 |
by Sarah Hall
A book review
When, in 2020, with the onset of Covid-19, the world started shutting down and whole populations were being shut inside, literature was – at least for some of us – a way of escaping the terrors of the present or, perhaps, trying to make sense of them. Gothic, horror and post-apocalyptic fiction seemed particularly adept at reflecting the all-pervasive end-of-times atmosphere. I, for one, immediately sought out Jack London’s classic The Scarlet Plague. Other contemporary novels I was reading – for instance Michael Griffin’s Armageddon House, Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song, Sue Rainsford’s Redder Days – seemed to uncannily reflect the experiences the world was going through.
Burntcoat
by Sarah Hall is, however, one of the first novels – and, although admittedly a
bold claim, possibly the first literary masterpiece – to be written during lockdown and
to explicitly reference Covid-19. It is
narrated by 59-year old Edith Harkness, a survivor, who surveys the life-changing
pandemic with the benefit of intervening time.
The images Edith describes are familiar, even though the virus featured in the novel is actually much deadlier than the “novel coronavirus”, leading to one million deaths in the United Kingdom alone:
The virus has shed its initial and older names. They were frightening, incorrect, discriminatory. Hanta. Nova. Now it is simply AG3. It is contained; an event in a previous era from which we continue to learn. Contingency planning. Social tracking. Herd control. The picture of the pathogen– orange and reticulated– has become as recognisable as the moon. Children sketch it in science lessons, the curious arms, proteins and spikes. The civic notices listing symptoms, and the slogans, look vintage ...
The images are so strong from that time. The nurse standing in the empty aisle, her back to us, hair dishevelled and her uniform crumpled, the weight of the shopping basket, though it is empty, pulling her body downwards. The Pope, kneeling in the rain in a deserted St Peter’s Square.
Edith is a visual artist. Her expertise lies in the creation of large-scale wooden sculptures, using a technique learnt in Japan. A major success in her 20s finances her acquisition of Burntcoat, a large riverside warehouse-like building at the outskirts of an unnamed British town. Burntcoat is at once her studio and her residence, a labour of love. On the announcement of lockdown, it is to Burntcoat that she retires, accompanied by restaurant-owner Halit, the new-found lover with whom she has just started a relationship.
Edith’s story, just like many of the present generations, will be marked by the pandemic. We meet her at the opening of the novel, putting the finishing touches on a commission meant to mark the victims of the pandemic, which prompts her recollections of that painful event. But Edith’s story is not just about the lockdown months, about the deaths and devastation. It is also about other aspects of her life – such as growing up with her mother, an author recovering from a severe stroke; the loss of her father, who abandoned the family when they most needed him; the growth of Edith’s artistic career. But, as one would expect, the novel keeps circling around those (literally and figuratively) feverish months.
At one point in the novel, Edith is discussing Naomi’s work with her agent Karolina. Critics have reassessed her mother’s writing, she tells us,
… the label of Gothic stripped off like cheap varnish. Karoline once said to me the term is used for women whose work the establishment enjoys but doesn’t respect. Men are the existentialists.
Leaving aside for the moment the problematic implication that the Gothic is cheap (alas, a centuries-old prejudice), this sounds much like an apology for Hall’s own novel. Indeed, although not primarily fascinated with “the ghostly, the ghastly and the supernatural”, to borrow Dale Townshend’s succinct definition of the Gothic, the novel does visit the tropes of the genre, exploiting them to great effect. The symptoms of the virus skirt body horror. The violence and breakdown of society echo post-apocalyptic fiction. Burntcoat itself might not be plagued by literal ghosts, but it is visited by illness and death and haunted by memories, a contemporary urban version of the possessed Gothic mansion. But Burntcoat is also, defiantly, a novel about life, love, and lust. Edith’s ground-breaking creations find a parallel in the (very explicit) sex scenes, which hungrily, almost desperately, challenge the impending siege of the virus.
Just like her narrator Edith, in Burntcoat
Sarah Hall has given us a poetic tribute to the all those who have suffered
losses during Covid. I perfectly understand
that describing a work as a tribute is ambivalent praise. Because,
admittedly, tributes tend to stick to safe ground, to seek a “common
denominator” which will gain as wide approval as possible. Edith certainly doesn’t do so with her
transgressive works. Similarly, Hall
comes up with a work which might challenge some sensibilities, but which is
also incredibly moving and ends, albeit without any sentimentality, on a note
of cautious hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment