Tag Archives: literary novel

Dark Family Tale in Northern Ireland

Destination: Ireland

Book: Black Lake by Johanna Lane

When you travel, do you like to visit old homes–you know, the Downton Abbey kind of manor, where the titled family has had to let visitors traipse through in order to make enough money to pay the taxes?

If you have visited, or stayed overnight in one of those places, you may have wondered what it would be like to turn your home into a place of amusement for the masses.  What does it do to the soul of the place? To the souls of the family members?

In Black Lake Johanna Lane explores those questions along with deeper, more existential questions that plague the family.  She presents the point of view of each family member–mother (Marianne), father (John), son and daughter (Philip and Kate)–one at a time.  The novel moves through a year when each person tries to cope with tragic changes in their lives.

Ireland
Glenveagh Castle, Ireland. Photo by Stephen Collins. Used with Creative Commons license.

Dulough, John’s family’s grand family estate stands looking out to water from a cliff overlooking Black Lake in Donegal County, Ireland, with woods behind the house. Stately gardens surround the house. The atmosphere is cold and mostly gloomy, a suitable setting for such a serious story.

Marianne, a city girl from Dublin, has adjusted to her marriage with John and the family heritage through her work with the garden.  John has hidden from her the financial problems that came with the estate.

Irish castle
Glenveagh National Park, Ireland. Photo by Raphael Schön. Used with Creative Commons License.

9-year-old Philip tries to understand the world of the grownups and is most fascinated by his father’s lessons about the ice age. Glaciers carved out this land. The effect of ice on land and the effect of the restrained coolness of emotions on family members underlies the story. Kate, at twelve, is never quite sure what she really thinks and feels. Both children are shaken when they must move out of their accustomed home and routines into a humble cottage while tourists traipse through what was once their private domain.

Lane skillfully wraps you in the landscape and magically captures just the right tone for each character.

The  book’s circular structure means thoughts of one person are echoed, generally in a slightly different key, as we move from one point of view to another.

Johanna Lane has written an intriguing book that gives you much to ponder.  Not the least, for traveler’s is the conundrum of how we peek into other people’s lives as we visit new places and how the observer affects the observed.

In the interview linked to her name in the first paragraph (above), Lane is asked a question pertinent for Travelers Who Read:

Which Irish authors do you think do a great job of capturing the countryside?

John McGahern — he wrote 10 novels set in the Irish countryside. His vision is a lot bleaker. He grew up in quite an abusive household. For him, the country is beautiful, but also a trap … I think he’s one of my favorite Irish authors. And Anne Enright, of course.

So there you go–read Black Lake, then explore the writer’s writers.

Or pop over to Ireland and visit the Glenveagh National Park, which Lane used as a model for the estate in this book.

Note:  The publisher provided me with a copy of the book for review.  My opinions are totally my own.  There is a link to Amazon here. If you’re shopping for books or anything else at Amazon, it costs you no more to use these links, and you’ll be supporting A Traveler’s Library. Thanks. The two photos of Glenveagh are from Flickr. Click on a picture to learn more.

Alys Always

A WEEK of Books About Writing and Publishing

Note: On Monday, I talked about All Men Are Liars, whose characters are all in the writing and publishing business. Today’s book, in a different time and a different place also centers on the business of writing. It just happens that three books landed on my reading pile that deal quite prominently with writing, reading, and publishing. So it seemed logical to group them together this week.

Destination: England


Book: Alys Always (New in the U.S. June 2012) by Harriet Lane
The woods on Horsenden HillAlthough there is nothing supernatural going on, I think it is fair to say that a dead woman dominates this novel. Continue reading Alys Always

Unsworth on a Greek Island

 

Greek Fishing Boat

Destination: An Anonymous Greek Island

Book: Pascali’s Island by Barry Unsworth (1980)

We move today to an early book by Barry Unsworth about treachery and deceit in pre-modern Greece.

Pascali’s Island deals with many of the same themes as Land of Marvels, a book he wrote about archaeologists in Iraq. I did not care for that book,  But in this literary novel,  Pascali’s Island, everything works. The author focuses once again on the dying  Ottoman empire and the struggle of the Americans, British and Germans to pick up the spoils. But here the story spotlights the rot and corruption of the weakening government instead of the imperialistic aims of the stronger nations.

Another similarity to Land of Marvels comes with the ever shifting line between truth and self-serving lies, and the exploration of the act of story telling.  The main character, an informer to the Ottoman ruler can be defined by a circular equation: writer = informant =spy = writer. Writers/spies tell tales that  recreate people, action and scenes so that someone else can draw meaning from the words.

Pascali tells us plainly that he is an undependable narrator. Not only does he state, through his reports to the Sultan that he  sometimes invents people and events, but he also wanders far away from the task and embellishes with so many details that the reader wants to scream, “Get to the point!” However, gradually, one realizes that the wandering IS the point.

Greek Island
Greek Island

Because of Pascali’s charming diversions into scene setting, Pascali’s Island becomes an appealing book for travelers.  Not only does it lend some insight into a formative point of Greek history, but it also paints a picture of a Greek island that rings very true.  Oddly, even though the island is never named–we know only it is in the Eastern Aegean, near Turkey–the descriptions seem to be so precise that you could paint it.

Below me I can follow the sweep of the bay as far as the headland, and see beyond to the pale heights of the mainland, across the straits.  In this thickening of atmosphere, the sand and stones of the shore appear slightly smoky, as if enveloped thinly in their own breath.  Beyond this the sea is opaline, gashed near the horizon by a long, gleaming line of light. The light fumes upward into the sky.”

Reading a passage like that, I found myself thinking, yes, it is exactly like that, and then snapping back to realize that he was not describing a real place, but rather an amalgam of Aegean islands–perhaps the Platonic ideal of Aegean Island. Unsworth/Pascali speaks frequently of the quality of the light, which always impresses visitors to Greece. But also refers to truth as light when he says that “humans could not live long in the light, it would shrivel them up.”

Finally, I cannot resist quoting his comment on writing. Pascali says parenthetically in a report, that he has recently discovered he has a wish to suffer and gives examples. “That is why I became a writer of reports, Excellency.  Otherwise why would I wrestle with words, go on wrestling, when every bout ends with me thudding to the canvas.”

I would say that in Pascali’s Island, the decision goes to Unsworth.

Photograph by VMB. All rights reserved.