Separating Fact from Fiction: The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy by Barbara Vine

Viking

Pp. 343

When Gerald Candless, a critically acclaimed author dies, his daughter, Sarah, is asked to write a memoir of her beloved father. As she starts to research his childhood and origins – i.e. his life before she was born – she soon discovers multiple discrepancies in the narrative. There follows a domestic investigation into family secrets that might make a man change his name and adopt an entirely new persona.

As with many Barbara Vine novels, the timeframe switches back and forth between past and present, and all the family members are affected by the consequences of one man’s actions. Each chapter begins with a ‘quote’ from one of Gerald Candless’ novels, allowing the author to play with her story-within-a-story motif, as Sarah plays amateur sleuth and attempts to mine fact from fiction. The moth on the spines of Gerald Candless’ books (and the jacket of this novel) proves to be a ‘clue’ in the manner of an old-fashioned detective novel, and simultaneously represents a subtle homage by Barbara Vine to the art of cover design.

The secrets are often to cover historic scandals, such as illegitimacy, unwed mothers, class distinctions and homosexuality, which would not raise an eyebrow today. She writes with sadness that such issues could lead to misunderstanding and even murder.  Another familiar trope is the notion of blood being a metaphor for generational inheritance (both positive and negative), while also being a vital fluid.

Like PD James or Robert Goddard, Barbara Vine writes literary suspense novels where the characters are more engaging the plot, and the themes are apparent from the start. Rather than racing to the end to find out whodunnit, the reader spends time with the characters wondering how they feel and what they are going to do about it.

Trouble in Paradise: How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

 

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

Tinder Press

Pp. 308

The title refers to a cautionary tale parents tell their daughters not to be willful, as the child in the narrative loses an arm due to curiosity when she enters a tunnel despite dire warnings. The message misfires when Lala (she who is told the tale by her grandmother, Wilma) wonders whether the girl could cope without the limb, swapped for following passion. She is cautioned, ‘but how will she sweep the house with only one arm’? She questions whether a woman’s worth is judged by her housekeeping, and maybe she would rather lead an adventurous life.

Unfortunately, her adventures do not lead to happiness. The novel is set in Barbados on a beach straight from the brochures of paradise. White folk live in tall, gated houses, while violence, prostitution, drug smuggling, murder and other criminal activities exist beyond their gardens, and everyone carries a gun. The police turn a blind eye to the abuse (particularly of women) until it enters those houses of those who go to embassies and ruin the tourist trade.

The community is steeped in intergenerational violence and abuse. Mothers beat their children because they do not want them to go bad and need to whip the devil out of them; they fear that sparing the rod is the cause of the child’s failings. Lala marries Adan, who regularly beats and rapes her, even while she is recovering from a traumatic birth. He commits robberies to pay for his lifestyle, which escalate to drug smuggling and murder in a sort of subplot to the novel. His cruelty leads to a tug of war with their newborn (known only as Baby because they have not yet decided on a name), which results in the death of the child as she is dropped on the floor.

Girls are routinely raped by their male relatives: Lala is the child of her mother, Esme, and her grandfather, Carter. The young women are sent away to remove the temptation, while the man is not considered to be at fault. Lala is made to sleep in the outhouse to avoid her grandfather’s attentions, or how else can he resist? Women are pursued by men. The policeman who investigates the Baby’s death pursues Sheba and refuses to accept that she doesn’t want his protection; Adan fixates on his ‘outside woman’ despite being married to Lala.

"A grown man cannot help himself, she explains, in the presence of a young Wilkinson girl. This is the way it has been for generations. It is not the man’s fault, says Wilma, there is nothing he can do about it. It was this way with her mother before her, her daughter and granddaughter after her. It was this way with her."

In some ways, the novel, full of descriptive scenes and local patois, is reminiscent of those by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison or Alan Duff. Characters struggle to connect with community and lash out at those who seek to reinforce their culture without understanding the roots of reggae or Rasta, merely turning gangsta. When Wilma holds a funeral for Baby, Adan does not attend because he is wary of her connection to culture, although he tells his friends that she is a bitch and “he not going anywhere around her or her house.” He is alone and left behind in the world where he has lost his local bonds.

