One man’s account
Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry, by B. S. Johnson
£6.99, Picador (2001)
Everyone wants to get their own back, and Christie Malry is no exception. Payment is due, he feels: from his seminal encounter with an in-the-way Edwardian office block (debit one scratch on the brickwork), through his employers and co-workers (debit five tons of carbon-copy paper, delivered in apparent error) to the Houses of Parliament themselves (debit tbc.), Malry calculates in a common coinage the wrongs done to him, and acts accordingly to recover those debts. But his accounting is suffering overinflation, people are dying, and the clockwork train of Malry’s morality is careering out of control….
It’s rare to come across a novel which simultaneously conveys such tension and obsession with detail, while pouring forth exuberance and sheer joy in the craft of writing well. B. S. Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry is such a book. The plot kapows from one ecstatic event to another, supported ably by Johnson’s literary caprices that Joyce and Borges would sell their aunts for. He stretches the form just far enough to generate plenty of heat, but not so far that it snaps under the strain. This is the bleeding edge of novel construction, and Malry skims along this blade like an angel dancing on a pinhead, living through his dangerous, violent, hilarious exploits like no thriller hero has ever done.
Johnson is—was, God keep him—a stunning writer. Christie Malry leaps off the page, while still being aware on one level of Johnson pulling the strings. Self-referential asides deftly sidestep the territory of the cynical, knowing wink and become respectful acknowledgements of the intelligence of the reader. The characters are all ripe, richly sympathetic and completely, completely believable. The story is genius and the narrative flawless magic. Read this book.
posted at: 22:03 |
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Extraordinarily normal
House Mother Normal, by B S Johnson
(OOP) Bloodaxe Books (1971)
What you’re about to read isn’t a normal book review. But then B S Johnson didn’t write normal books. Just keep in mind that House Mother Normal is challenging, exciting, but above all readable, and all will be well.
Imagine a book where the same story is told from different viewpoints. Think David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, where each viewpoint is topped and tailed by another. But the narratives in House Mother Normal all come one after the other, for a very good reason.
Now imagine that the same number of pages is used for each viewpoint, , that each line advances the chronology by the same amount. It’s like a film script, where each page is a few minutes and a gap in one’s thoughts looks like this: “ ”. Thus in House Mother Normal page 5 of Gloria Ridge’s story matches page 5 of Ron Lamson’s, and page 5 of the House Mother’s, line by line.
Finally, imagine that each story describes the same few hours in a nursing home, from the point of view of one of the old folks, all with wildly varying degrees of mental competence. After the gradual deterioration of narrative from lucid Sarah Lamson to almost silent Rosetta Stanton, the story is finally explained, and cast in a whole new light, by the House Mother’s own narration. In this way House Mother Normal makes barbed comments about our understanding of mental wellness and wholeness, and break the heart of every reader with its portrayal of silent, unacknowledged, misunderstood sickness.
- House Mother Normal is a book with no equal, no peer, no accompanying movement and no obvious influences.
- House Mother Normal is prose and play minced and ground and stirred up together.
- House Mother Normal is a three-dimensional novel.
- House Mother Normal is a witty, wise, sad, beautiful exploration of the human condition.
- House Mother Normal is a biting satire on mental-health culture and Foucauldian power struggles.
- House Mother Normal is smashing.
posted at: 18:06 |
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