Death of the Heart

From StarMag, 13th Feb 2005

Review by DAPHNE LEE

THE LANDSCAPE OF LOVE

By Sally Beauman

Publisher: Little Brown

(ISBN:0316729434)

WHEN I read a Sally Beauman novel I find myself feeling both caressed and harassed. Her narratives are hypnotic; her words – symbolic and evocative – are full of portent and significance. I am lulled by the beauty of her style and the glamour of her characters, yet haunted by the certainty that nothing is right in the worlds she describes.

Her books are rich, dark things. Her characters, especially the women, are beautiful, dangerous and misunderstood. An air of doom prevails; secrets and lies fester and pollute everyone and everything, while lust and love compete for dominance: both are equally destructive.

Will she ever write a book full of nondescript people leading blameless, boring lives? It’s hard to imagine. Her latest, The Landscape of Love, is just what one has come to expect from her. Set partly in a mouldering, haunted abbey in the Suffolk countryside, it could have been a romantic, picturesque tale a la I Capture the Castle. Why, given the right tone it could have taken a satirical turn and ended up a modern Northanger Abbey. But no, Landscape is just exactly what her fans want – firmly and woefully a Beauman exercise in hand-wringing tragedy.

As the title suggests, it is a love story – that is, an anatomy of the emotion as experienced by and seen through the eyes of the novel’s characters. Love’s terrain is rugged, unfriendly and unforgiving – typical Beauman-country, a battlefield on which her characters die a thousand deaths, disillusioned, desperate, frustrated and obsessed.

It ain’t pretty, but it’s compelling, and like all Beauman’s work, one loathes to stop reading. She teases you mercilessly, constantly hinting, implying and inferring, so that the suspense is unbearable. Unfortunately, disappointment is also inevitable. All the hoo-ha is, at least I find, about nothing – how could it not be when whatever revelations Beauman has in store have your energetically back-flipping imagination to live up to? (Of course, it may just be that I have a more gratuitously morbid and disgusting imagination than hers.)

It’s no different with Landscape. Nevertheless, what a page-turner it is – the feeling of anticipation, when you’re right in the middle of the story, is hard to beat. Beauman has been likened to Daphne du Maurier (her last novel was actually a re-telling of du Maurier’s Rebecca) and I agree that she comes very close to matching that writer’s broodingly elegant style. In addition, Beauman, like du Maurier, specialises in puzzling yet beguiling female characters and settings that exude a sense of both mystery and menace.

In Landscape, we are bewitched by the Mortland sisters. The youngest, Maisie, is only a girl when the story opens, but she is also the narrator – a sly, intensely observant one who sees ghosts. Her sisters, in their early 20s and late teens respectively, are the beautiful and scornful Julia and the wild, bookish Finn.

It is the summer of 1967 and the family are gathered at the ancestral home. Also present are the sisters’ childhood friend, Dan; his best friend, Nick; and Lucas, an aspiring artist who is in the process of painting the sisters. In the second part of the book, both Lucas and the painting are famous; Julia and Nick are unhappily married; and Dan is a drugged-out has-been, suddenly gripped by the urgent need to make sense of that last summer in Suffolk.

This second portion of the book, set in London and narrated by a bitter and desperate Dan, is harsher in tone than the first, reflecting both his state of mind as well as the dog-eat-dog social climate of late 1980s Britain. And yet, there’s something about Maisie’s gently pensive voice, and even Julia’s final, dispassionate words, that are more unsettling than Dan’s explicit and intentionally offensive account.

All three are, in fact, masters of concealment, deliberately leading the leader deeper and deeper into a story by dangling the truth like a carrot. Ultimately, however, one is left in the dark. I even re-read the book, hoping to benefit from hindsight, but the second time around only made me certain that Beauman intended to leave us guessing. With this book, about that treacherous land called love, she may have decided that hiding the truth might be the most honest course of action.

Books by Sally Beauman, Daphne du Maurier and others about love and how it can really, really suck:

S. Beauman:
Dark Angel
Rebecca's Tale

D. du Maurier:
Rebecca
My Cousin Rachel

Others:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt
Heartburn by Nora Ephron (at least this one is funny)
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
The Willow Cabin by Pamela Frankau

Teen Mifits to the Fore

From StarMag, Sunday, 6th February, 2005

CHASING VERMEER

By Blue Balliett

Illustrated by Brett Helquist

Publisher: Scholastic

(ISBN: 978-0439372947)

SEVERAL foreign reviews have called Chasing Vermeer a children’s Da Vinci Code, but I think the only thing the books have in common is that they encourage an interest in art, or at least certain artists and their works.

