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The Express, UK
August 19, 2011 Friday
U.K. 1st Edition
Weekend Books - A journey of love and manipulation
by VANESSA BERRIDGE
THE BLUE BOOK
Jonathan Cape, GBP 16.99
THIS is a confusing and at times impenetrable book but that is perhaps
part of the point. Kennedy always scratches well below the surface in
anything she writes, revealing the bewildering inconsistencies of
human behaviour. The location itself, a transatlantic cruise in
midwinter, helps to give the novel its sense of displacement.
As the characters brace themselves against increasingly stormy
weather, they are both literally and metaphorically at sea.
Kennedy plays games with the novel form, opening with a direct address
but it's not clear whether she's talking to us as readers or to a
character in the novel or indeed who is actually speaking.
She twiddles, too, with the pagination, following page 186 with page
181 and page 155 with 934. It seems random, like the numbers games
with which the sinister Arthur Lockwood teases and disconcerts his
former lover Elizabeth Barber.
Elizabeth (or Beth) has boarded the US-bound ship expecting her barely
satisfactory partner Derek to propose. Instead, as Derek suffers with
seasickness, Beth wanders about the ship in the company of a benign
couple from Dorset: and with Arthur.
He is a fake medium who preys on the rich and vulnerable, including a
survivor of the Rwandan genocide and an elderly woman who lost family
in the Armenian massacre. By making them relive the horrors they've
experienced he conjures up their loved ones: "Give them the truth of a
world, " he says cynically, "then they'll beg you to defend them and
believe every unseen monster you create."
Elizabeth was for a while involved in Arthur's work but her horror at
his amoral manipulation has driven them apart and sent her on the
journey to America with the less charismatic Derek. How both
characters come to terms with their past is the book's love story.
"Any word can work a spell if you know how to use it, " Beth thinks.
That's certainly true of Kennedy's writing which captures the reader's
imagination from the beginning with an eloquent description of an
unhappy child. There is humour, too, in her evocation of ship-board
life with its round of time-filling classes and second-class
entertainment.
It's a complex, challenging novel which is not for the faint-hearted,
there's strong language throughout. At times the tone is chill and
distancing but it edges gradually towards a final satisfying sense of
empathy and resolution.
August 19, 2011 Friday
U.K. 1st Edition
Weekend Books - A journey of love and manipulation
by VANESSA BERRIDGE
THE BLUE BOOK
Jonathan Cape, GBP 16.99
THIS is a confusing and at times impenetrable book but that is perhaps
part of the point. Kennedy always scratches well below the surface in
anything she writes, revealing the bewildering inconsistencies of
human behaviour. The location itself, a transatlantic cruise in
midwinter, helps to give the novel its sense of displacement.
As the characters brace themselves against increasingly stormy
weather, they are both literally and metaphorically at sea.
Kennedy plays games with the novel form, opening with a direct address
but it's not clear whether she's talking to us as readers or to a
character in the novel or indeed who is actually speaking.
She twiddles, too, with the pagination, following page 186 with page
181 and page 155 with 934. It seems random, like the numbers games
with which the sinister Arthur Lockwood teases and disconcerts his
former lover Elizabeth Barber.
Elizabeth (or Beth) has boarded the US-bound ship expecting her barely
satisfactory partner Derek to propose. Instead, as Derek suffers with
seasickness, Beth wanders about the ship in the company of a benign
couple from Dorset: and with Arthur.
He is a fake medium who preys on the rich and vulnerable, including a
survivor of the Rwandan genocide and an elderly woman who lost family
in the Armenian massacre. By making them relive the horrors they've
experienced he conjures up their loved ones: "Give them the truth of a
world, " he says cynically, "then they'll beg you to defend them and
believe every unseen monster you create."
Elizabeth was for a while involved in Arthur's work but her horror at
his amoral manipulation has driven them apart and sent her on the
journey to America with the less charismatic Derek. How both
characters come to terms with their past is the book's love story.
"Any word can work a spell if you know how to use it, " Beth thinks.
That's certainly true of Kennedy's writing which captures the reader's
imagination from the beginning with an eloquent description of an
unhappy child. There is humour, too, in her evocation of ship-board
life with its round of time-filling classes and second-class
entertainment.
It's a complex, challenging novel which is not for the faint-hearted,
there's strong language throughout. At times the tone is chill and
distancing but it edges gradually towards a final satisfying sense of
empathy and resolution.