O Captain, My Captain

I’ve been sitting at my desk for almost an hour now, trying to convince myself that it’s not frivolous or silly to want to write a blog post about the passing of a person I never met when we’re living in a world where thousands of innocent people are dying, unnaturally, every single day. I want to believe that it’s important to remember people who had a huge impact on our lives, even if it wasn’t a personal connection, and to mourn them when we lose them. One thing I know for sure is this: I’ve been sitting here for a long time now, simply weeping, and even though this blog post may be nothing more than an example of how it’s a bad idea to write a blog post when you’re upset, I’m going to go with the only thing on my mind right now.

Robin Williams. He can’t be gone. I simply won’t believe it.

Image: chicagoreader.com

I grew up with Robin Williams’ work. Mork and Mindy made me laugh as a tiny child, Mrs Doubtfire made me wail with laughter as a teenager, and the magisterial Dead Poets’ Society broke my heart and healed it again repeatedly as I grew into an adult. For a long time, it was my favourite film, and it still holds a warm place in my ‘all time greats’ pantheon. Watching the tributes to this awesomely talented man pour in on Twitter this morning reminded me just how many brilliant films he made, and how many parts became his own – he was the voice of Aladdin’s Genie. He played a hilarious cameo role in Friends. He was Patch Adams. He was electrifying in The Fisher King, and compelling in Good Will Hunting. He was Garp, one of my literary heroes, in the underrated classic The World According to Garp. It’s only now I think about it that I realise how much his voice and image contributed to my life, and the lives of so many others.

The fact that he has left us suddenly, and tragically, is hard to bear. If it is hard to bear for his legions of fans, I dread to think how devastating it is to his wife and family, and my thoughts are with them.

And yes, I know there is a humanitarian crisis in Iraq, and in Syria, and in Gaza. I know there are wars everywhere we care to look. I know that women, children and men are being brutalised all over the world, and that the death of one more human being hardly matters in the grand river of destruction which we have created.

But this death does matter. They all matter. Every single life – they all matter. If I were to cry about all of them, I’d never be done crying, so I will cry for Robin Williams. I will cry for the beauty he brought to my life, for all the laughs, for the times I was stopped in my tracks by his talent, whether it was his comedy or simply his acting ability. I will cry that there will never be another film from him. I will cry for his family, and for all who loved him. I will cry for myself, because part of what made my childhood so magical is lost now, forever. I will cry because the tiny glimmer of hope he shone on the world has been extinguished.

And then, I’ll dry my tears and try to remember to make someone laugh today. I’ll try to remember the power of laughter, and how it bridges even the most unbridgeable of gaps, bringing together people who seem to have no common ground. I’ll try to remember to ask others whether I can help if I think they’re going through a bad time, and I’ll try to remember to ask for help if I’m going through a bad time, and I’ll try to remember that there is no shame in asking for help.

And it will all be for you, Robin Williams.

Image: thewrap.com

If you have been affected by the death of Robin Williams, or if you need help dealing with feelings of depression or suicidal impulses, please know that there is so much help out there. Click here for a link to a list of international suicide crisis helplines, or see http://samaritans,org or http://pieta.ie. Please reach out to someone if you’re finding things difficult, and don’t feel you have to deal with your feelings alone – there are so many people who will help you, and there is no shame in asking for help.

Book Review Saturday – ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’

This book is one I’ve wanted to read for years. I kept forgetting about it until the other day when my lovely husband handed me a copy. ‘I thought you might like this,’ he said. ‘It sounded right up your street.’

Well. They do say that when a spouse speaks their affection through books, they’re worth holding on to, don’t they?

Okay, they don’t. But they should.

Image: whytebooks.com

‘Goodnight Mister Tom’, by Michelle Magorian, was originally published in 1981. It won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, an amazing feat for a first novel, and has been a classic of children’s literature ever since. It tells the story of William (‘Willie’, later ‘Will’) Beech, a London child evacuated to the countryside at the outbreak of World War II, and his relationship with Tom Oakley, the man with whom he is placed.

