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Human Flaws Exposed: Dazzle Patterns

12 Monday Nov 2018

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Review: Dazzle Patterns, by Allison Watt
Freehand, 2018. 339 pp. $22

Clare Holmes works in a glassworks in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, a port city that buzzes with wartime traffic. Living in the big town instead of on her parents’ farm has provoked a constant, simmering conflict with Clare’s controlling mother, Ada. But Clare has plans that Ada would never dream of. The young woman is saving up for her passage to France so that she can become a Red Cross nurse and be near her soldier fiancé, Leo.

However, when a ship blows up in the harbor, the blast destroys the glassworks and a swath of town, leaving many dead. The consequences for Clare are severe and cascading. Not only does she lose an eye, which means Ada grabs her and brings her home; Clare worries that Leo won’t want her anymore; and, worse, the post-traumatic stresses sap her desire to live. Her friends hold out hope that she’ll be able to return to the glassworks, but her job there involved checking the product for flaws, and the boss isn’t the only one who doubts she can manage that with only one eye. It’s a nice twist, the flaw-checker who feels — and is — damaged herself. And she becomes so aware of her imperfection that she can hardly get out of bed, let alone function.

But Clare is nothing if not independent-minded, and Watt has put her protagonist’s inner life on vivid display. Overcoming her disability literally means Clare has to develop another way to see the world in perspective; and when you read that she takes up drawing, the metaphor gains breadth. But her adaptation of course involves how she sees herself, and this is my favorite aspect of Dazzle Patterns. Where once Clare defined the future as being Leo’s wife, or, more immediately, staying out of Ada’s clutches and becoming a nurse, she now takes a larger view. It’s as if Clare’s loss and necessary compensation for it have let her grow in unforeseeable ways, to extend the metaphor even further.

Watt’s at her best when the narrative stays in Halifax. She portrays the home front and all its fears and prejudices with a sure hand, as well as the boarding house Clare lives in, the glassworks, and the horrific aftermath of the explosion. Here’s the destruction recounted through the eyes of Fred, a glassblower whom Clare later befriends:

Walking back to his rooming house Fred saw houses fallen in upon themselves, charred like abandoned bonfires, or burnt completely away, only the chimneys flooded with black puddles of ash and snow. Standing houses stared blank-eyed, all their windows gone. Telephone poles tilted. On the street, a breadbox, a school bag, a woman’s evening shoe, black patent with a pointed toe and a velvet bow. At the corner of Agricola and West Street, Fred brushed the snow off and righted an empty baby carriage.

But I think Fred’s less successful than Clare as a character. Watt makes him a prewar German immigrant, which allows her to evoke the jingoistic suspicion of an “enemy alien” who is actually a naturalized Canadian. I like the theme and how Watt plays it, but Fred’s a bit too good to be true, as if the chief victim of the narrative must be a paragon.

Leo’s more believable as a person, but what happens to him, less so. He’s a sapper, assisting the engineer officer who tunnels under German lines. Watt’s depiction of that rings true. But the narrative fudges on what the Western Front looks and feels like, and other details are simply inaccurate. Most critically—and I don’t want to reveal too much–Watt fails to consider what a civilian’s possession of a firearm in a war zone can mean, as in getting the entire village put up against a wall. Moreover, that entire setup seems designed to alter Leo in convenient ways, whereas leaving him as he was, though messier, would add depth and conflict.

Finally, I hope that what I read is an uncorrected proof — although it doesn’t say so — and that a proofreader will catch mistakes like the constant misspelling of Fred’s German name, and the typographical and grammatical errors that crop up.

Still, I enjoyed Dazzle Patterns. The story is compelling, Watt tells it with brio, and has provided a heroine worthy of your time and attention.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher via Historical Novels Review, in which this post appeared in shorter, different form.

