"He looked like an elbow patch on a tweed jacket, battered and obvious, and not quite whole".
That's one of the many lines in Jennie Rooney's Inside the Whale
It's the dual narrative of Stevie and Michael: the former measuring out her life - not with Eliot's coffee spoons - but in the large print fiction section of her local library, the latter in hospital now, remembering his past while ' in conversation' with the young woman who is looking after him. Stevie and Michael have a shared history; brought together by the war, they were then separated by it in sad circumstances, but neither can ever forget the other, and now is the time - for one of them - to make amends.
It's a touching book, full of humour, written with a fine emotional poise and an eye for things which sets it apart from so many others. As a first novel it's highly accomplished and one of my best books of the year so far, not because it's big and showy, but because its scale is small and as such it's tightly written and perfectly formed.
Here's a passage from the beginning of the book - Stevie remembers being at home when war was declared: "It was generally assumed, although never openly admitted, that if any part of the house were going to be invaded, it would undoubtedly be the front room. It had the nice curtains, after all". Victoria Wood could have written that. So the tone of the book is set - domestic, intimate, gently introspective - and all shaped by a lithe and interested mind. Do read it!
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The cover alone is enough to make me want this book! It sounds my kind of book and I shall add this to my wish list right away!
Posted by: Margaret Powling | 28 August 2008 at 01:18 PM
What terrific drawings. Can a book live up to their promise? :<) Blurb by Alan Sillitoe! Have you read him at all?
Posted by: Nan | 28 August 2008 at 03:02 PM