From the get-go, I loved Tom. He’s depicted as the typical ‘gruff’ countryman, keeps himself to himself, doesn’t bother anyone and nobody bothers him – but beneath it all you know that his neighbours respect and like him. He reacts with thinly veiled irritation when Willie is deposited on his doorstep, fresh off the London train, but almost instantly we see his annoyance begin to melt. He has the instincts of a father, and he sees straight away that Willie has been terribly abused by someone in his past. Without having to be told, Tom knows how to take care of Willie. He is patient, and he is understanding, and he is gentle. He is kind, and generous, and he gives the child space to be himself – he gives him a chance to come to trust him, and he never forces the issue.

It is one of the most beautiful ‘parent’-child relationships I’ve ever read. Often, when reading this book, I was moved to tears by Tom’s understanding of what it is to be a child, and how easily he placed himself in Willie’s shoes. It made me wish that every child had a ‘Tom’ – a parent or guardian who treated them with consistent kindness and patient love, allowing them to be who they are and express who they are without judgement.

Just a minute. I’m getting weepy again. Here, have a picture:

John Thaw (Tom) and Nick Robinson (Willie) in the 1998 movie adaptation of the book.
Image: kingsroad.learningspaces.net

Right. Anyway. As the story progresses, we learn a bit more about Tom, and his own painful past. We find out why he keeps his world small and why he has locked away all the love in his heart for so long, and we watch it slowly start to re-emerge as he and Willie grow closer. We see Willie learn how to run and laugh and play like an ordinary child, and we see him make friends – best friends – for the first time. It is through showing us all the things Willie has never experienced before that Magorian expresses the depth of the abuse he’s suffered – and that abuse is like nothing else I’ve ever read.

Willie’s life with his mother comes back into play in the latter part of the book, after she summons him back to London. He has been with Mister Tom for over six months, and he has transformed from a sick, weak, bruised and broken child into a strong, healthy boy. He is so changed that, when he arrives back in London, his mother does not recognise him. In the character of Mrs Beech, Magorian has created one of the most compellingly evil fictional mothers; we see her belittle Willie, and we see her anger when she realises that Tom has not been beating Willie regularly, as she would have wished. We see her determination to ‘break’ him once again, undoing all the good work Tom and the people of Little Weirwold have been doing since Willie arrived among them. We see, in fact, that Mrs Beech is profoundly mentally ill, and has taken out her own frustration and anger on her son.

Tom, meanwhile, has had a premonition that all is not well with Willie. A month goes by, and there is no word from the child despite several letters having been sent to him. Suspicious and uneasy, Tom – who has never ventured beyond his own village – finds his way to London, and eventually to Deptford, where Willie lives. He persuades a policeman to break down the door of the Beechs’ seemingly-abandoned flat – and, inside, they find Willie in the worst possible condition.

During this part of the story, I had to put the book down once or twice because I couldn’t deal with what I was reading. The sheer brutality of what Willie has endured is shocking, even to me; I thought I was fairly worldly, but this book showed me I am not. It was hard going, and I wondered how I would have coped with it as a younger reader. I think children would react entirely differently to this sort of thing, though: it’s almost like something out of a fairy tale, something unreal. It’s only to an adult reader that the true horror reveals itself.

Suffice it to say, I wept as I read the final twenty or thirty pages of this book. As well as Willie and Tom’s story, a character meets their death (unnecessarily, I thought, but that’s just me) which had me in a heap on the floor, and the conclusion of the story wrenched every last drop of emotion from my soul.

So, the story is wonderful.