Death of a Genius: Fall of Man in Wilmslow

15 Monday Aug 2016

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Review: Fall of Man in Wilmslow, by David Lagercrantz
Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding
Knopf, 2016. 354 pp. $27

Like Alan Turing himself, the extraordinary mathematician and cryptanalyst whose life forms the premise of this novel, Lagercrantz’s narrative is often brilliant but fails to realize its promise. In Turing’s case, his apparent suicide by poisoning in June 1954 ended a life of spectacular accomplishment while he was still young. In the novel, the mystery quickly swims away like a red herring, and the focus shifts, a setback for the reader, who may be forgiven for expecting that the narrative will identify who might have wanted to murder Turing and build a case for or against.

 

Alan Turing's passport photo at age 16, 1928 or 1929 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Alan Turing’s passport photo from his teenage years, 1928 or 1929 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Instead, you get a sort of coming-of-age story about the detective who investigates, a character almost as annoying and socially inept as Turing, but who has talent of his own, submerged under a mountain of self-hatred. Leonard Corell is twenty-eight but hardly formed, conscious that he was meant for better things than to be a policeman in a backwater like Wilmslow, a town near Manchester, yet also believes he deserves nothing else. Leonard has no friends, has never had a romance, was bullied at school (which he never finished, for lack of will), and is often irritable with colleagues who try to be friendly. Just the kind of person you’d want to spend a few hours reading about, right?

Indeed, if that were all, Fall of Man in Wilmslow would be a dreary book, too much to finish. Yet Leonard learns to grow into his skin–haltingly, to be sure, a process rife with sharp elbows given and taken. He has a long way to go, and Lagercrantz’s portrait is terrifying in its depth and detail. Leonard’s father, now dead, was a narcissist who drew constant attention to himself through exaggerated stories and antics, such as announcing, on entering a room, “What a delightful gathering! May a simple man such as I join your company?” Required to revolve around this sun like an outer planet in perpetual shadow, Leonard grew up feeling that he would never be good enough. Yet, at the same time, he fantasized coming up “with an idea, a great thought which would revolutionise the world.”

What the reader knows, though Leonard doesn’t, is that Turing was just such a thinker. Not only did he develop the theory and mechanical means to crack German codes during World War II, he framed the mathematical theories that have given us computers. But Leonard, though groping in the dark, can tell that Turing was special, and you sense that in attempting to grasp how such an accomplished person could poison himself, and what Turing was trying to say about life, the young detective will change.

Turing was homosexual and prosecuted for it, victim of both homophobia and hysteria over national security. The Cambridge ring of Soviet agents (which Helen Dunmore wrote about in Exposed, from a different, later perspective) included several homosexuals, about whom it was presumed that they were led to their treason by immorality, an unnatural affinity for communism, or desire to destroy the world. Since only highly placed intelligence officers know what Turing did during World War II, most people who hear his name, including the Wilmslow constabulary, assume that he must be a danger to society because he’s gay. And the intelligence community, many of whose less enlightened denizens wonder whether Turing ever passed information to the Soviets, becomes very curious about this young policeman who asks a lot of questions.

They don’t realize what Leonard’s after, or where he wants to go. But the reader sees that he starts out sharing the common prejudices and comes to recognize the hypocrisy in himself and others. He gets there, in part, through long discussions of mathematical principles and of Turing’s life and character. These can be long, interesting though they often are, and feel like explanations, another weakness of the narrative, which tells too much instead of showing it. Nevertheless, Fall of Man in Wilmslow has tension to spare, because Lagercrantz occupies Leonard’s head so convincingly, and the young man is fit to burst with discovery and feelings he can’t manage.

I know nothing about math or cybernetics, and I don’t think you need to be passionate about either to appreciate Fall of Man in Wilmslow. However, if you’re looking for a mystery, this is one of character, not who done it, and that may be a letdown.

