comedy
Chick lit? Hardly!
I’ve never been into what used to be called chick lit, now more properly light romance – ‘refined sugar for the brain’ – but realised this week it was presumptuous of me to dismiss it without a fair trial. It’s been a rather fraught week with a lot to exercise my mind, so I needed something undemanding, and this seemed as good a week as any to give it a whirl. One name came to me: during lockdown I attended lots of on-line book festivals and a bubbly author with a lovely Irish accent impressed me with her charm and eloquence – Marian Keyes. I raked around and … yep, found one of her novels. I’ve since read her biography and apologise unreservedly for classifying her so glibly. In reality her books defy genre and sell in their thousands.
This Charming Man is billed as dealing with serious issues but is light reading with plenty of humour, so it should be the just sort of thing I can dip into for distraction that won’t bog me down in angst. … or so I thought.
The ‘charming man’ in question is charismatic politician Paddy de Courcy. Word is out that he’s getting married, and there are four women in particular who have every reason to feel powerful reactions to this fact. The tale is told through their eyes with clever changes of font and style to anchor their stories.
Stylist and fashion guru Lola Daly has a vested interest because she’s his current girlfriend – or thought she was – but she’s certainly not the bride-to-be. Devastated by the news, she vanishes to a rural retreat to try to get perspective. From childhood she’s had a real fear of abandonment, but it keeps happening. What did she do wrong to lose Paddy? Was her Dad right: Never trust a politician? She’s left feeling worthless, her confidence in shreds, and this spills over into her work life, leading to her quitting city life and settling for a very different kind of existence in a rural backwater, while she tries to regain her self respect and confidence.
Journalist Grace Gildee is desperate to get a story on Paddy de Courcy from the inside and thinks Lola would give her a real scoop. But even big money won’t tempt Lola to talk. Then Grace is asked … no, ordered to go and interview the new fiancee in her professional capacity. She can’t! She insists she can’t! Her integrity would be compromised because of her personal connection to Paddy de Courcy. But she’s given no choice; she has to go. The bride-to-be herself will brook no other.
Grace’s twin sister Marnie is one reason for her resistance. Paddy was her first love, and she can’t forget him. But Paddy de Courcy has had a devastating effect on Marnie’s life. Her tale unravels as she sinks further and further into alcoholism.
And then there’s the fourth woman, the real bride-to-be, Alicia Thornton, determined to be the perfect wife. Someone with her own scores to settle. Who has her eye on the ultimate prize.
Well, this is certainly no ‘refined sugar’! Keyes took a long time writing it and says from the outset that it honours all women who are the victims of domestic abuse. But, whilst abuse certainly lies at its core, the book deals with far more issues than that: alcoholism; cross dressing; press harassment; Irish politics; racism; addiction, ageism. Gritty, dark, troubling, but woven through with light touches and even outright comedy.
It’s not my kind of reading (and it’s a veritable door-stopper at almost 900 pages long!!) but I take my hat off to a very talented writer. I shan’t make the mistake of dismissing such literature so lightly in future.
Hands: new and used
Last week I was talking about over-use of my hands during interviews. This week those same hands have been in overdrive in a different kind of way: taking photos, packing picnics … pointing out landmarks, exploring history … playing games, doing girly things … all the fun that lies behind having grandchildren for a holiday. Then to cap it all, my trusty Kenwood Chef went up in smoke (literally!) after thirty plus years of valiant service, so I was back to pounding bread dough manually again. The notion of an extra pair of hands seems more than usually appealing.
Which brings me nicely to the book The Fourth Hand which I read a few weeks ago and haven’t yet told you about.
John Irving has won prizes. Big prizes. Even an Oscar. I’ve read his A Widow for One Year, and seen The Cider House Rules, so I was looking forward to The Fourth Hand. As you know, I’ve been ploughing through a minor mountain of novels about organ transplantation, and such was my confidence in Irving’s literary skill, that I reserved this one till last to savour the flow and style of a master.
But oh dear, what a disappointment, what an anti-climax. I really couldn’t find anything much I liked in Irving’s tale of a hand transplant. Briefly it tells the story of a well known journalist and TV anchorman, Patrick Wallingford, who gets his hand bitten off by a lion in full view of the world watching his news report. Far away in Wisconsin a married woman, Doris Clausen, obsesses about giving her husband’s left hand to ‘the lion man’, whilst in Boston a renowned hand surgeon, Dr Zajac, awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant.
The blurb says the book ‘seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce’ but it is ‘in the end … characteristic of John Irving’s seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author’s recurring themes – loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel breaks new ground; it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.’
Hmm, well, that wouldn’t be my summary, I’m afraid. To me the plot is flimsy and unbelievable, the characters are implausible, and to be blunt, I really didn’t care what happened to any of them. Is it likely that every woman he meets wants to fall into bed with this one-handed, immature newsreader? Would any sane woman behave as Doris did for the sake of a complete stranger and an unfulfilled wish for motherhood? Would any surgeon be as indiscriminate and absurd as Dr Zajak? I don’t think so. Of course, you would be perfectly justified in asking, who am I to dare to criticise the work of a literary giant like Irving? But regardless of my credentials, the fact remains that this novel left me cold. It took all my stubborn obsession about finishing what I start to keep me turning the pages.
But then, towards the end of the story, I found a tiny redeeming feature, a little nugget of truth that gave me pause for reflection. Doris loves The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Patrick has seen the movie but recognises that seeing and reading aren’t the same, so he sets about tackling the book to try to discover what it is that charms Doris. He slowly comes to a humbling conclusion, and he feels ‘like a fool’.
‘He’d tried to invade a book Doris Clausen had loved, and a movie that had (at least for her) some painful memories attached to it. But books, and sometimes movies, are more personal than that; they can be mutually appreciated, but the specific reasons for loving them cannot satisfactorily be shared.
Good novels and films are not like the news, or what passes for the news – they are more than items.They are comprised of the whole range of moods you are in when you read them or see them. You can never exactly imitate someone else’s love of a movie or a book …’
I don’t believe I was in any particular kind of mood when I read The Fourth Hand. And I’m pretty confident it was nothing to do with transplant-book overload since this is quite unlike the rest of the books on the topic I’ve read. I simply didn’t like it. It was indeed ‘personal’. No matter how many people laud this work, I cannot ‘imitate’ their emotions. Period.
After writing these comments something still niggled though, so I sneaked across to Amazon to check the reviews from other readers, and there I found a surprising number shared my reservations. Instantly I felt a kind of reassurance, which is paradoxical given what I’ve just said about reading as a subjective experience dependent on many personal factors. Hmmm, again. Am I really as confident in my opinions as I think I am?
In any event, I could still use an extra pair of hands! Oh, and I now have to read The English Patient because I’ve only seen the film.