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Who Are We, and Where Do We Come From?: The Great Unknown

23 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: The Great Unknown, by Peg Kingman
Norton, 2020. 324 pp. $27

In 1845, Constantia MacAdam, just delivered of twins (one of whom died), serves as wet nurse to the large, ever-growing Chambers family, temporarily residing outside Edinburgh while their city home undergoes renovation. Constantia, unable to be with her beloved husband, makes the best of her grief over her lost son and her struggle to make ends meet, but she has lucked out. Not only has she landed among the kindest people in Scotland, who treat her like a family member rather than a servant, she’s never found such intellectual stimulation in her life, and she thrives on it.

Mr. Chambers, a newspaper publisher, takes a keen interest in the natural world and urges his immense brood to do likewise, even (if not especially) the girls. He impresses Constantia, who also loves natural science, because of the breadth of his knowledge and the liberality of his mind. A sensational book has appeared, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and its unorthodox views receive a warm welcome in the Chambers household. The reader will guess that Vestiges anticipates Darwin’s influential book almost fifteen years later.

Figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith, depicted here at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, were part of the Edinburgh Enlightenment, often presumed to be an eighteenth-century phenomenon. But their nineteenth-century counterparts included such scientific and cultural luminaries as Thomas Carlyle, Mary Somerville, Charles Lyell, and James Clerk Maxwell (courtesy Kim Traynor, via Wikimedia Commons)

While this is happening, the Chambers’ gardener, who has been at this residence all his life, has derived similar revolutionary ideas from observing the randomness of life and death, thriving and deformity, among his beloved plants. And on a Scottish island reasonably near in mileage yet isolated and hard to reach by even the fastest transport, a quarryman seeks to split apart a limestone ledge, in which, he believes, important fossils lie.

To say, therefore, that The Great Unknown is a philosophical novel about the origins of life restates the obvious. The story, at first glance, may seem thin. Constantia longs to rejoin her husband. She also strives to learn who her father was, which the Chambers family, being the soul of tact, infer is a troublesome matter, a secret best left unprobed. Her good character is plain; what more need anyone know?

That doesn’t satisfy Lady Janet, a distant relative of theirs who possesses neither tact nor sensitivity, though she does express much righteous superiority. (When Constantia finally gets the courage to talk back to Lady Janet, it’s delicious.) Lady Janet is the foil for the good-hearted spirit of inquiry that reigns chez Chambers, and a reminder of how different they are from most Britons.

But there’s much more besides the evocation of a country on the brink of a moral upending through scientific discovery, or the excellent, personal portrayal of the conflict between religion and science. We have a thought-provoking daily drama playing out chance and consequences, fortunate or tragic, and people trying to figure out whether these outcomes mean anything or merely display the benign indifference of the universe. (Note the name Constantia in this regard.) Add to that what makes a person human, and how we differ (or don’t) from other species; or is it just our vanity that we do?

In sentences that have a Victorian ring, Kingman has crafted a plot that often turns on Dickensian coincidences, perhaps too fortuitously, at times. But she’s also created a family as a perfect test case for her themes, and not just because of their scientific curiosity. The male species of Chambers are born with a sixth finger on each hand and a sixth toe on each foot. Random chance, indeed, as with the success of surgeries necessary for these digits’ removal. As for Mr. Chambers, imagine a Mr. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice as a witty, urbane man of science who’s more immediately concerned with his daughters’ grasp of Linnaean nomenclature than how to attract a husband—though, rest assured, they have dancing and music lessons too.

Further, when anyone in the household has a musical idea that grabs them at any time, they are encouraged to try it out immediately:

It was understood by all that musical ideas were so fragile, so evanescent, and so precious that they were to be snatched from the thin air upon the very moment of their wafting into existence; they might otherwise as evaporate as quickly as they had precipitated, never again to be recovered. No chances could be taken with them; it was a duty to bring them into the world. Constantia became accustomed to seeing an inward distracted stillness fall over the faces of the girls; any of them might, even in the midst of nursery-supper noise, fall silent for a moment; then spring from her chair, to run to the pianoforte—the harp—the violin.

