LAST GREAT READS FOR OCTOBER, 2016
My
Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante
Ms
Ferrante has caused a furore in the literary world: apart from the superb quality of her writing,
she is also very strict about anonymity, Elena Ferrante being a pseudonym. She believes that novels should be born, then
stand alone without the weight of an author’s name behind them propping them
up. Fair enough, but it is obvious that
the search for Ms Ferrante’s true identity is ongoing, if only for the fact
that someone so much the master of her craft should never remain secret, for Ms
Ferrante has produced a remarkable feat, a quartet of novels that are
unforgettable.
The
first, ‘My Brilliant Friend’, opens in 1950’s Naples, that teeming, corrupt
city overshadowed by Vesuvius and plagued by crime and poverty, particularly in
the area that eight-year-old Elena Greco lives.
A porter’s daughter, she longs to be friends with the local shoemaker’s
daughter, Rafaella, called Lila, for Lila is wild, different, a disturbance in
the classroom, but of superior intelligence:
if only there were some way to impress Lila, to make her see that she,
Elena, is smart too, worthy of her friendship though more of a follower than
the instigator of mischief that Lila unleashes so effortlessly: Elena feels that if she can persist in her
attempts at friendship, it will be a win-win situation for them both. For Lila has a natural brilliance, a
propensity to soak up knowledge (and languages) like a sponge, that Elena must
benefit from just by association. She
wants to be a scholar too, but doesn’t learn as easily as Lila, who is generous
with advice on how to retain knowledge that eludes so many of their classmates.
Their
friendship grows over the years, overshadowed by the stark poverty and casual,
everyday violence that is a feature in the lives of their families and
neighbours. Money and the lack of it
colours all decisions, and it is considered a triumph for Lila and Elena to go
from elementary to middle school, much against parental objections, especially
from Elena’s mother who says she should be earning a wage somewhere (at barely
thirteen) to help the family. Lila’s
family is no different and at the same age she is seconded to her father’s shoe
repair shop to ‘learn proper work’ with her brother Rino, who is already
seething with discontent, for he has been ‘learning proper work’ for years and
has not been paid a penny for his efforts because it is ‘for the good of the
family’.
The
only families doing well in the neighbourhood are those whom everyone is afraid
of: the family of Don Achille Carracci,
grocer and black marketeer, eventually murdered by a carpenter he ruined, and
the Solara family, local gangsters and loan sharks operating within a pastry
shop. The sons of these two families are
the local lords of all they survey, and as Elena and Lila develop it becomes
plain that Lila, the free spirit who laughs in their faces, is the prize. The one who must be brought to heel, to show
respect.
Ms
Ferrante ends Book One with the explosive finale of Lila’s wedding at the age
of sixteen to the grocer Stefano Carracci;
he has set up her father and brother in the business of crafting shoes
designed by her; he has showered
clothes, furniture and a brand-new apartment on her, and Lila feels she has
made a fine marriage, saving her family from continued penury – until the
wedding reception, when it becomes abundantly clear that Stefano has made a
deal with the Devil. Book Two is ‘The Story
of a New Name.’ Can’t wait! FIVE STARS.
Vinegar
Girl, by Anne Tyler
Who
could possibly top that? Well, no-one
really, but Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Tyler has elected to tackle ‘The
Taming of the Shrew’, the Bard’s paean to misogyny, and the bane of feminists –
and ordinary women – since it was first written. She does a sublime job.
Italy
becomes the American state of Maryland, specifically Ms Tyler’s beloved
Baltimore, the setting for most of her lovely stories. Kate Batista is twenty-nine, a college
dropout and reduced to keeping house for her largely absent father, a revered
scientist researching autoimmune diseases, and her vacuous, empty-headed (but
pretty and popular!) younger sister Bunny.
She knows that life is passing her by but she feels powerless to change
her circumstances, until her father, desperate to keep his brilliant Russian
research assistant whose visa is expiring, presents her with a request which she
finds utterly outrageous: marry Pyotr
Cherbakov so that he can stay in the country and get a Green Card! Her reward?
The knowledge that she has contributed to the unimpeded advance of vital
scientific research!