I’m fine – honestly…
Image: drhealth.md

However, I did have a problem with the writing. Specifically, there’s a lot of showing, as opposed to telling, in this book, and it is – despite not being the heftiest of tomes – too long. Lots of what happens is not vital to the plot, and pages of pointless description and minutiae take away from the book’s power, for me. Having said that, while the style of writing is irritating at times, it shines when Magorian is writing dialogue. At that, and at characterisation, she absolutely excels. In any case, the sheer heft of the story, and the profound effect it had on me, more than make up for the perceived shortcomings in style. Perhaps, after all, there were different ‘rules’ or expectations from children’s books in 1981 in terms of how they were written, and it was Magorian’s first book.

But what a first book.

This one is highly recommended, for those of you who haven’t read it already. Just be prepared to weep, is all I’ll say.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Go read!

Wednesday Write-In #57

This week’s words were:

end of an era  ::  peanuts  ::  claustrophobia  ::  spore  ::  fizzy

 

Image: thedecorista.com

The Glamour Girl

They’d talked until dawn set fire to the horizon.

Much later, he woke to a gentle hsss. It took him several minutes to understand that he was listening to the dregs of their forgotten champagne, bubbling their last. He threw the fizzy liquid back, its slightly sour note wrinkling his palate.

He remembered.

Her skin, like a fresh snowfall. Her lips, red as death.

‘Let’s open a window,’ he’d suggested, but she’d just widened those famous eyes. Her fingers, heavy with jewels, had pulled her robe tighter around her neck.

‘No,’ she’d whispered. ‘I just… I can’t deal with the cold. You understand, don’t you?’

He’d dropped his hand from the window latch, then, and heaved a sigh, stirring up the dust particles in this claustrophobic, unwashed room.

‘Come and sit by me, darling,’ she’d said, with a smile, seeing his frustration. ‘Let’s talk about the good old days.’

‘The days of getting paid peanuts and being worked like a horse, you mean?’ He’d laughed joylessly and slid into the hollow of her body. She’d settled around him like a cat, curling herself into his warmth.

‘But they were fun, weren’t they?’ she’d said, her voice distant. ‘Even so?’

He’d let his hand fall to stroke her narrow back, realising as he did so that he could trace each one of her bones. She was like a puzzle, badly made. His hand had stilled.

‘Fun? I suppose,’ he’d murmured. Perhaps, if you were the star.

‘They loved me then, didn’t they?’ she’d asked, tilting her head back. He’d felt her breath on his face as she spoke, warm and sickly, like a spore-filled breeze. In his mind, she’d started seeding and taking root in him, all over him, and his bile had risen.

‘What’s the matter?’ she’d asked, a frown beginning. ‘Do I… Is it how I look? What?’

‘You’re every bit as lovely now as you’ve ever been,’ he’d told her, trying to smile. Her frown had deepened at his words, and her lips had thinned. He felt like he’d said the wrong thing, but he didn’t know what.

Her eyes, like sloe berries. Her hair, bright as life.

His head pounded.

He looked around, searching. He called her name, softly and then with more force. He stumbled upright, scanning the detritus of the night they’d spent together; she was not on the bed, nor on the couch. She was not singing in the kitchen.

It took him several long moments to think of checking the marble- and gold-fitted bathroom, but when he did, he marvelled, for a moment, at how neat she looked. Then, he heaved up his champagne, his ears still hissing, his brain strangled.

He gasped for breath, already seeing tomorrow’s headlines in his mind. They’d likely call it ‘the end of an era’, ‘the death of a goddess.’

Gently, he lifted her to the bed, settling her robe decently around her. He rouged her face and combed her hair, and while the police were on their way he cleaned out the tub.

As the first bulb flashed, he thought her pale, tired face bore the faint trace of a smile.

 

Book Review Saturday

Today’s book review takes as its subject a book I’ve mentioned before on the blog, and one I’d been looking forward to for ages before I managed to pick it up last weekend. It’s the latest work from one of my all-time favourite authors, a writer whose books for me are always an automatic buy; I knew I’d love it before I’d even introduced my eyes to the opening lines.

So, really, this review is more of a love letter to the author.

