LITERARY FICTION
THE composer Shostakovich might be the subject of this book, but a cradle-to-grave account of his life it is emphatically not.
Instead, Barnes’s first post-Booker novel is divided into three sections, each separated by more than a decade, and each capturing the Russian during moments of suspended animation.
Thus, in the first section, he waits anxiously for his arrest — the unfortunate consequence of having outraged Stalin with his new opera. The middle section spans a transatlantic flight, and the last, a car journey.
The beauty of Barnes’s design is the way it allows his hero’s mind to wander naturally over his many predicaments — the government-authored fall and questionable rise of his star being chief among them — thereby bypassing stiff dramatic set-pieces and stagey dialogue, which are common pitfalls of the bio-fic genre.
Indeed, Barnes largely avoids putting words into his protagonist’s mouth — after all, as we’re reminded, that can be reliably left to dictators.
This is a slim novel about the big things: art, fear, Power (in this case always with a capital ‘P’); history’s farcical, tragic repetitions. It is also quite excellent. IT’S not just secrets that are exposed here but whole lives: think of those photos of ripped-open houses after the Blitz and you’ll get a sense of Orange prize-winner Dunmore’s novel.
This, though, is not the Forties but 1960; the enemy is Soviet Russia and the nation is dependent on men in hush-hush jobs at the Admiralty — men like Simon Callington, recruited at Cambridge by his lover Giles.
That was then; now Simon is married to Lily, while Giles is on the slippery slope to alcoholism. Reluctantly, Simon goes to his rescue, only to find himself suspected of treachery and whisked off to prison, throwing his wife and children’s worlds into turmoil.
Dunmore’s expertly handled theme is how much we must of necessity overlook, and it has to be said the mechanics of her plot don’t bear too much thinking about.
But persevere through a slightly laborious first half and you’ll be rewarded: the pace picks up and, though this isn’t really a thriller, Dunmore doesn’t begrudge her readers a good oldfashioned denouement.
The real strength of her novel, however, is its sympathy for characters whose security has been swept so devastatingly away. AMNESIA thrillers, while not quite ten- a- penny, are familiar enough by now; nevertheless, Joyce Carol Oates’s original and discomforting take on the genre offers food for thought.
Elihu Hoopes, the 37-year-old former stockbroker son of a respected Pennsylvanian family, first comes to the attention of neuropsychologist Margot Sharpe in 1965.
Her interest is (initially) professional: a catastrophic illness has left Elihu with a 70-second memory span, although he can recall his distant past with ease.
From the start, Oates drops in academic references so readily you could be fooled into thinking her tale had its basis in fact. But we’re soon into more typically gothic territory, with the intense relationship between Elihu and Margot taking a turn for the highly unethical.
Meanwhile, Elihu’s visions of a young, drowned girl provide a slow-burning background mystery — though Oates is at least as interested in the sexism, politics and ickily incestuous power structures of the scientific community as she is in whodunit.
Ultimately, though, it’s as a portrait of loneliness, need, and the cruel tricks of age that this book is at its most compelling.