Interesting questions are raised
A decently written and compulsive read even if it doesn’t justify the marketing label of ‘literary thriller’.
THE Spain in the opening section of Under The Sun is a land of dreams.
The book’s central character, Anna, has bought a farmhouse and lovingly restored it. The stone finca has swallowed her money, her time and her energy. But the result is exquisite, tastefully restored, and stunningly beautiful with its terraces and its views over the surrounding countryside.
It seems that all is perfect for her and her partner Michael – until old friends of his arrive. And then the dream slowly disintegrates.
Michael is increasingly cold towards her; conversations exclude her. Anna, it appears, is not sharp enough, clever enough or witty enough for the exalted company.
And then one day Michael simply goes, ups and leaves. Whatever test she was set, Anna has failed it.
Cut to 2009. The local British expat community is in trouble. After the financial crisis of 2008 many have had to sell up and return home, mostly to Britain.
The value of their properties has collapsed. Investment incomes have frozen or plummeted. This is the other side of the escapist dream.
Anna has scraped together the last of her money to buy a small bar with a flat above it. She needs an income.
The finca is for sale but no one
Under the Sun Author:
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is buying. It becomes overgrown.
There is an option of returning to Britain but it is not one she wishes to take. That would involve admitting defeat. Better to struggle and get by.
Moggach handles all of this very well. The opening section in which Michael and his friends squeeze Anna out is convincingly painful. In overheard conversations she is belittled, designated as uninteresting.
“I’m not sure what she brings to the table,” one of the friends comments, believing Anna to be out of hearing and Anna, unable to take the put-downs any longer shouts back as loud as she could muster, “I bought the f **** ing table!”
In the scenes that follow Michael’s departure, the little bar has a convincing cast of expats, all bemoaning their financial plight and gossiping within their own community.
At around this point, the book shifts gear.
One afternoon Simon enters the bar and offers to rent Anna’s
600 house. He will pay her a month. Anna does not hesitate; this is her salvation.
She is the envy of the expat community. She has an income for now ... and perhaps he will even buy the finca in time?
The discovery of the body of an African immigrant apparently washed up on the beach signals a twist in the novel’s direction and concerns.
Simon has told Anna that he wants her finca to give his workers a holiday, to give them a reward. When she goes to check on the house she discovers a sea of plastic on the land adjoining hers. The agricultural poly tunnels have expanded and her farmhouse is clearly home to some of the African immigrant workers who work in them. When Simon is challenged, he quotes the law back at her: he is renting the house, he pays the rent, there is no written agreement, he is entitled to be left in peace.
Furthermore, the innocuous old man who lives on the beach and to whom Anna has in the past given charity money, appears somehow to be involved with Simon and the African immigrants ....
Moggach has deftly moved the trajectory of her tale from escapist romance through personal disillusionment to full blown widespread political turmoil. Into the enclosed and cosy world of the expats, the outside world has intruded. Anna feels she has to act but does not really know what to do and, even less, how to do it. There follows a lot of very convincing floundering around as she tries to work out a course of action.
The book’s title is, I assume, taken from Ecclesiastes in the Bible: “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” The words are echoed towards the end of the book when Anna considers, and rejects, a laissez-faire viewpoint: “The Africans wanted to be here; Paco got them across; Simon gave them work. What was wrong with that?” If, as Solomon suggests in Ecclesiastes, everything is meaningless, what relevance or importance has any intention or action?
Anna has dilemmas to solve and does so with a little, slightly random, unexpected outside help. She has done her own “chasing after the wind” and found it less than satisfactory. Are all her possible courses of action equally meaningless?
Under The Sun is a decently written and compulsive read even when some of it strains credulity. Whether it justifies the label of “literary thriller” that has been used to market it, I am less convinced.
But the questions it raises are not without interest and Anna is an all too convincing protagonist. I enjoyed Under The Sun and it made me think. That is enough, I think, and any literary pretensions can safely be put aside.