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

The Other End of the Telescope: Mr. Mac and Me

18 Monday May 2015

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Review: Mr. Mac and Me, by Esther Freud
Bloomsbury, 2014. 296 pp. $26

Most novels about the First World War, even those of the home front, portray the emotional and physical carnage, which warp everything they touch. But Mr. Mac and Me takes a gentler approach, setting a coming-of-age story within an unusual friendship between a thirteen-year-old boy and the Scottish artist and architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and his wife, Margaret. The war still penetrates daily life, of course, but remains a thing outside, like a beast scratching at the door. The setup feels vaguely threatening, all to the good, yet misshapen in its odd proportions, which ultimately undermines the novel.

Dunwich seafront, 2007 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Dunwich seafront, 2007 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

The beginning plods, as Freud introduces the Maggs family, which runs a struggling pub in Dunwich, a fishing village on the Sussex coast. But eventually, the story gets going. It’s early summer 1914, and Thomas, the young teenager, has two older sisters and six dead brothers, whose loss he feels keenly. The dead are practically his only company, since his brute drunk of a father is best avoided, and his mother carries too many burdens to pay attention to Tom, unless to cuff him for his misdemeanors. Tom befriends his dead siblings by visiting their graves and adopting a family of starlings as though they represented his brothers alive once more, an example of the sensitive, warm touch that Freud shows throughout.

However, he soon has someone else to occupy his vivid imagination. Mackintosh and his wife have taken up residence, and Mac casts a strange figure, striding about the headland and beaches, turning a spyglass on the seascape. At first, Tom thinks Mac must be a detective, for he reminds the boy of Sherlock Holmes. It’s not clear who befriends whom, but the reclusive, troubled architect takes to Tom and encourages his love of drawing–ships, because Tom dreams of going to sea. Margaret, a gifted artist herself, encourages him too and feeds him, having sensed, without ever putting words to it, that he’s neglected. As surrogate parents, they’re a godsend.

But come the war, Mac’s behavior creates suspicion in the village. His tramps around the headland, his spyglass, that he’s an outsider, an artist–a “foreigner,” in other words–all count against him. The coastal folk naturally assume that their plot of earth is the first place the Germans would invade, a fear they embrace with the inflated desire to feel important. Is Mac signaling to enemy ships? Tom himself isn’t so sure, because he’s seen Mac and Margaret’s pamphlets describing exhibitions of their works at Vienna, and the German words he can’t read sound ominous. He soon sees his mistake, though, only nobody else does, and his father is among those most strident in slandering Mac.

Meanwhile, the more compelling story is about Tom’s growing up. Freud’s Suffolk coast is a place where old ways are dying out, and even Tom’s job with a rope maker may fall to progress. His naivete about certain subjects yields to knowledge, though Freud is careful not to let him see too much. I like the skill with which she handles this, as with the village atmosphere and small moments. The passage of soldiers, billeting in town before shipping to France, teaches Tom a little, and his sister Ann even more, unfortunately. Tom has his first love and catches a glimpse of what the war means, beyond uniforms and patriotic back-slapping.

But Mr. Mac and Me never takes flight, mostly because Mac has no voice of his own and never fully emerges. Since he’s not about to tell a thirteen-year-old why he’s depressed–money troubles, career frustrations–Tom has to find this out by steaming open his letters, a betrayal that, disturbingly, hardly registers with the boy. It’s a clumsy authorial device, as with the expository dialogue that Mac spews when he’s particularly angry at the wrongs he’s suffered. The village suspicions, though they have consequences, neither drive the narrative nor resolve it, and the last twenty pages summarize events that deserve a more careful unraveling. Finally, I understand that Freud wanted to focus on the village, but when news comes that a Suffolk regiment has been decimated in battle, the tragedy hardly penetrates, a startling lapse.

Mac and Me was nominated for the Walter Scott Prize in historical fiction. The short list includes three books I’ve covered already: The Lie, by Helen Dunmore (October 27, 2014); The Thousand Things, by John Spurling (March 16); and The Wolf’s Mouth, by Adam Foulds (March 12). I’d be happy if Dunmore or Spurling won, but I still think The Lie–my first review on this site–is better.

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