Several years ago, when I was clearing my late mother’s house, I came across a small card, detailing an unknown relative’s interment in a local cemetery. I only recognised her surname because it was the same as my great-grandmother‘s maiden name, but I remember being astounded that I knew nothing else. But with the help of the local council’s Bereavement Services, I located the burial place, where I stood and pondered. I wanted to know about this woman, how she related to me. It sent my sister and I on a journey; perusing censuses with their occasional dubious transcriptions of names, requesting certificates of birth, marriage, and death from the General Registry Office, travelling to cemeteries, locating streets, some of which were no more or with changed names and demolished houses - in my very own Who Do You Think You Are adventure!
And it seems that Simon Mawer has done exactly the same. Except that he had the wonderful idea and foresight to use all that research and information to construct a fiction based on enough facts that we might have ourselves a new genre - ‘faction’!
Mr Mawer is a natural storyteller. He brings his characters/relatives alive, using the barest of details and impressions from documents and newspaper articles in the most absorbing way. And as much as this is a novel it also seems to offer us flavours of history from a maritime life in the 19th century to the trenches of Sebastopol during the Crimea. Social history too has a place, particularly with regard to the women in Victorian England and attitudes to widowhood.
The novel is in three parts that deal, I guess, with the maternal ancestry in part one, and the paternal ancestry in the second part, with part three trying to tie up ends and leads us to the epilogue, which focuses on a 1928 photograph.
For me, it was the women I wanted to read about, Naomi and Ann’s stories, so, at times, I found the balance disproportionate.The experiences of the 50th regiment in the Crimea were harrowing, but I felt too much focus was given to this part and I felt the outcome, for the purposes of this fiction, became obvious. But, conversely, aficionados of military history would be hanging on every word, I should imagine, it was well written.
I’d be interested to know what people who have never dabbled in genealogy made of the book! I feel I’m coming at it from a different perspective from many others. The author was very clear to make the distinction between fact and fiction, which I think is helpful for people who have not read census entries and registration documents. Some actual instances are backed up by newspaper articles. This could so easily have been a factual book, one person detailing their search for their ancestors, and that could end up being a somewhat dry account. Or it could have been a complete fiction without any reference to genealogy which would have made for a good story but Simon Mawer has given it an added dimension - it’s a fusion of both, and it has been a compelling read.
So much has gone into this book and I’m not just talking about the research. I think that when you’re writing about your family there is an invisible web of emotion that subliminally brings all the words together. How many times have we seen on the TV show, Who Do You Think You Are people overcome with emotion over ancestors they’ve never met! I think that what the story does is show just how powerful family ties and blood ties really are. Perhaps it’s that enduring need to find ourselves, to try and understand who we are, and how we have reached this point in our existence that the need to know about the past can consume some of us as we search for those answers. I know it did me. For example, finding out that my great-great-grandfather was a tailor in Penzance thrilled me. And my sister recently found the house where he lived all his life. It makes it all so real. That’s what this book does too.
Ancestry has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize this year, and I was lucky enough to win a copy.
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