And that author is Neil Gaiman.

Image: thesundaytimes.co.uk

‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ tells us the story of a lost and bewildered man, returning to the landscape of his childhood. As he begins to immerse himself in the lost people and places of his past, he tells himself – and, of course, the reader – a story about a pivotal summer in his life, the summer he was seven years old, and what happened to him. As he narrates, bits and pieces of his memory float back up to his consciousness; it’s like he has suppressed his memories underneath a layer of ‘growing up and moving away and making a life for yourself,’ but that summer remains at his core, a slumbering seed waiting for the right time to bloom.

The narrator is not (as far as I remember) given a name – the book is, of course, written in the first person, so this isn’t a problem for the reader. As an adult, he seems quite jaded, a little disillusioned with life, a man who has put a failed marriage behind him and whose three adult children have grown and gone and left him to deal with the trauma of a family funeral alone. Attending this funeral is the reason he has returned to his childhood home, and he drives – at first randomly, and then with purpose – through the small village in which he grew up, and eventually out onto the narrow country roads that lead to his house, the house his parents built, and in which another family are now living. He drives further down the lane – deeper into his memory and himself – and winds up sitting beside the duckpond at the heart of Hempstock Farm, the pond which Lettie Hempstock, a girl he hasn’t thought about for forty years, once told him was the ocean.

The narrator’s seven-year-old self tells us about the summer his parents took in a lodger, a South African opal miner who eventually steals their family car and, having lost all his money through gambling, decides to take his own life in it. This tragic event – and it is tragic, and sad, and described by the seven-year-old narrator with all the wide-eyed clarity of a child – would be bad enough by itself, but it is only the beginning of a horrifying sequence of events which will drag in not only the child, but everyone who lives on the lane. The miner’s decision to commit suicide has unleashed a horrifying magical force, a dark and sinister spirit which uses his death as a portal into the human world, and who takes up residence in the fields around the narrator’s house. This spirit, in its twisted way, wants to ‘give people what they want’ – the opal miner died because he had no money, and so, one day, the narrator wakes up choking, his throat on fire with pain. With great effort, he manages to pull out whatever has made its way into his neck. It turns out to be a large silver coin – a silver shilling.

This macabre and twisted way of trying to ‘help’ while hurting is the signature of this malevolent spirit. Luckily for the narrator and his family, though, the family who live at the end of the lane – the Hempstock women of Hempstock farm – are far more than what they seem. Their duckpond is an ocean, the oldest of them remembers the Big Bang, they have powers beyond description and wisdom beyond measure and courage beyond understanding. Lettie, the youngest (though that’s a meaningless term, in relation to these characters), is eleven to the narrator’s seven, and she takes him with her as she goes forth to confront the spirit. Unfortunately, they underestimate it, and their attempts to vanquish it only allow it to create a doorway into the human world, which it can use at will – and the doorway is located through the body of our narrator, our seven-year-old innocent, whose life and family instantly begins to crumble. The Hempstock women must regroup and rethink their tactics in order to fight it, and fight it they do.

This book is an expertly handled mingling of fantastical elements and minutely observed realism. For me, even as a person who adores fantasy and mythology and folklore, and particularly when they’re in the hands of Neil Gaiman, and despite the fact that magic and folklore is at the heart of this story, I felt the book was strongest when rooted in the real. The descriptions of the narrator’s family, and the ways in which this spirit attempts to worm* its way into the fabric of their home life, are so effective because we’ve already seen the love between the members of the family, which makes the coldness and hatred that starts to grow once they’ve been infected by the spirit even starker and more upsetting. The most powerful scene in the book by a country mile is the one in which the narrator’s father, overtaken by the spirit’s power, very nearly takes his son’s life – it chilled me to the marrow. It’s an unforgettable piece of writing.