Needless
to say, Kate is furious – she is a shrew, after all, something that Pyotr in
his clumsy attempts to court her recognises early. Not that it deters him: ‘You are crazy about me, I think’, he states
when Kate’s body language (not to mention her mouth) informs him of just the
opposite. He does not care; he needs his Green Card, and the thought of
having to return to Russia without finishing the exciting work he is doing with
the world’s foremost researcher on autoimmune diseases fills him with
dismay. Besides, there is nothing for
him to go back to: he was a foundling,
left on the steps of an orphanage in a box that held cans of peaches (brand
name Cherbakov). No: his life must continue here in the U.S.A,
where he has a chance to permanently belong to a community – and a family.
Ms
Tyler was a finalist in last year’s Man Booker Prize (the first year it was
opened to American writers) for her lovely novel ‘A Spool of Blue Thread’, see
review below); once again she beguiles
the reader with prose as simple and natural as breathing, and she leaves no-one
in doubt as to her mastery of Shakespeare’s comedic style, striking a blow
(subtle though it has to be) for women everywhere with Kate’s wedding speech,
in which she rationalises in the most charming, authoritative way Pyotr’s
caveman tactics leading up to their hugely unceremonious marriage.
This
is a little gem, and does the Hogarth Shakespeare Project proud. SIX STARS!
A
Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler
Family dynamics: that weary, well-worn euphemism for the
myriad ways that people hurt those whom they should love most.
The clarion cry of ‘It’s not FAIR!’ engendered by sibling
rivalry which, as siblings reach adulthood becomes ‘Why did they love you more
than me?’ has never been portrayed with more skill, perception and humour than
in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Tyler’s peerless chronicle of a family’s
life through three generations – not very long as a family ancestral record,
but of sufficient length to draw the reader into this graceful story, because
we recognise so much of it as our own.
In 1994 Red and Abby Whitshank have four grown
children. They live in Baltimore,
Maryland in a house that Red’s father built, and Red has taken over his father’s
construction company after both his parents were killed in an accident. Abby is a social worker, a woman who welcomes
the waifs and strays, especially at Thanksgiving, a holiday her family secretly
dreads for they never know which awful waifs will be present at the carving of
the turkey – but Abby doesn’t care: her
heart is big and There But For the Grace of God etc etc. More turkey, anyone?
In the main, Red and Abby are content with their life and
their family, whom they love dearly.
Amanda, the oldest girl is a lawyer;
Jeannie followed her father into the construction business, a bold
step; Douglas (called Stem for a very
poignant reason) has also gone into the family company; but Denny, the third child – well, Denny
appears to have taken on the role of family failure; family flitter-away-from-responsibility
candidate; family jack-of-all-trades –
and master of none, despite much encouragement and many new starts, assisted emotionally and financially each
time by his parents.
Time
passes inexorably; Red and Abby
age; their family start families of
their own – all except Denny. His life
is a mystery to them: they have no idea
where he lives, or what he does for a living – does he even work?
Then they receive an invitation to his wedding. He is marrying the bride because she’s
pregnant. Oh. Okay then.
They’ll have a grandchild to love and spoil! Sadly, no.
Denny disappears for years, until family concern about Red and Abby’s
vulnerability as they age brings him home, and what has been simmering beneath
the family surface since childhood erupts in an ugly geyser of hatred and
resentment: Denny’s anger is never
directed at himself; he could never hold
a mirror up to reveal his many faults:
instead, he lashes out at those who are the last to deserve his ire,
causing ructions that are shocking but come as no surprise to anyone.
I
can’t remember reading at any time a more perfect evocation of family
life; the petty jealousies, the
perceptions real or imagined, of who loves who best, and the immense loyalty
and unity only a family can draw on when tragedies occur. And the great, beating heart of this family
is contained in the house, built by their grandfather for someone else, but eventually
becoming his, as told in beautiful flashbacks.
Roddy Doyle and Nick
Hornby, both writers who ‘know their onions’ (my old gran used to say that
often!) maintain that Anne Tyler is ‘the greatest novelist writing in English’
and it is easy to see why. SIX STARS!!!
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