Gods, bodies and offices
When life’s storms rage fiercely around you and you’re plunged into an emotional crisis, your mind is too busy and your heart too full to read. You’re focused on survival—every cell in your body is working hard to gather hope, to believe in a good outcome. That’s how it’s been for me lately. I read very little.
A book that managed to hold my attention is The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce. This author impressed with Miss Benson’s Beetle, one of those novels that stays with you. She is a living treasure.
This novel deals with the complicated dynamics within families—between siblings, between children and parents. The four Kemp children didn’t have the happiest start. Their mother died shortly after the birth of the youngest sister, Iris. Their father, a flamboyant artist with a serious drinking problem, was financially present—his somewhat sentimental erotic paintings sold like hotcakes—but emotionally he was either distant or intensely, manically focused on them. They had only each other, and to they were deeply and closely connected.
Until their father, Vic, in his late seventies, falls in love with Bella-Mae and impulsively marries her. She is 27, fifty years his junior, and even younger than Iris. Allegedly, she’s an artist. She brews herbal teas that cause Vic to lose weight at an alarming rate. He stops drinking. The children haven’t met her and weren’t invited to the spontaneous wedding in Italy.
They only meet her after their father mysteriously drowns in the lake near their holiday home in Italy while on his honeymoon. Only Bella-Mae and her enigmatic cousin were nearby. Vic was a strong swimmer. Everything seems suspicious, especially since his young bride is the primary heir, and the villa in Italy—the beloved childhood holiday home—now belongs to her.
Their problematic, irresistible father was the centre of the children’s lives, the foundation of their identities. We spend time in each of their minds. The oldest, Netta, is the head girl type, the leader, a successful lawyer with a picture-perfect life, even though the love of her life left her for a man. He has since died of AIDS, and his partner is now her best friend and loyal companion. The brother, Goose (or Gustav, which he couldn’t pronounce when he was little), is physically large like his father but, unlike Vic, he is shy and lacks self-confidence. He is gay. The second sister, Susan, always lived in Netta’s shadow. She married a much older man and never had children. Iris, the youngest, is a bit lost in the world, a free spirit. Aside from Netta, their father was the source of financial stability for his children.
Now, all three children fly to Italy. Bella-Mae is not what they expected. According to her, it was their father who kept her away from them. She is stunningly beautiful and outspoken. A troublemaker. She quickly sows division among the siblings. They’re frantically searching for their father’s will and don’t trust her, although she manages to win over some of them. She is hypnotic and charming.
You read to get to the heart of the matter—and as a curious observer, to delve into complex family dynamics. This is a novel full of insight, intelligence, and humour. I highly recommend it.
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce is published by Doubleday and costs R390 at Exclusive Books.
Like psychological thrillers about family dynamics, crime novels can hold one’s attention during challenging times. I also read Nightshade by Michael Connelly, that master storyteller.
Detective Stilwell from the Los Angeles homicide division is transferred to Santa Catalina Island to stay out of trouble. The island posting is rather hopeless, with no prospects for promotion. Not much happens on this idyllic vacation destination—until divers discover a woman’s body tangled in anchor chains. It’s not Stilwell’s case—his former colleagues from LA are called in. They’re two bombastic, lazy oafs. Of course, like all our favourite detectives, he refuses to back down and begins his own private investigation. Naturally, he becomes a target of the local mafia and kicks over quite a few hornet’s nests.
His ex-colleagues quickly arrest someone for the murder, but he realises they’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Will he live long enough to prove them wrong? It’s a race against time, highly suspenseful, and the characters are sharply drawn. The reader is in the hands of a master of the genre.
It kept me awake, and I highly recommend it if you’re a crime fiction fanatic.
Nightshade by Michael Connelly is published by Orion Publishing Co and costs R465 at Exclusive Books.
Another book that fascinated me and made me forget about my problems was Counter-attacks at Thirty by the Korean author Won-Pyung Sohn.
The narrator, Jihye, is thirty and completely average. There’s nothing special about her. She did so-so in school and didn’t get into the top universities. She struggled to find work and is now a temporary employee at a college, working as an administrative assistant mostly responsible for photocopying lecture notes. It’s an exploration of office politics and the deadly tedium of Korean bureaucracy. She doesn’t exactly excel at her job, but she doesn’t make catastrophic mistakes either. She rolls her eyes and fetches coffee.
But everything changes when a new intern is appointed: Gyuok Lee, a bear of a man with little ambition and anarchistic tendencies. He and Jihye take a ukulele course together (interns are allowed to take one free course a year, though it’s actually deducted from their meagre salaries). This is how she reflects on the ukulele:
We held our instruments up to our ears as we competed against the noise. And then one day while doing this, a thought occurred to me. Perhaps that’s life: plucking away at a four-stringed instrument by yourself and making soft yet crude sounds while competing against others doing the exact same thing, all in a vain attempt to hear just a whisper of your own voice.
To top it all off, she started learning the ukulele because she wanted to play it like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s—only to find out that it wasn’t a ukulele at all, but a mini guitar that Hepburn played in the film. The book is filled with this kind of subversive humour.
Jihye, Gyuok Lee, and a few office comrades begin performing small, symbolic acts of resistance and retaliation—counter-attacks against those in positions of power. In the process, they discover the joy of friendship. It’s a delightful book that I highly recommend.
Counter-attacks at Thirty by Won-Pyung Sohn is published by HarperVia and costs R579 at Amazon South Africa.