Writing fantasy is no challenge to Neil Gaiman. The spirit, its manifestations, the horrifying ‘hunger birds’ who must be summoned in order to make an attempt to destroy it, the powers at the heart of the Hempstock family and the thrilling mystery that binds them together, as well as the sacrifices each member of the Hempstock family makes in order to ensure the survival of everyone else on the lane, are all marvellous. But, I can’t help thinking that Neil Gaiman can create this type of thing effortlessly – this sort of writing, this sort of thinking, is not difficult for him. It’s the touches of realism – the marital difficulties between the narrator’s parents, the relationship between him and his sister, the loneliness he feels when nobody turns up to his seventh birthday party – which elevate this book into a higher form of art.

I devoured ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane.’ I loved every word. If you enjoy excellent writing, wonderful storytelling, superb narrative framing, and a touch of scary magic topped with love, sacrifice and devotion, then this is the book for you.

Happy weekend, everyone. Read well, read often, read wisely…

*If you’ve read the book, please forgive the pun!

Another Week…

Happy Monday, everyone.

Today, I’d planned to write about a short story I was working on over the weekend. This particular short story was pretty much all that was occupying my mind this morning as I woke up. I was intending to submit it to a major competition, and I thought it was reasonably good; I’ve drafted and redrafted it and it’s probably, in its current state, as good as I can get it. But I re-read it last night and realised something weird: I’m not sure whether I like it, or whether I hate it. Normally, it’s obvious to me whether I like something or not. This was strange enough, I felt, to warrant a blog post.

But then I heard the early news this morning, and learned that a young man from County Kerry, in the far south of Ireland, had lost his battle for life yesterday (Sunday). His name was Donal Walsh. Here’s an article about him which has reduced me to tears this sunny Monday morning. Here’s another. If you’ve never heard of Donal Walsh, I hope you take the time to read about him, and about the courage that drove him in his last months to speak out against the scourge of suicide among the young.

Once I learned that this brave boy had succumbed to the foul disease that has destroyed so many lives, I knew that a blog post that didn’t mention him would be a travesty.

Rarely in my life have I come across a public figure that touched my heart as much as Donal Walsh did. Young people in Ireland (and across the world) have, it seems, been turning more and more to suicide as an answer to the darkness that appears to be besetting their lives, and Donal was a light in that darkness. His message – ‘look, see, this is how beautiful life is. This is why it’s worth fighting for. I want to live, but I have no choice – you have a choice’ – has profoundly impacted Ireland, and, I hope, the wider world. In recent months and weeks, he has been appearing on TV chat shows, and on other media, to talk about his illness and his battle, and his belief in the power of the young to make choices which will illuminate the world. He always looked so well and healthy; I had no idea that he was so close to the end of his journey. News of his death has taken me, I have to admit, by surprise.

For a young man to face his own death so bravely is one thing; for him to spend his last months and weeks trying to save the lives of others is a heroism rare in our cynical old world. I never met Donal, nor did I know him personally, but I am proud of him for all he did, and for all his work will mean in the months and years ahead. Long may his legacy live, and long may his light shine.

RIP Donal.
Image: irishexaminer.com

You, and I, hopefully, have another week, and another week, and another. We have many Mondays, many mornings, many opportunities to feel so tired we’re barely able to roll out of bed and many days when we’ll bounce awake, full of enthusiasm for the day ahead, many chances to do our work as well as we can, many days to spend with our loved ones, and as many moments as we could wish for to tell them we love them. We have time to achieve our dreams. In Donal’s memory, let’s all be lights in the darkness; let’s do all we can to help others to live. Let’s spend every second we’ve been given doing all we can to make the paths of others a little smoother. Let’s never forget how lucky we are to have a choice.

Have a wonderful Monday.

Wednesday Write-In #36

This week’s words were:

on the ledge  ::  fingerprint  ::  subtitle  ::  just a cigar  ::  birthday

Meet on the Ledge

She wakes to singing, gentle and under his breath. Barely there at all, it’s more of a vibration in his chest than anything. He’s warm beside her.

