Gretel seems to live a
simple, dedicated and ordered life, with perhaps more than an element of self-imposed
isolation. She is a lexicographer, examining the accuracy and scope of
dictionary entries. Words thus matter to her. They are her bread and butter.
Though she has not seen her mother since she was sixteen, she still has vivid
memories of words they shared, words her mother invented to label things
otherwise indescribable. As an adult, Gretel finds her world turned upside down
by the reappearance of a woman she probably only ever partially knew, but whose
own identity has now been transformed by age. Communication is hit and miss,
sometimes lucid, sometimes mythical, sometimes disconnected. Gretel, however,
decides to relive her past via the family life she can either remember or
reconstruct, reliably or otherwise via conversation and reflection with her
mother.
And that life was
indeed somewhat unconventional. She and her mother lived on a boat that was
moored on a river. The waters were, it seems, always murky. Gretel never really
knew her father, and one of the areas she tries to uncover via her partial
engagement with her mother is nothing less than the truth about her own
beginnings. The water on which the family boat floated stayed murky throughout
Gretel's childhood, and, it seems, has not cleared since then.
Complicating the scene
is the fact that she and her mother used to communicate via code words, sounds
they themselves invented to describe the unknowns, the lurking dangers or
merely the otherwise unspeakable things that can surface to threaten these
lives lived in a microcosm of their own invention. There is apparently much to
uncover, and not all of it is accessible. And when this private language, these
codes for the unmentionable, invade either a mother's or a daughter's memory,
they are used to hide something difficult, to obfuscate, as if to ensure their meaning remains unknown, unacknowledged.
Characters alternate
between the present and memories of a limited family life on their moored boat.
There are demons to confront and assumptions to deconstruct. The water, if
anything, becomes murkier when stirred. And if there is a criticism of this
forensic reconstruction of a shared but only partially remembered past, then it
lies in its tendency to over-complicate. It is perhaps minor point, but one
might have expected Gretel, with her professional desire for accuracy in
everything to do with words, not to tolerate such obfuscation.
Mother and daughter's
invented vocabulary seems, however, to extend to only a few words. This is
hardly the "language" we are told they shared. The words reappear in
different contexts to indicate apparently different things. Unpicking how these
labels have been applied to their shared experience forms a significant element
of plot. But again, though much is made of these few words, they hardly
constitute the "invented language" of the book's preamble.
Everything Under thus
evolves into a complex, complicated and inevitably confused uncovering of this
relationship between mother and daughter. Truths are revealed and unconsciously
absorbed detail is newly remembered to add context. Throughout, however, we
feel that, in essence, things were probably a little simpler than each
character's desire to speculate might allow. In some ways this is the book's
strength, since Everything Under is a tangle of memories, a tangle of
relationships and possibly an undergrowth of old stems that even the
participants have neglected to prune.
Everything Under is a
challenging read around what is essentially a simple idea. But, when reality
finally knocks on the door and these characters find they must own up to the
detail of their family life, there are revelations and surprises which,
paradoxically, change nothing. Perhaps many families are like that.
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