A number of portraits by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer appear in Blue Balliett’s novel, but none harbour secrets about Christianity or the, supposedly, true identity of biblical figures. There are no codes to crack, no puzzles to work out, no trails to follow in Chasing Vermeer. Rather, it becomes gradually clear that the mysteries in this book are solved by methods that are themselves mysterious. They remain, till the very end, unexplained phenomena.

As a result, some readers might close the book feeling short-changed. Personally, I was surprised that so little logic went into the mapping and unfolding of the plot. Pentominoes feature largely in the story, but although they are a mathematical tool, they are used in a strangely fanciful, even superstitious, manner.

There is much focus on Vermeer’s art. Seen through Balliett’s eyes and described in her words, the artist’s paintings are vibrantly beautiful things. The “real” portraits (reproductions in books and on the Internet) don’t come close to what one sees as a result of the author’s loving and vivid descriptions. In this way, and by feeding the reader with intriguing titbits about Vermeer’s life, Balliett succeeds in kindling one’s interest in him and his paintings.

However, I suspect kids might find pentominoes and Charles Fort more fascinating than the artist. Fort (1874-1932), a writer who delighted in strange events, plays a significant part in Chasing Vermeer. But, like pentominoes, he and his work are used to further mystify the characters and the reader, and do not actually provide any clear answers.

The book’s strongest point is, I feel, its characters, especially Calder Pillay and Petra Andalee, the pre-teen, socially awkward protagonists. Refreshingly, neither is of Anglo-Saxon stock: Calder is part Asian-Indian, while Petra has African, European and Middle-Eastern forbears. Both are intelligent, creative, articulate and – in each other’s eyes – “weird”!

Then there is their unconventional teacher, Ms Hussey, who encourages her students to question everything and come up with their own spin on things. It is partly thanks to her that Calder and Petra take an active interest in the disappearance of a Vermeer painting that’s on loan to a local museum.

Although their interest in the crime is initially awakened by uncanny dreams and weird coincidences, it is only when it becomes evident that Ms Hussey is in some way involved in the incident and in danger that the pair make a pact to find the artwork at all costs.

Elderly Mrs Sharpe, with her furtive air, cryptic remarks and scathing sense of humour, is also fascinating. But as sharp-witted as she is, her style of mystery-solving is, disappointingly, as whimsical as everyone else’s.

At least Brett Helquist’s illustrations provide readers with quite a meaty puzzle to sink their teeth into. I suggest saving it for last as it’s quite time-consuming and distracting. Young sleuths will also enjoy decoding some letters Calder receives from his best friend, who has moved to another state. It’s a pity that these brainteasers have nothing to do with Balliett’s actual story. Perhaps she (and Helquist) provided them as a trade-off!

It’s such a pleasure seeing Helquist’s drawings here. I especially love Petra, with “her fierce triangle of hair”. Children’s novels (and even many adult ones) used to be illustrated as a matter of course up to about 30 years ago. But economics seems to have put an end to that, apart from rare cases, like the A Series of Unfortunate Events books, also illustrated by Helquist.

I’m looking forward to Balliett’s next book, another mystery, featuring Petra and Calder, and ghosts! Once again, Helquist will provide the artwork.

I recommend Chasing Vermeer, but not because it’s the most spectacular children’s mystery ever written (any Famous Five story does better in this aspect), but because I think it contains some really marvellous writing. Balliett does particularly well when she writes from Petra’s perspective, offering a view of the world that is delightfully reflective, full of trembling, inspired wonder, and confused but intense emotion.

Finally, it’s pretty wonderful when a couple of non-conformist geeks like Petra and Calder are cast as heroes. In the tradition of E.L. Konigsburg and Madeleine L’Engle, Balliett celebrates and empowers social misfits. As most youngsters go through periods of self-doubt, this book and others like it are a welcome and refreshing alternative to the recent barrage of teen novels that make too much of being beautiful, well-groomed and sexually active!