CB # 18 Hand Me Down World

Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones
             There are no limits to what a mother will do for her child, and in Hand Me Down World Jones explores the reality and consequences of that statement. In the first chapter, a hotel maid in Tunisia recounts the story of how one of her co-workers fell in love with a hotel guest. She got pregnant, and he rented a house where they both could live. Every one at the hotel was so happy for her since she seemed to be coming up in the world. However, a week after her son was born, Jermayne (the hotel guest) made her sign papers in a language that she could not read and then left with the child. The rest of the novel follows the consequences of  that action, as the woman tries to reach her child again in Berlin.

            The first half of the novel is all told from other people’s perspectives as they tell the story of their experiences with the woman they call Ines. Their versions allow each person to present his or herself in the most positive light. However, all their stories have a black hole in them when it comes to Ines. Through their eyes, she is made mysterious or unknowable. Even those who think that they know her, seem to be completely wrong. All they see is what she lets them see, her bright blue coat or her hotel uniform. In the last third of the novel, she tells her own story, and the reader comes closer to understanding her than those she met seemed to. I liked the Rashomon quality of having both versions of the story available, always leaving you wondering what is the truth.

            I must admit that when I started this novel, I wasn’t really enjoying it. There wasn’t a very long description of the novel on its back, so when I started it, it seemed completely different from what I had expected. However, the more I read the more I enjoyed it. I started to really wonder about truth. What is it? How do we know it? Don’t we change it just by being? I also became more and more concerned for Ines and wondering how she would get to have her son back.

            I picked this book up because I had adored Mister Pip, which left me crying like a baby on a Greyhound bus. Hand Me Down World was not as intense, for me at least, but there was something really wonderful about it. It left me thinking and it made me worry more about the people I see on the streets. What is the truth of their life? Can I ever know it?

CB # 17 The Little Stranger

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

            I do like ghost stories and I love horror. I like chill that runs down my spine as I read, but I don’t like to be scared after I finish a book. I don’t like the feeling when I’m lying in my bed that something is wrong. I don’t like feeling like closing my eyes is risky. To fight off this fact, I mainly read horror and ghost stories in the summer. The chill can’t stay for too long then, and the sun scares off all the murky thoughts from staying for too long.

I have to mention that I have loved the Sarah Waters novels that are set in the Victorian era, especially Fingersmith. It was thrilling and filled with crazy twists and turns. Waters seems to love exploring different genres each time she writes. I knew when I picked up The Little Stranger that it wasn’t set in the underbelly of the Victorian era, but instead in the grubby reality of post-WWII Britain. The gentry, or the upper class that has been falling apart since Jane Austen’s time is finally in the death throws, and part of the fear of the novel comes from the realisation that something real is finally dying off. The Little Stranger is set at dilapidated Hundreds Hall, where the matriarch and her two children are somehow still there. Roderick was injured in the war, and is having a hard time being the master of a falling-apart house. Caroline is a rather plain girl who doesn’t mind having the take care of the house almost completely by herself; in this time and place, she’s considered a spinster.

The story is told by Dr Faraday, an older bachelor who gets called down to the house one day to see to the maid, but gets entangled with the Ayres and the mysterious goings on in the house. Scorch marks are left in strange places, strange noises happen in the night, sweet and gentle dogs turn vicious and Roderick thinks that something is infecting the house and its inhabitants.

The horrors are not extreme, and Dr Faraday is able to rationalise away them all, but that’s not the point. The ghostly/ghastly occurrences appear to reflect the world outside of Hundreds. There is no place for the Ayres in the new society that is emerging after the war, and they realise it. The house just seems to reflect it back on them. Dr Faraday isn’t much help because he doesn’t seem to have any sense of self-reflection. His own mother used to work at the house, and he has always felt a strong connection to the house because of it. Instead of telling the Ayres to sell the place, he believes that things will work out in the end, without having any thoughts of how or why.

Now I just want to state my personal pet theory about the novel because I would love to know if anyone feels the same about it. Obviously, there is no one true answer, Waters likes to be ambiguous. I just had a feeling as I read that I need to sort through. So SPOILERS ahead after the jump