There’s something almost perversely satisfying about reading stories of dysfunctional families because you end up feeling that perhaps your own family was not, perhaps, as dysfunctional as you thought! Rebecca Wait’s moving account of one dysfunctional family is piercingly perceptive as she demonstrates again, as she did in Our Fathers, that her observation of human behaviour and the human condition is astute and intelligent.
I guess that, as in Our Fathers, I found the theme of nature versus nurture raised; how far do genetics play a part in the people that we are and the people that we become? It’s a conundrum that has consumed me for most of my adult life I think and maybe it’s the same for Rebecca Wait? Although I feel having read this book that she comes down more strongly on the nature side.
And how perfect to have as the main characters a set of non-identical twins. For that raises another batch of questions in the reader’s head. For these twins do not conform to one’s stereotypical notion of the kinship of twins. At least not on the surface, but let’s allow the blurb to set the scene.
‘ For Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, growing up is a trial. Their mother takes a divide and conquer approach to child-rearing, and their father, and absent one. There is their older brother Michael, who disapproval is a force to be reckoned with. And there is a catastrophe that is never spoken of, but which has shaped everything.
As adults, Alice and Hanna must negotiate increasingly complicated family tensions, while longing for connection and stability. They must find a way to repair their own fractured relationship, and they must finally choose their own approach to their dominant mother: submit or burn the house down. And they must decide at last whether life is really anything more than a tragedy with a few hilarious moments’
And I guess to an extent that last phrase does sum up the book – ‘…..more than a tragedy with a few hilarious moments.’ There is a great deal of sadness in the book or I certainly found there to be so. My heart just broke for Hanna (and her aunt Katy) and I found some of those sequences in the book quite hard to read for the compassion in me wanted to try and make everything better for them. However that’s not to say that the book is enduringly depressing. The conclusion is redemptive and lifted my heart.
There are dual narratives which allow us to piece these jigsaw puzzle lives together. All of the characters are flawed in some way and some of them appear to be unpleasant or certainly they behave in ways that are questionable but because we know that they all have problems you don’t actually end up disliking them, even poor Celia, the twins’ mother. But it does raise many questions about the nature of abuse and highlights the fact that not all abuse is conscious or intentional.
It is an extremely well written book. I’ve previously alluded to the author’s perceptions but she has tapped into how painful it is sometimes with family dynamics and relationships as each member of the family strives to understand not just their relatives’ behaviours but their own too. This book looks at extremes I guess of what happens when dysfunctional parents raise dysfunctional children. It’s also a very emotional book. I experienced an incredible sense of being powerless to intervene when I could see that this was a runaway train out of control. It was quite tiring! But in a satisfying way, if that’s not a paradox. Because by the end of the book you felt that there was an element of hope. That people could maybe learn, could maybe find some understanding.
My thanks to the wonderful Ana McLaughlin at riverrun for a gifted proof of this book.
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