July’s book was Caryl Phillips’s 2003 novel A Distant Shore. It tells the story of two individuals who form an unlikely friendship in a small town: Dorothy a white, middle-aged schoolteacher, and Gabriel/Solomon, a refugee from an unnamed African country.

We began by focusing on the first few paragraphs of the novel, which set up a particular image of contemporary England as socially and geographically divided. A couple of readers identified a concern in the character of Dorothy with an idealised past – an image of England (and her own childhood) that perhaps never existed and that is linked with a sense of respectability and dignity shared by Dorothy and Solomon. The novel opens with the lines: ‘These days it’s difficult to tell who’s from round here and who’s not. Who belongs and who’s a stranger.’  and this question of who is the stranger began to permeate our discussion. We draw parallels between Dorothy and Solomon as both experience a sense of alienation in the small community, complicating the notion of belonging. The word ‘tribe’ stood out and ran through the discussion as suggesting not only the specific context of tribal warfare in Africa experienced by Gabriel, but also the various ‘tribes’ we fit into in Britain: class, race, gender.

The non-linear chronology and fragmented psychological realism of the novel were both challenging and engaging as readers are forced to piece together events in the protagonists’ lives and slowly build a picture of their characters through details revealed at different points in the novel. We spent some time discussing the effect of this structure and while some found it frustrating, others found illuminating points of contrast in the process of piecing events together. We considered the implications of the narrative technique of multiple viewpoints and asked if one of the effects of this is to question the possibility of ever reconstructing a ‘true’ or historically accurate version of events. While this might remind us of the fallibility of memory in texts such as Penelope Lively’s Oleander, Jacaranda, it is especially pertinent in the context of seeking asylum, where the need for a verifiable story secures the asylum seekers right to refuge.

We ended the session by returning to the question of belonging and some readers felt that this had been a theme in a number of the books we’ve been reading in the group. Perhaps, we thought, this is a question that is of particular concern for writers in the twenty-first century, who diagnose the contemporary moment as peculiarly fragmented.

FURTHER READING:

Caryl Phillips was born in St Kitts and brought up in Leeds, UK. He is a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. His historical novels tend to address slavery and the black diaspora. Of particular interest to readers might be Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993) and The Nature of Blood (1997 – about world war two and the establishment of Israel). Phillips’s non-fiction takes the form of essays collected in The European Tribe (1987 – about his travels in Europe as a black Briton) and A New World Order (2001 – in which Phillips examines his ‘roots’ in the Caribbean and Africa).

In the second session of the book club (Wednesday April 23rd) we read poems from the Forward Anthology of Poetry 2001-2011. This anthology is a selection from the Forward anthologies published each year from the Forward Prize one of the big poetry competitions that tries to bring poetry to the attention of the nation. I introduced the discussion by noting that poetry which in Victorian times was widely read and valued by many middle class ‘cultured’ readers, is now a tiny fragment of the book market and little read except in school and university. I hoped to suggest that a poem could say and do things that no other art form can. A novel for instance is a very complicated and lengthy machine for saying something about life, whereas a poem is a supremely flexible instrument and can say all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. I also hoped to show that reading and discussing a poem slowly together can be enjoyable! Certainly the poems in the anthology had provoked strong feelings. Some were strongly disliked, though we also said this was not necessarily a criticism. Some were very much enjoyed – sometimes the same poems. Of the three poems we read in our session Anne Wigley’s Durer’s Hare was one of the most popular and we saw how it seemed to be simply a brilliant description of a painting but really was about the painter’s artistry in capturing the elusiveness of life and perhaps also about its own effort to capture a visual image in words… We also read George Szirtes’ ‘Song’ addressed to the South African anti-apartheid politician Helen Suzman, and U.A.Fanthorpe’s ‘A Minor Role’ thinking about the use of language, metaphors and imagery, and the additional meanings behind apparently simple words. A little snapshot I hope of the different things contemporary poems can do.

At the first session of the 21st-century literature book club, we read Penelope Lively’s childhood memoir Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived, which describes the author’s early childhood in Egypt until she was sent to boarding school in England at the age of 12. Through a series of autobiographical vignettes interspersed with historical detail, the memoir captures British colonial life in the Middle-East through the eyes of a child. It also reflects on the process of recalling childhood experiences, asking how it is possible to recover and represent the past.

We began by reading the short preface, in which Lively suggests that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. Instead, according to Lively, all we have is ‘a headful of brilliant frozen moments’. An animated discussion ensued about the different ways in which children and adults view the world, and many group members highlighted the visceral nature of Lively’s recollections; for example, the feel of the hot, sticky leather car seats evoked in the first chapter. As one participant noted, the memoir comprises ‘snapshots’ of a life, rather than one continual, unfolding narrative.

From there, our discussion broadened out, touching on the legacy of family relationships in our early years and how they influence our adult selves. Many group members were intrigued by Lucy, the nanny with whom Lively had an intense and loving relationship, and wanted to fill in the gaps in her story. There was much discussion of the letters returned to Lively by Lucy, which testify to the distress caused by her painful separation from her guardian and childhood home.

The memoir also provoked reflections on the consequences of being an only child and the effects of displacement and relocation during the post-War era.

Here’s a poem that reflects some of the ideas evoked by Lively’s memoir:

Lois in the Sunny Tree

When in August 1920 I smiled for the camera
from my perch on the limb of a sun-spangled tree,
says Lois, long dead now but humorously seven years old then,
with a giant ribbon in my hair, the sorrow of living in time
was only very tiny and remote in some far corner of my mind

and for me to know then, as I smiled for that camera
in Michigan in the summer of 1920
that you would peer thoughtfully and admiringly
into my happy photographed eyes eighty-some years later
would have been good for me only in a very tiny and remote way.

MARK HALLIDAY