Breakfast At Libraries: April 2016

Saturday, 30 April 2016

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver was published in 1998 but although it's a very well-known and critically acclaimed novel, I'd never really thought to read it until a few weeks ago it was recommended by Marian Keyes on the Radio 4 books programme, A Good Read.

The Poisonwood Bible is the story of five women, the wife and four daughters of a Nathan Price, an evangelical Southern Baptist minister from Georgia who in 1959 takes his family to what was then the Belgian Congo so he can carry out missionary work. As a family, they are hopelessly ill-prepared for the culture shock and hardships of life in a Congolese village, both physically and emotionally. The story begins with them packing 'all the wrong things' to take with them on their journey. Upon arrival, the painfully stubborn, dogmatic Nathan Price immediately sets about planting a vegetable garden which, thanks to his refusal to listen to their Congolese housekeeper's advice, fails. Their preconceived notions about race and religion are bigoted and patronising. And in the background, the Congolese struggle for independence, and all the accompanying interference from the West, rumbles on.

Told from the five points of view of each woman - Nathan's wife Orleanna, 16-year-old Rachel, 14-year-old twins Leah and Adah and five-year-old Ruth May - The Poisonwood Bible has a fairly epic scope, spanning around 30 years, and yet each woman's story is deeply personal. Each narrator has her own distinctive voice, values and vision. The unashamedly selfish Rachel peppers her speech with unintentional malapropisms; her language, like her views on race and politics, is carelessly skewed. Adah, academically gifted but physically disabled by a brain injury at birth and possibly affected by some form of autism, is prone to reading things backwards and obsessed by palindromes and linguistic patterns. Language in general is important in the story: inflections are misunderstood, concepts are untranslatable, and translation becomes symbolic of the vast differences between the Prices' way of life and that of their new Congolese neighbours. Everything the Prices bring from America somehow fails to 'translate' when it reaches Africa, whether it's the powdered cake mix ruined by equatorial humidity, Nathan Price's uncompromising sermons that leave his congregation alienated and confused, or the family's preconceived notions about the Congo and its people.

This is a long and sometimes rambling book, and the further the story progresses, the less deftly the (albeit fascinating) exploration of post-colonial African politics are woven into the narrative, and the particular voices and states of mind of the characters make some chapters a little hard-going in comparison to others. Overall, though, this is a beautifully written and absorbing novel with fascinating characters and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Saturday, 9 April 2016

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

As a fan of Daphne du Maurier I read most of her books when I was much younger, but for some reason I never got round to My Cousin Rachel. I don't know why that is - along with Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, it's probably one of du Maurier's better-known novels.

The narrator is Philip Ashley, an orphan brought up on a large country estate in Cornwall under the care of his guardian, Ambrose, in the early 1800s. When Ambrose dies suddenly overseas, shortly after his unexpected marriage to a distant Anglo-Italian cousin, Philip, now in his early 20s, is convinced that Ambrose's widow Rachel is in some way responsible. Yet he, not Rachel, is the beneficiary of Ambrose's will and when he finally meets his cousin, Philip finds himself instantly charmed by her beauty, wit and sophistication. Can Philip's initial suspicion that Rachel poisoned Ambrose, gleaned from his guardian's confusing letters, be correct? Or did Ambrose indeed die, like other Ashleys before him, of a brain tumour?

What is particularly clever about My Cousin Rachel, however, isn't just the ambiguity of Rachel herself, it's the unreliability of the narrator. The late Ambrose, whose presence hangs over the novel, has brought Philip up in a way that Philip believes faultless but which could also be seen as somewhat stifling, over-indulgent and inappropriate - the book opens with him taking Philip, then a child, to see the tarred corpse of an executed criminal hanging at a crossroads. Philip's adoration of Ambrose is also almost uncomfortable to read about in its obsessiveness; it seems more like an intense crush than a paternal or avuncular relationship. Moreover, Philip's entire world-view and character have been shaped by Ambrose, who has brought him up to be suspicious of foreigners and disdainful of women. It's very clear that Philip thinks of himself as a simple country squire and a jolly, affable nice guy, and indeed his behaviour towards his servants and tenants does often support this - yet he is also a spoilt, complacent misogynist, oddly inflexible and, when it comes to his relationships with not only Rachel but everyone else in his limited acquaintance, immature.

While we're always aware that Philip's view of Rachel is colouring our own, that's not to say that we can be confident that everything Philip thinks about Rachel is wrong - not least because what Philip thinks about Rachel is constantly shifting and conflicting. Du Maurier is a consummate expert at this kind of writing, wrong-footing us repeatedly and imbuing the novel with a feeling of uncertainty and latent, simmering danger.

My Cousin Rachel is more of a psychological novel than a plot-driven one, and isn't necessarily going to please everyone who likes clear answers and neatly tied-up loose ends. It's also not particularly fast-paced; it's character-driven rather than action-packed and the story unfolds slowly and descriptively, with the feel of a Gothic novel from an earlier period. It is, however, full of atmosphere, and despite the pace it still feels tense thanks to its pervasive sense of unease.