![]() I read this book in one sitting on a plane from London to Miami in January. I have never managed to do this before. Perhaps it was the strength of the in-flight coffee or my eager anticipation of a holiday in the sun after four years? I think both of these aspects would have helped, but The Only Story by Julian Barnes whisked me away long before we landed, and I think that would still have been the case if my feet had remained firmly on the ground. Looking back over fifty years of his life, we begin our story in the claustrophobic home counties of England of the 1960s when Paul is just 19 and falls in love with Susan, a married woman of 48. He believes himself to be in a love which is concealed – initially from each other – and then from friends and, especially, their families. Part of the attraction – for we readers and for them – is how this will inevitably impact on middle-class convention (hiding its own dark secrets). This is as much a coming-of-age novel as it is an understanding of times that were about to be changing. Part two of the book begins when we follow Paul and Susan, full of hope as they are, out of the tedious expectations of small village life and tennis club rules to London where things begin to unravel for them both, together and independently. The final section effectively illustrates our narrator’ attempts to find new loves and addressing the central theme of whether it is better to ‘love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?’ He thinks this to be the only real question left in a life unfulfilled. Good or bad ‘first love’ can of course define our lives. The tenderness of discovery, harnessed with a seemingly innate fragility can render subsequent comparisons ‘less than’ – believe me, as a romantic soul I am hooked by those feelings each time I relive them through books and films. The wiser me – the reflective and far less singular Paul in me – believes that though love may be packaged in perhaps more knowing ways as we head through life, it is still love: love that stands a far better chance of enduring. I had previously read The Sense of an Ending by the same author and this is similarly beautifully written. Those early days of summer capture us entirely as do the clouds rolling in and blocking out the sun. They come as a pair, do they not? I think he captures the warmth and the chill of what it is to truly know another, to live through another – to become another. It might not be the only story that matters in life, but it certainly feels like that at the time. I did find the later section of the book both disappointing and tedious. Disappointing because the cracks in Paul’s character, hinted at previously, became ravines when we so hoped that they would be mere ditches for us to continue to jump over. The change in narrative style from first to second person does convey distance but not, for me, difference. I never really did like Paul but grew to detest him, which meant I was far less sympathetic to his contemplations even had there been a pervading sense of injustice. Tedious because – attempting to depict the tricks of memory or not - I found his musings circular or, at least, repetitive. I suppose they were always going to be. Overall, it was a challenging read, but I’d sensed the ending long before we landed, and this was a less rewarding journey than the one I was taken on in his previous book. Perhaps this should have been retitled ‘The First Story’ instead?
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![]() I sometimes struggle with my perception of Booker Prize-winning books: will they be ‘too clever’ for me, or will they open my eyes in ways that ‘lesser books’ fail to do? Will I go beyond the covers with a truly open mind, or do I embark on the fictional journey with baggage in my mind telling me that it will either not be as good as other learned people say it is… or it will be even better? I had picked up copies of Shuggie Bain in Waterstones a number of times, read the blurb and picked though a few of the pages, before deciding that the colloquialisms and sometimes impenetrable Glaswegian phrases would be in the ‘too difficult’ box for me to understand. Then, one day, I set these worries aside and went for it, proudly carrying my copy back to my lovely house in the Worcestershire countryside before settling down and quickly descending into a world of addiction, poverty and hopelessness. Shuggie’s mother, Agnes, is an alcoholic – a condition which becomes worse as we turn the pages on a helpless situation. Rejecting her first husband and moving her family out of her parents’ tiny flat in Glasgow to a former mining community on the city’s edges felt like a one-way street with few real alternatives to left or right. Shuggie effectively becomes his mother’s carer, and the development of that gentle, caring nature accompanies a discovery and awareness of his own sexuality. We care for Shuggie because he is doing his best in the face of remorseless poverty of kitchen cupboard and spirit. It would be easy to assume that Agnes’s alcoholism renders her far less to blame for what unfolds in the book than the addiction itself; this is compounded by the fact that Agnes is a beautiful-looking woman – and plenty of men look, and take, and leave, including Shuggie’s father. Thankfully his half brother does what he can for Shuggie before, like his sister, seeing how hopeless the fight is to rescue Agnes, he can clearly see that he needs to save himself. However, I found Agnes somewhat superior and not a little arrogant, which made her even more of a target to be knocked down by just about everybody she came into contact with. Set mainly during the time of the Thatcherite mine closures in the early 1980s there are some obvious parallels with ‘Billy Elliot,’ although I found the grinding poverty of working-class existence and joyless resistance to change controlled by others far more compelling on these pages than on a silver screen. There seem to be no silver linings here, even when we meet Shuggie again some ten years later. I did indeed struggle with some of the language, but clearly that is the essence of the book’s authenticity. I found the unrelenting darkness of the novel hard to see through for much of the time and I cannot say that it was a joy to read; certainly not ‘beautiful’ as one or more of the Booker judges described it. However, Shuggie’s resolve in the face of all that ‘life’ threw at him, from desperate hunger to bullying to loneliness to the possible sexual violence he too would encounter in the future, was as incredible as it was heart-breaking. I believe the book was better than my learned friends indicated that it was, and I feel that my horizons have been suitably stretched way beyond the hills I see from my window; like many readers of this book, I’m sure, I thank my lucky stars that they, along with time and space, shine down more brightly on me than the subjects of such frightening shadows. |
AuthorI am a fiction writer, currently living in Worcestershire, enjoying mystery dramas, thrillers, poetry, comedy and history. I read a wide range of fiction, also writing book reviews here and sharing on amazon, goodreads and Waterstones sites. Archives
October 2024
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