Even Lala is infused in her beliefs, although they may not support her – her grief, trauma and post-partum depression are explained in superstition. “She is convinced also that supernatural beings are conspiring on her daughter’s behalf to make her understand that she will pay for her part in her death.” She fears a “wicked duppy” is playing tricks on her, putting cans of formula in the cupboard, although she knows she has thrown them all out, sprinkling the scent of baby powder in the house, and “It is this duppy, or another, equally malevolent, who infuses the peculiar sound the paper bag of flour makes when she is making dumplings and it hits the floor with the same sound she heard when Baby was dropped.”

Reviewers have called the book unflinching, claustrophobic, pitiless, and relentless. Focussing on murder, abuse, a violent marriage and the death of a baby, it is certainly no light-hearted tale, but there is a slight glimmer of hope towards the end, and it is ultimately compelling. It is exquisitely constructed, with flashbacks to flesh out the characters and the pathways that have led them to this Barbadian beach, and it is a great achievement for a debut novel.

Prison Performance: Mad Blood Stirring

Mad Blood Stirring by Simon Mayo

Doubleday

Pp. 387

Simon Mayo’s first novel for adults concerns a relatively unknown incident about a massacre at Dartmoor Prison where American sailors were being held in 1815 after the end of the three year-year conflict between the United States and Britain. The peace had not yet been ratified and there were thousands of prisoners of war crammed into Dartmoor, frustrated, angry and turning to violence. This much is true, and the novel is packed with solid descriptions of prison life: crowded bunks; appalling food; general boredom; thoughts of escape and political intrigues; and the constant backdrop of fear and danger.

Inspired by true events, the detail is precise including the initial march to the prison, the labour of snow-clearing, the smallpox outbreak and vaccinations against it. The sailors are segregated by choice, with the black sailors in Block Four, where they sing gospel songs and perform plays which they take very seriously. King Dick ‘rules’ Block Four, and the Rough Allies attempt to rule the rest, with violence and intimidation.

Sixteen-year-old Joe takes on the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet that is to be performed with great passion by the inmates of Block Four, although they bowdlerize the text. The kiss between the lovers is fraught with danger partly due to the homosexuality (punishable by flogging and further brutality) and also because Joe is white, while Romeo, played by Habakkuk (Habs) Snow is black. The title of the novel is taken from the opening scene of Act Three of Romeo and Juliet, and here implies but the growing unrest in the prison, and the illicit feelings that Joe and Habs develop for each other.

Highlighting the theatrical elements, the chapters are divided into Acts, some scenes are presented as scripts, and there is a list of characters at the beginning. There are many characters and they are not all fully formed with some aspects that could have made great stories relegated to mere subplots, causing the novel to read a little like the first draft of a film-script, albeit in a well-defined setting.

Flight of Fancy: When the Wind Blows

Described as a mystery thriller with fantasy elements, this novel is the first in a series which sparked the Maximum Ride spin-off series. It concerns genetic experiments on babies which produce children with wings: what could possibly go wrong? There are evil manipulators behind these cruel experiments, but there are also those with strong moral instincts. Innocent people who stumble across the flying kids suspiciously vanish. The novel is fast paced with short (two-paged) chapters, clearly-drawn lines between the good and bad guys, little room for ambiguity, and an element of romance with an eye to the big screen: she’s a vet; he’s a ‘troubled and unconventional FBI agent’.

All of the action is described in literal detail, and much of it would look better on screen than it does on the page. “We gathered up the children, kept them moving. We slid and fell and scraped our way down the hillside into a small valley. Then we climbed painfully up the side of a facing hill. Then down the opposite side. We ran until we couldn’t run anymore, and then we ran some more.” The short sentences and minutiae are clunky and dated in a way that recalls Stieg Larsson’s product-placement-crime-fest novels. “Kit continued to work furiously at the desktop. Like many of the younger agents in the Bureau, he was good at it. He likes computers most of the time, and was comfortable around them. He brought up Netscape, then opened it. In the location field, he typed – about:global.” Other aspects of science are explained for dummies to seem technical.

Maximum Ride fan art

The obvious moralising also becomes tedious. When the children escape from the lab, the baddies chase them down with a justification that “The good that will ultimately come will justify everything. The most important days in history are almost here.” Just in case we might have missed the point, it is reiterated several times. “Biotech was definitely the new frontier in science. It can, and undoubtedly will, push evolution farther and faster than anything has in history. The question, though, is whether we’re ready, emotionally and morally, for what we will be able to create in the very near future.” The novel is an undemanding, fairly gripping page-turner that you could read on a plane between interrupted dozes and not be upset if you left it behind in the seat-pocket.