‘Morning,’ she whispers, curling herself into the hollow under his arm. They’re lying on the couch in the living room, and the curtains are askew. The light falls across her face like the blade of a sword.

‘Morning, you,’ he says, between verses. He sings her awake, making her feel like a snake being charmed out of a basket. Wineglasses cluster around overflowing ashtrays like workers around water coolers. The air in the room is heavy with remembered crowds. Laughter lingers in every corner.

‘It was a great party, wasn’t it?’ he says, when the song comes to an end. ‘Very, I don’t know – decadent, maybe. Bohemian.’ She feels him smiling.

‘They don’t throw ‘em like that any more, that’s for sure,’ she agrees. There’s a thickness in her voice, and a strange taste in her mouth. She rolls her tongue around, feeling all her teeth, trying to get her bearings. Everything feels upended. She tastes wrong, she feels wrong. Her head spins. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Well, the birthday girl is in bed – I’m not sure who with,’ he says, archly. Her eyes fall on the birthday card they all clubbed together to make for her – it has a picture of Sigmund Freud on the front. Captioned ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…’, she grins as she remembers the messages they put inside. ‘I think there are a few marooned souls on the floor, too. Little islands of drunken solitude.’

‘You’re such a poetic fool,’ she teases, laying her hand flat on the skin of his chest. She stretches out her fingers. They feel like rivers, flowing down her arm and out under her nails, covering him from head to toe, dripping onto the carpet. She begins to feel light-headed. As if he can sense her beginning to float away, he lays his hand on top of hers. He circles her knuckles gently. Beneath her ear, his heart thuds, steady as the oceans.

‘You know, skin can take a fingerprint,’ he says. ‘So, if I become a crime scene, they’ll dust me. They’ll try to pin it on you.’ His voice takes on a noirish tinge. ‘You gotta make a run for it, sister. You gotta never let ‘em catch you!’

‘Idiot,’ she smiles. ‘I’m too clever for that. Don’t you think this is all part of my master plan?’

‘I never doubted you for a second,’ he says, chuckling. She feels his other hand start to play with her hair. She wonders if she stinks of sweat, or smoke, or worse.

‘What were you singing?’ she asks, covering her sudden shyness. She wants to ask him a different question, but she’s not brave enough to form the words.

‘Just now? It was Meet on the Ledge. Fairport Convention. Do you know it?’ She desperately wants to lie, to pretend she’s on his level, but instead she shakes her head.

‘Shame,’ he says. ‘It’s a great tune.’ The melody beneath her ear starts up again. She listens, and her mind fills up with images of high places, blown lives, waste. Lost friends. She finds it depressing.

‘A bit sad, isn’t it?’ she says. He’s silent for several minutes, but his heartbeat fills her mind.

‘No way,’ he replies eventually. ‘They knew how to write a song, back in the day.’ He hums a bit more, like he’s fast-forwarding a tape. Eventually, he gets to the part he wants. ‘“If you really mean it, it all comes round again,”’ he sings, so softly that only she can hear. ‘This isn’t the end, you know what I mean? It’s all a cycle. We’re meaningless.’ He pauses, takes a deep breath. ‘What’s the point of any of it?’ he says, his voice soft and far away. She can’t say why, but something about his words makes her feel uncomfortable. She swallows a sudden mouthful of hurt.

‘Sometimes I wish you came with subtitles,’ she jokes after a few minutes, looking up at him. His eyes are bright green in the morning light. They search her face for a long time, as if looking for a foothold. Then he blinks, and looks away.

Much later, she’ll remember this moment, and wonder what she missed. Every time this date that was once just a birthday, and which became so much more, rolls around, she’ll listen to the song. She still won’t understand, and she’ll wonder if her fingerprints are still on his skin. Between the notes of the song she’ll tell herself she can hear his heartbeat, and she’ll cry a little less with every passing year.