving wife, the only woman he commits to apart from Emma.
One Day is a charming read about how love, however strong, can easily go unsaid and unrequited in a world where people are too afraid to say and let themseleves believe what they feel. Frustrating, sad and unrelentingly romantic, it shows that however we try to hide it and run away from it, true love cannot be escaped or avoided.
My next read: Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan.
Set on the same day, July 15, over 20 years, the novel flips between the perspective of Em, a bright, witty feminist dreamer and Dex, a spoilt self-centred rich boy who has a soul well-hidden under his looks and designer clothes. The couple meet on the final day of university and the novel tracks their lives in the 20 years after their graduation day.
With this premise, the unlikely coupling could have been a corny, trashy romance. But with Nicholls's masterful touch and ability to perfectly capture the realities of relationships One Day is a hauntingly honest portrayal of how our prejudices, insecurities and day-to-day lives can delay and get in the way of what really matters: love.
Em is insecure, afraid and disappointed by the reality of life after university, finding herself working in a Mexican restaurant chain despite her first class degree. She believes Dex is too good for her. Dex is rich and without direction, travelling the world before landing a job in TV. Handsome and vain, he is too busy sleeping around to confront his real feelings for Em.
By treating the reader to both characters' thoughts and a life-changing letter which is never posted, Nicholls shares the nearly-said and nearly-happened moments that make putting down the book impossible. From the unspoken feelings on a holiday together and during a painfully horrendous meal during Dex's drug and alcohol addiction, the book charts how our fears of being rejected delay world-stops-turning romances. Em and Dex are divided by their unsaid feelings and class differences. Dex has the swagger and confidence of the perpetually rich; Em is obssessed with being downtrodden and feels inadequate.
Nicholls writing isn't wordy, worthy prose packed with metaphors; it is quietly observed, finding the love in people's flaws, however big or small. Dex is easy to hate with his selfish demands, his ruthless promiscuity and emotional dependence on Em. He is an alcoholic drug user who pushes away everyone around him and leaves his baby screaming upstairs when he decides he can't cope with her. But despite his list of flaws, he is written so well, the reader can't stop loving him. The same goes for Em and her chronic insecurities. They are both so well-drawn and realistic the reader roots for them even more.
The book is also packed with loves that never quite match up. Ian is a not-very-funny stand up comedian, who would do anything and everything for the smallest piece of Em's heart. On paper, he's the perfect man - but he's just not the man she loves. Sylvie is Dex's beautiful, cold and unnerving wife, the only woman he commits to apart from Emma.
One Day is a charming read about how love, however strong, can easily go unsaid and unrequited in a world where people are too afraid to say and let themseleves believe what they feel. Frustrating, sad and unrelentingly romantic, it shows that however we try to hide it and run away from it, true love cannot be escaped or avoided.
My next read: Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan.
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