The Virgin & the Whale'
A Love Story
by Carl Nixon
Published by Random House NZ (Vintage)
RRP $37.99
The cover of this book has a hot
air balloon floating in a green sky above exotic temples. Both the title and the cover are quirky and
eye-catching conjuring up thoughts of the fantastical.
This
is an old-fashioned 'story' - it's a tale within a tale, within a tale. There is quite a lot of authorial comment
directed at the reader. Initially, this
really irritated me, but I was sufficiently engaged with the story to keep
reading. For example:
"You are undoubtedly wondering about this
story's name - 'The virgin & the Whale... Perhaps it is the title that has
caused you to dip a figurative toe into these pages?'
The
main story is essentially, a beautiful love story. Not your ordinary every-day sort of love
story though. Instead, we have Lucky, a
returned serviceman from the First World War, in the city of Mansfield (a
fictitious double of Christchurch) and Elizabeth his nurse. Lucky (thus named when he is found alive
after a piece of the right femur of another soldier is embedded in his brain),
has no memory from prior to the moment of his injury. He's back home recuperating and his wife is
trying to get him to remember who he really is. She employs Elizabeth a nurse, whose husband
is missing in action overseas, because Elizabeth has had experience working
both in Mansfield and in London nursing returned servicemen.
The various permutations of how to tell the
story are then played out by the author as he assumes a scientific hat (looking
at velocity and physics and how injuries occur during war - in particular the
splinter of bone that enters Lucky's brain), his addressing the reader, even to
imply that the reader might now be ready to hurl the book at the wall - and indeed, right around this point, the author
read my mind - and instead of hurling the book, I was appreciative that he
could guess how I was feeling, and carried on.
A strange, but in the end effective ruse.
So,
there's the more or less straight-forward love story (which may or may not be a
true story) and then there is the sub-text about what it is that makes us human
- do we exist because of memory and are we just our memories, and if we lose
that, then who are we?
Adding
to the layers of 'The Virgin & the Whale' is a story that Elizabeth who is
nursing Lucky, is telling to her young son to divert his attention from the
fact that his father is missing in
action and may not return from the war.
In tale within the tale, we meet
the Virgin and the Whale...
I
got the feeling reading this book, that the author had been gifted the original
love story and as he stated, had been searching for a way into it, the right
way to tell it and so he's constructed a series of stories within stories. Is this effective? Was this the best way? I think even the author is asking those
questions. Now and then I wondered how
it might have been if I'd just been reading a straight-forward fictional
account of Elizabeth and Lucky and also been able to get inside the head of
Lucky's distressed wife. But, in the
end, I decided the author has chosen a 'novel' way to tell this story adding
other layers to what is, after all, a quite simple, but very affecting love
story.
'Stay where you are & then
leave'
by John Boyne
Published by Random House New
Zealand
RRP $26.90
Interestingly,
Graham Beattie had given me two books to review as I left for Siem Reap, and the
second 'Stay where you are & then
leave' by John Boyne, is also about the First World War and the impact of shell
shock, or as we now refer to it more commonly, as post traumatic stress
syndrome. . There are parallels between these two books as both explore the limited
scientific understanding of brain injuries and shell shock at that particular
time. They include some of the more
primitive treatments such as heavy sedation and frequent misdiagnosis, such as
Schizophrenia. I found it interesting to read the two books with this similar
theme, one as an adult story, the other written for children. (And, you might note, both these books use
the ampersand in the title, which struck me as interesting - sharing themes and the ampersand).
I
had read 'The Boy in Striped Pyjamas' but I had been also, a little uneasy
about the (I say this with caution), exploitation of my emotions - but in the
end, felt it had been a successful and interesting child's view of a
Concentration Camp from the German perspective. 'Stay where you are & then leave' is a
similar sort of book, looking at the First World War this time, and the
implications of shell-shock and of conscientious objection. I read and reviewed John Boyne's' 'The Absolutist'
which along with forbidden love, also looks at the issue of conscientious
objection and the First World War - a book I liked. I feel less able to be objective about this
book for children as I am not as familiar with the genre. I felt my emotions exploited and I found it
hard to suspend my disbelief. In a book
for children perhaps the rules are different.
The young boy who is only nine and who wags school to shine shoes at
Kings Cross - I could believe that - but I couldn't believe that his mother who
worked as a nurse, didn't notice the extra money he was slipping into her
purse. I was reminded of another novel
'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer, which was well
received, but that I disliked for similar reasons - I couldn't suspend my
disbelief about a boy roaming New York post 9/11.
And,
so with 'Stay where you are & then leave', Boyne is tackling some fairly
hefty issues for children (as in the case of 'The Boy in Striped
Pyjamas'). It feels like a book trying
to have a bet both ways - to appeal to both adults and children. There are some nice touches with famous guest
appearances, including Lloyd George having his shoes shone by the protagonist
at Kings Cross Station. I did enjoy the
scenes at Kings Cross, and the details about trains in England during that
time, stopping before the actual station to try and avoid bombings. And then strangely, characters from 'The
Absolutist' turn up, Wilf with his wooden leg, to have his shoes shined and
Marion Bancroft his sister - two fictional characters who will mean nothing,
unless you've read 'The Absolutist'.
In
the end, I did feel as an adult reader, that I was being manipulated into
feeling things, directed, rather than being left room to respond as a reader.
I'll
be interested to see if this book has the same wide appeal as 'The Boy in
Striped Pyjamas' And too, the thing that haunted the story for me, was that we
were so close to the nine year old protagonist and the impact of war on his
life - his Dad missing in action and
then hospitalised, his mother out working, while he wags school and shoe shines
- my knowing that in twenty years time in this fictional world he inhabits, he
will be called up to serve in the Second World War.-
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