In my latest blast through my bookcase as part of #20BooksOfSummer, trying to get rid of as many books as possible (see Castaway or Keeper criteria), this serendipitous cluster of books about family secrets, across different genres, formed my entries for spots 3, 4 and 5. One was a mock-Gothic piece of historical fiction, one was a crime novel and the other was literary fiction – or possibly what might be classed women’s fiction. But the genres themselves are sort of meaningless, and none of the books are contemporary: one is set in 1863, one in 1976 and the last one in 1999 (but refers to cold cases from the early 1970s). All of them are going to be discarded, not that they were bad reads, but just that I don’t think I’ll reread them and they are all going to be quite popular in charity shops.
3. Charles Palliser: Rustication, Norton, 2014. Castaway.
A satirical take on the 18th and 19th century novels in diary form, this tongue-in-cheek faux Gothic novel reminded me of Northanger Abbey but also of Pamela or The Woman in White.
December 1863. The rather immature 17-year-old Richard Shenstone has been rusticated (i.e. sent down, i.e. expelled) from Cambridge, for opium use and for suspicions he might have been involved in fraud or deception or the death of one of his friends (apologies for any spoilers: we find out these things gradually, when his family does, but we know from the start that he is in disgrace and won’t be able to finish his degree). He has returned to his parents’ house, except that everything has changed. His father has died, and his mother and sister are now impoverished and forced to move to a run-down house they’ve inherited in a remote village, and are left with only one servant, the young teenager Betsy, who can’t even cook.
Richard is the typical self-absorbed, highly-sexed, naive teenage boy, who cannot for the life of him understand the social and psychological nuances around him. When vicious anonymous letters start appearing in the village, he keeps trying to play detective and keeps changing his mind about who could have sent them, often for the most puerile for reasons. As he stumbles and bumbles his way through the village, occasionally venturing out at night high on opium, he becomes the prime suspect himself for a number of crimes taking place in the village, including animal slaughter and culminating in murder.
It is quite funny to read between the lines of his often feverish narrative, especially when he switches to Greek alphabet to disguise his sexual thoughts and experiences. All the classical Victorian novel tropes are here: inheritance, murder, suspicion and gossip, scandal, illegitimacy, mysterious illnesses, but ultimately it is Richard’s own family who are keeping secrets from him, so the betrayal goes even deeper.
I had more fun writing about the novel and what it is trying to spoof than I did reading it. It was a bit too slow-paced for me – and the use of italics instead of speech marks to denote dialogue irritated me. I can’t say I was rushing to return to it every day, so it took me quite a few days to finish, and I read at least two other crime novels in parallel. I’ve heard The Quincunx by this author might be a more accomplished novel. From reading the blurb, it sounds to me a little like Antonin Varenne’s rip-roaring picaresque novels Retribution Road and Equator, which I enjoyed. But I won’t be rushing to read anything else by him in the immediate future.
4. Maggie O’Farrell: Instructions for a Heatwave, Tinder Press, 2013. Castaway.
It is the summer of 1976 and everyone is melting in the heatwave (something we are getting increasingly used to, so it seemed most fitting to read this while I was sweating inside the house), when Robert Riordan leaves his house in London, where he lives with his wife now that the children have flown the nest. He is supposed to be gone for a few minutes to buy a newspaper, but he never returns, and we spend most of the book trying to figure out, as his family does, what has happened to him.
Strange weather brings out strange behaviour. As a Bunsen burner applied to a crucible will bring about an exchange of electrons, the division of some compounds and the unification of others, so a heatwave will act upon people. It lays them bare, it wears down their guard. They start behaving not unusually but unguardedly. They act not so much out of character but deep within it.
The siblings, Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife, each have an unfulfilled life of their own and a complicated relationship with their mother and with each other, so the bulk of the book digs deep into the causes for their distress or secrets or strained relationships. Being an Irish family, they also end up taking a trip to Ireland, which they haven’t visited together in many years.
With the exception of a rather horrible scene of having a cat put to sleep, which I wasn’t expecting and which was really not the right thing for me right now, this was perfectly enjoyable fare, but, since I’m not a big fan of family sagas, it would have to be something truly special to stand out for me, and it felt very similar to Tessa Hadley’s The Past, for example (although that one was published later), but without quite as much subtlety and observational acuity. It also felt quite melodramatic and sentimental in parts and there wasn’t as much beautiful, sensuous writing as I was expecting after reading Hamnet.
5. Stephanie Gayle: Idyll Hands, Seventh Street Books, 2018. Castaway.
This was the quickest and easiest to read of the three, probably because I had no expectations going into it. I had heard the author speak on The 7am Novelist podcast with Michelle Hoover and thought it was an interesting and to me an inexplicable choice to set a fairly standard police procedural about a New York cop Thomas Lynch now operating in the tiny town of Idyll in Connecticut in 1999 rather than in the present-day. Especially when in this book he is examining a cold case from 1972, with the help of Detective Finnegan, whose sister also went missing that year. What they painstakingly find out shocks the Catholic family and community, but in the end there are two separate cases which need to be resolved, both dealing with missing young women.
I think the reason for this step back in time, not really enough to call this a historical novel, is because the author wanted to bring in the discomfort small-town America had with gay policemen, babies born out of wedlock and abortions – and perhaps draw a parallel to present-day developments in the States. Perhaps it was also easier to disappear from the grid back in the 1970s than nowadays – and we get a little swipe at Y2K panic.
The very short chapters alternate largely between the much-divorced, world-weary Finnegan and Lynch, who is still uncomfortable with coming out publicly. However, other the two voices did not feel distinctive enough to me, but there are some interesting people on the investigative team for future developments in this series.
A fairly solid police procedural, without any gimmicks; likeable, although it didn’t feel like it was bringing anything particularly fresh to the genre. A good way to distract myself from ongoing problems.
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