Not everyone will gravitate toward a quiet, reflective story like this, a daguerreotype of the moment when brave thinkers began to ask the most earthshaking questions without fear of divine retribution. But readers who take The Great Unknown for what it is will be greatly rewarded.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Ménage à Trois: Love Is Blind

14 Monday Jan 2019

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Review: Love Is Blind, by William Boyd
Knopf, 2018. 369 pp. $27

Brodie Moncur is one of those fictional characters you wish you knew in real life. A Scotsman entering his twenties in the nineteenth century’s final decade, Brodie has spent six years tuning pianos for an Edinburgh concern, Channon and Co. He knows all there is to know about his craft but much less of the world than he would like, so when his boss chooses him to manage a showroom in Paris, Brodie jumps at the chance. With his bag of tools and the knowledge in his head, he can go anywhere. But to make his break, he must stand up to his narcissistic, tyrannical father, who keeps the army of Brodie’s siblings in thrall—Brodie’s the first to leave and by no means the youngest. Nobody, least of all Brodie himself, expects him ever to return; as Boyd often does, he shows that anticipated emotional transition through the natural world:

Brodie had been fishing this small river since he could remember — Callum [his brother] also. They knew every bend and pool, every potential crossing point, every placid, midge-hovered eddy. It had a calming effect on him… memories skittered through his mind, came and went like butterflies or sun dapples beneath breeze-shifted branches; he saw himself as a little boy with his first rod, remembered the charge and thrill of his first catch. Maybe this small river and its wilderness should be ‘home’ to him, he thought, not the manse or the village. He should carefully store the memories of this day and recall it whenever he felt lonely or homesick.

But, as the title suggests, this novel isn’t just a coming-of-age story. A creative thinker, in Paris Brodie devises a scheme whereby a celebrated pianist will use a Channon exclusively and thus publicize the brand. The idea works, but with consequences that will change Brodie’s life; John Kilbarron, “the Irish Liszt,” signs on, sweeping Brodie into his mercurial, if fading, orbit. One moon encircling planet Kilbarron is Russian soprano Lika Blum, his mistress, for whom Brodie falls, hard. Another moon is the pianist’s boorish, mistrustful brother, Malachi, who worships John and acts as his business manager. To no surprise, life gets very complicated. It also travels to different places, and one of the pleasures of this novel is how Boyd describes them all.

Some tools of the trade: rubber mutes and a tuning hammer (courtesy Onascout via Wikimedia Commons)

Brodie’s character appeals, in part, because he takes his many losses without an ounce of self-pity, while enjoying happiness to the fullest. He draws people to him wherever he goes, and his love for and understanding of pianos makes his work a fascinating art. The scenes in which he repairs or tunes these magnificent instruments make wonderful reading, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a virtuoso’s necessary assistant that no one ever meets.

Brodie trusts people easily, perhaps too much so — strange, given his corrupt, vicious father — and suffers for it. His ingenuity bears fruit, but others seem destined to appropriate it. Accordingly, bad things do happen to him; one theme of Love Is Blind is how quickly happiness and contentment can dissolve. Still, those reversals have to do with others’ weakness, not his, so at times, I wonder whether he’s a little too good to be true. His sole major flaw seems to be vengefulness, but you have to push him very hard before he unleashes it, testament to his patience.

The more obvious weak link is Malachi, whose antagonism has no apparent root except a self -sacrificial brother worship, which Boyd explains but never explores. As an antagonist, Malachi is satisfyingly tireless, but after a while, he becomes more of a device than a person. I wish Lika came into closer focus as well, for she seems a passionate, seductive, willing beauty, perhaps too convenient for Brodie by half. He’s the star of the show, and what you think about that fact or the man himself will decide whether Love Is Blind is for you.

