Nineteenth-century authors as various as Dickens and W S Gilbert regularly sent up the old
Posted in General on 25. Aug, 2010
Nineteenth-century authors as various as Dickens and W S Gilbert regularly sent up the old for the crime of looking and acting in ways not found in younger ages Today’s writers are usually more circumspect. In an age of irregular visits back home and reports of occasional granny-bashing, the old – already a cause of guilt – make uneasy targets for satire. Nineteenth-century authors as various as Dickens and W S Gilbert regularly sent up the old for the crime of looking and acting in ways not found in younger ages Today’s writers are usually more circumspect. In an age of irregular visits back home and reports of occasional granny-bashing, the old – already a cause of guilt – make uneasy targets for satire.
But not for Anne Fine, a fearless novelist, whether writing for children or adults.
Having previously described family life as, at worst, something of a self-mutilating confidence trick, she now turns a furious glare in the direction of vindictive mothers in the shape of the impossible Norah. Having ruined her children’s lives when they were young, this harridan is now shown trying to do the same for them as grown-ups. If Age Concern ever issued a black list of titles, then All Bones and Lies would certainly be on it.Fine is also a constantly amusing writer, and this saves her story from coming across as unbearably depressing. Norah repeatedly shows a darkly comic talent for turning any positive into a negative. Friendly attempts at preparing a meal simply provide her with something “she would enjoy refusing and some tea she could criticise”. Doing nothing brings out the alternative response: “And I don’t know when I’m going to be offered a cup of tea.”Colin, her put-upon son now in his thirties, ends up a total wuss as a result. Frightened of everyone else as well as of the old gorgon at home, he stands, or rather crumbles, as fictional proof-positive of the powers of the family to dictate lives and personality whatever genetic inheritance children themselves bring to the situation.But while the energy of Norah’s evil machinations and Anne Fine’s brilliance at plotting her story carry the reader through, there are costs as well.
The other oldsters who crop up in this narrative are surely too exaggeratedly awful, and the moment of reconciliation when Colin finds it within himself to forgive his mother makes for an uncertain climax. Since he is already a broken reed, it is hard to interpret this character’s new magnanimity as any other than further weakness. His off-key romance with a former circus acrobat and her adored little girl is also too much like a compensatory fantasy to carry conviction.Old age has always attracted both comedy and tragedy. King Lear, given a Victor Meldrew-type treatment, could as easily be played for laughs, at least in the earlier parts. While children’s books today usually avoid either extreme, many do now choose to portray old age in a mostly favourable light, reserving stronger criticism for the middle-aged or even for child character themselves.Writing this time for adults, one of the best of modern children’s novelists turns this picture on its head. The result is an unsettling, sometimes angry but always engrossing story, uncomfortably close to the type of contemporary home truths usually talked about in private rather than committed to the printed page..
At the heart of this marvellous book lies an astonishing courtroom drama. It reaches its climax when Mary Johnson, a chief of almost 80 from the Gitxsan people of Canada, sings a lament in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Hugh Brody was there, and, for him, the history of the region, the encounter between colonists and indigenous cultures, and their consequent desolation was distilled in this moment The judge, though, was embarrassed and angry. At the heart of this marvellous book lies an astonishing courtroom drama. It reaches its climax when Mary Johnson, a chief of almost 80 from the Gitxsan people of Canada, sings a lament in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Hugh Brody was there, and, for him, the history of the region, the encounter between colonists and indigenous cultures, and their consequent desolation was distilled in this moment. The judge, though, was embarrassed and angry.
Brody has spent much of his life living with hunter-gatherer peoples.
The Other Side of Eden is a valuable contribution to his sustained attempt to give access to their cultures – to enable us, for the most part as tin-eared as the judge, to hear their song.The case that Brody recounts, in which Mary Johnson sang, was brought in the 1980s. Two neighbouring peoples, the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en, went to the court to argue that they, rather than the government, should have jurisdiction in the land where they had always lived, hunted and gathered food Theirs are oral cultures, so there are no documents Instead, there are stories Rights to the land depend on knowledge of its stories. So the chiefs presented their case by telling the Supreme Court the stories of their territory, the entire history – including the occasion of the lament – of their civilisations.The case lasted 243 days, but eventually Chief Justice Allan McEachern ruled this oral evidence inadmissible. What was the very basis of truth to the original inhabitants was dismissed as hearsay by those who had power. The judge concluded that they had no links to the land and that they lacked “all badges of civilisation”.In books such as Living Arctic and Maps and Dreams, Hugh Brody has observed that hunter-gathers such as the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en have been fundamentally misunderstood. People from agrarian societies consider hunter-gatherers rootless, while regarding themselves as settled The truth, Brody argues, is the opposite.