Monday, July 30, 2007

At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O'Neill


For one week while away this month I lived in Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys, first published in 2001. My plunge into its world began with the cover image, and I dove into 1915 Dun Laoghaire and the telling of a story that began with words that cast a spell of language and narrative:

"At the corner of Adelaide Road, where the paving sparkled in the morning sun, Mr. Mack waited by the newspaper stand. A grand day it was, fair and fine. Puff-clouds sailed through a sky of blue. Fair-weather cumulus to give the correct designation, on account they cumulate, as Mr. Mack believed. High above the houses a seagull glided, gliding on a breeze that carried from the sea. Wait now, was it cumulate or accumulate he meant? The breeze sniffed of salt and tide. Make a donkey of yourself, inwardly he cautioned, using words you don't know their meaning. And where's this paper chappie after getting to?

In delicate clutch an Irish Times he held."

There's a lot here: a setting, a distinct character, and two distinctive voices, that of Mr. Mack and of the narrator. In time we meet Mr. Mack's teenage son, Jim, and another father-son pair integral to the plot, which interlocks romantic love, love of family, and love of country in a time of unrest.

Good fiction creates a world in which the reader lives for a spell. And a spell, an enchantment it is, one that deepens our knowledge of the world and the human heart and adds vicariously to our experience. In this book I have felt as a boy in the confessional, confessing he knows not what but that he is wicked. I've felt the mixed and unarticulated emotions of that boy as he prays on his knees beside a priest whose psychological power over vulnerable boys is almost unlimited. I feel the pride that enables another teenage boy to shovel dung and still dream and love the world. I enjoy the all male swims in the sea, and the boys' determination to swim out to the Muglins the next Easter. I've lived through the planning of an uprising among Irish citizens who are faced with involvement in a great war at the same time they want to wrest their independence from British rule.

A great writer puts us into the lives of other people while still allowing us the perspective of the writer/reader. In the dual vision we create meaning.

I emerged from this book, at p. 562, wanting to go back and start over. I know I'll go back.

For dessert there's O'Neill's website with links to a number of early reviews and a few pictures. The story of O'Neill's ten year process of writing the book is in itself a great struggling-young-writer story. The title was inspired by that of Flann O'Brien's At Swim--Two Birds. The American publisher of O'Neill's novel wanted to call it just At Swim (too vague, too dull). O'Neill added the comma, and literature was enriched once more. You can see very fine photographs of the bathing area at the Forty Foot at the website of the photographer Tom O'Doherty. You'll have to scroll down a few pages to the set of the baths at Dun Laoghaire.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

I'm a Dog! And I love it!


Wow! What a book! Very unusual, and surprising! You'll never guess how it ends! Melvin Burgess is my hero this summer. Go to his website, and read what he says about teenagers, teenage boys in particular, and writing books they like to read. Mr. Burgess is married and a father of three children, and he writes books that offend some people. He dares to write about things that really happen in the lives of teenagers in Britain (and here), things some people would rather we just don't talk about. Is he a responsible writer? That is, one who cares about the effects his books have on young people? Yes. Because he shows life as it is and lets the consequences of kids' choices work themselves out realistically.
Lady: My Life as a Bitch is different from the other MB's I've read in not being entirely realistic. It's psychologically very true to life, but in actual life people don't ACTUALLY turn into dogs. But in a novel, a girl can very easily have in her head and heart the thoughts and feelings of a real girl AND those of a dog. (Insofar as we can imagine being inside a dog, but that's a digression..... )
I found it a bit long in the middle, but read it! Stick it out to the end, and you'll be surprised and maybe delighted. I think Ursula LeGuin would like this book. Maybe Zack can suggest it to her....

Monday, July 2, 2007

How I Live Now



My (public library) copy has the golden Michael Printz Award seal, the ALA's relatively new award for Young Adult literature. This novel for teens and up also won the Guardian Children's Fiction prize for 2004 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread in the same year. http://books.guardian.co.uk/childrensfictionprize2004/


On first reading, and with no reading of reviews yet, here's how it went. Daisy's voice grabbed me right away: here is a unique person yet identifiably a teenager speaking. The premise is terrific: she's off the England to stay with her cousins because her dad has a horrible new wife. She's fifteen, between child and adult. She falls in love with one of her cousins and has sex with him, and she bonds strongly with another, nine-year old Piper, a wise little girl. Then life really changes: terrorists occupy the country and keep it under siege. Army troops take over villages and people's houses, families are split up, the men and boys sent mysteriously away. Suddenly we're in a thriller, one with very strong characterization, great plot, and a genuine voice. And teenage sex. I have to say that because a lot of parents and librarians in the US would prefer that we not spotlight a book that includes this element of modern realism. But, like the novels of Melvin Burgess, another award-winning author of books for teenagers ("teen and up" is what I call it), Rosoff's novel is a gripping read and shouldn't be kept out of the hands of teens.

I recently read Penelope Lively's Cleopatra's Sister and am struck with the similarities in themes and situations in these two novels. The threat of terrorism is alive and present in our minds these days, and both of these books present scenarios which could happen, given the imperialist heritage of both the UK and the US, and the present neo-colonial mindset of some of our leaders.
The theme of love is strong in both: erotic love, familial love and its absence, the fierce protective love a person can discover when a child is threatened, the strong bond between people and animals (dogs, here). Teenage love that turns into a lasting relationship. The fortuitous meeting of two people. The energetic love that can get people through anything. (Cormac McCarthy's The Road is maybe the strongest example of this last motif since the setting is so bleak and stripped to the earth's bare bones.)
Recommended for teens and up.