Despite these drawbacks, though, I like this novel, and I think Brodie’s story makes for beautiful, poignant reading.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Feminism, No Holds Barred: The Wages of Sin

05 Monday Jun 2017

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Review: The Wages of Sin, by Kaite Welsh
Pegasus, 2017. 290 pp. $26

Sarah Gilchrist has come to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine in 1892, the first year its doors have opened to female students, and her prospects could hardly be less promising. Her parents have exiled her from her well-to-do London home for “immoral behavior,” of which she’s entirely innocent.

The main building of the University of Edinburgh medical school, completed in 1888 (courtesy Kim Traynor, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons)

But no one knows how Sarah has suffered, nor, if they asked, would they believe her. In fact, no one treats her more cruelly than her family, putting her through unspeakably barbaric, criminal horrors that she relives in nightmares. Many people go out of their way to hurt and malign her, like her aunt and uncle, with whom she lives, and whose bullying she must accept or face further punishment. At least, Sarah can talk back to the male medical students who resent the women who’ve invaded their preserve, and sometimes, even her professors. But then there are Sarah’s female classmates, the very people who should have the most sympathy, who delight in persecuting her.

Welsh excels at many things in this, her first novel. Chief of them is how she re-creates the vicious social order that imprisons not just Sarah but all women in Edinburgh, most of whom lack her advantages of wealth and social standing. It’s these women to whom Sarah dedicates herself and her education, working after hours at an infirmary in a poor neighborhood. The only thing that keeps her going is her dream of becoming a doctor, serving these people, and having a profession that will let her live in the world instead of as a cloistered wife. And she knows that one mistake, perceived or real, could cost her that dream.

So one night at the infirmary, Sarah turns away a young prostitute, Lucy, who asks for an abortion–which would have been a hanging offense for both parties–only to see the girl’s corpse soon afterward on the dissecting table in anatomy class. Sarah believes Lucy was murdered and sets out to discover who killed her, even as she recognizes that doing so may well drag her down. Not only does her quest bring her to disreputable places, she quickly arouses suspicion from a brilliant but irascible professor who’s quite capable of having her expelled from the university. Is he involved in Lucy’s death? Was he using her? These are deep waters, indeed, and Sarah learns that she’s not as good a swimmer as she thought.

In the process Welsh roils the currents, another pleasure of The Wages of Sin. Sarah should be the least worldly medical student in Edinburgh, but her sufferings and her work at the infirmary have taught her more than the others will ever know. When her female classmates pass out leaflets condemning prostitution and think themselves virtuous, Sarah scoffs in contempt:

They were so innocent. They were so lucky. They hadn’t turned away a frightened, desperate girl. They didn’t have a woman’s death on their conscience, her blood on their hands. They were little girls dressed in their teacher’s clothes, playing with women’s lives as they once played with their dolls, ignorant that all the sermonizing in the world wouldn’t save the soul of someone with a malnourished body.

As Sarah takes larger and larger risks to uncover the truth, the pressures increase from all angles. Her aunt and uncle want her to forget medicine and marry a vacuous, socially inept young man from a good family, and Sarah dares not resist openly. The irascible professor keeps running into her, alone, in places where she shouldn’t be, even chaperoned. Maybe he shouldn’t be there, either, but as a man, he has more moral latitude.

As you might guess, then, “no–and furthermore” lives large in these pages; the narrative consistently thwarts Sarah’s efforts, just when she thinks she might have gotten somewhere. For the first 90 percent of this novel, you couldn’t ask for more riveting storytelling. Throughout, Welsh has made the personal political, asked hard questions about feminism that sound as topical today as they must have seemed radical in 1892, and depicted as vivid, gritty a picture of late Victorian life as you could want.

Unfortunately, the last 10 percent nearly undoes the rest. Having pushed Sarah into a tight corner with hard-edged reality, Welsh builds her resolution on clichés. The killer turns out to have sociopathic tendencies–a cop-out and a tired convention–and is also supremely talkative, for no apparent reason other than the author’s convenience. The final confrontation feels like melodrama, a startling departure from an otherwise bold, original narrative. I think Welsh could have done better–I’m sure of it–and not just because she’s a talented writer.

But read The Wages of Sin, and you be the judge. Despite the flawed ending, I think you’ll be gripped.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.