So Much For That, Lionel Schriver

The most recent novel in our book club is from Lionel Schriver, the bestselling author of We Need to Talk about Kevin. I haven’t read that one, and after So Much for That! I don’t think I will.

Shep Knacker is the unlikely hero, who always dreamed of an early retirement with his wife Glynis to a cheaper part of the world. Taking the $800,000 he got from the sale of his Handyman business in New York, he planned to spend his last years in a hot climate where $800,000 is a fortune and he could live very comfortably for the rest of his days. This, he called the Afterlife.

After years of procrastinating, he finally books two one-way tickets to Pemba, Zanzibar, on an island off the coast of Tanzania. Only they can’t go. Shep’s wife Glynis has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

The back cover of the book shows a quote from the Literary Review which says ‘British readers will close this excellent novel feeling grateful for the NHS’. They are right. throughout the novel Shep and Glynis’ nest egg is gradually eaten up. Despite them having a comprehensive medical insurance policy from his job (Shep still works for the company he sold), there are fees for co-pays (insurance excesses) and out-of-coverage care. It turns out that to get an expert in Glynis’ rare cancer they have to turn to a doctor who is not one of the recommended care providers of the insurance company. I could rant on here about the absurdity of the American health insurance system, where doctors views of over-ruled by profit-making corporates and how, despite it’s deficiencies, the British NHS is far superior, but I won’t. I think that, as the author is an American living in London, she already knows this. As the main character laments:

For the sale of [my company] Knack alone I paid two hundred and eight thousand dollars in capital gains. Add up all I’ve shoveled those sons of bitches since high school, and it has to be somewhere between one and two million bucks. And that’s the same government who, when my wife has cancer, won’t buy her a single Tylenol.

The money is a backdrop to the story, but most of it deals with the gradual decline in the health of Glynis and of their nest egg. But there are also more medical issues. Shep’s father, Gabe, is slowly fading out. His best friend, Jackson, has a daughter with a rare genetic disease and another daughter on antidepressants (from years of being the ‘left out’ member of the family, as she has no such condition). Added to that, Jackson has taken an ill-advised course of cosmetic surgery which, when his wife finds out, adds strain to their marriage and finances.

It is good that  a bestselling novel has decided to deal in depth with cancer and dying. It is not something that people like to engage with and the  author has, I think, captured the reactions of friends and family. At first there is genuine compassion and offers to help, but after a while, as Glynis becomes more housebound and fades from public view, the visits become more infrequent. There is general awkwardness in some of the interactions as family members of the afflicted don’t know what to say. It is a more in-depth treatment than Jenny Downham’s Before I Die, but unsurprisingly, not as good as Tolstoy’s first person narrative in The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Like, Downham, but unlike Tolstoy, there is no thought given to what might happen after death (she makes her thoughts on religion clear in the loss of faith of Shep’s father (p429)) or even on the fear of the process itself – the focus of Schriver is on what the life is like before it and in particular, a description from a carer’s point of view.

Schriver is also very perceptive in the language that is used in the treatment of cancer and, whether this is helpful or not. In the book, as in the UK, we fight against cancer, battle it, struggle against it. Whist the doctors think this is important to keep up the patients resolve, this shows through in Glynis being unable to face up to her own death. While she is continually battling it, there is always a chance, however tiny, that she will recover. The doctors always want to try the next new drug (which, incidentally, is very costly) regardless of the side-effects or the probability of success. Near the end of the book (and at the end of his resources), Shep has a showdown with the doctor over what her struggles and his money has bought them. The response is that she has lived ‘a good two or three months longer than expected’. Shep questions whether, with so much medial intrusion, they have in fact been a good three months at all. They merely served to displace Glynis’ attention so she didn’t actually face up to the fact that she was dying.

Whilst it raised some interesting points, I would not recommend this book, primarily because it drags. At 530 pages it is a good 200 pages too long. I do not say this because I’m against long books – I’ve read War and Peace and Les Miserables among others, however Lionel Shriver could have got her point across in fewer words. She was over indulgent in her own writing.

Not a writer I immediately connect with, but I can see that the book has been written with thought, especially for those caring for others with illnesses. I’ll give it 6/10 but suggest you spend your time reading something else instead.

Notes on Death: The Death of Ivan Ilyich

This short story is usually published alongside other short stories of Tolstoy’s that deal with issues of marriage, happiness, life and death. At about 70 pages (roughly the same length as some contemporary novels such as Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach), it is minute compared to Tolstoy’s other epics, but is certainly long enough to develop character and to lure you into it.

I’m going to give the game away. In the book, Ivan Ilyich dies. I was rather surprised to find that he actually died in the second paragraph, because it is the nature and significance of death that Tolstoy wants to discuss. The book begins with effect that Ivan’s death has on others. To two of his work colleagues, the death is an opportunity and an irritation. Someone will need to fill Ivan’s role and Pyotr Ivanavich thinks he might be the one. So the opportunity for promotion is there. At the same time there is the irritation of visiting the family, consoling the widow, and staying for the wake which only delays Pyotr’s preferred way of spending the evening, at poker with friends.

Only then does Tolstoy turn to to dealing, in retrospect, with the life and death of Ivan Ilyich. We are treated to a fairly leisurely description of Ivan’s life – of how he floated through life enjoying his position, taking the opportunity for work advancement when it was there, marrying well and fathering two children. The marriage is not described in glowing terms. The initial attraction wore off quickly and the marriage was simply a given – not particularly good or bad, just there. However familiarity bred irritation followed by annoyance and hate. In this time Ivan wanted to climb the rungs of government advocacy and he succeeds, resulting in a move to St. Petersburg.

Shortly afterwards he develops an illness. Although at first it did not seem like an illness. An uncomfortableness developed into an irritation. Doctors were summoned and consulted and second opinions were had. Diets were followed and medicine was prescribed. The ache got worse. Tolstoy describes it as a loose kidney. With the deterioration of his condition came the decline in Ivan’s mood. Only the kindness of Gerasim, one of his servants, gives him any comfort. This kindness is shown in the hope that someone might do the same for Gerasim when his time comes, and it affects Ivan. Lesson one: We Will All Die.

Ivan doesn’t do illness well. The realisation sets in that he will not recover and be becomes prone to depression, analysing his life. Looking back, Ivan couldn’t think of anything noteworthy nor much that was particularly bad in his life. Yet he cannot shake the uneasiness that something has been missed and that he has not lived as he should. Again he cannot think that he could have lived any other way. He remained upright in society and, well, only treated others as well as other of his class did. The story climaxes not with a great confession or conversion, just an acknowledgment that he has been living for the wrong thing – that his life has in some sense been inauthentic as he lived it for himself. At the moment of his realisation he experienced an end to his loathing for his family and a cessation of his pain as he embraced the joyous white light that was enveloping him.

There is a quote from the South American Missionary and martyr Jim Elliot who was killed at the hands of the people he went to serve in 1956:

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

It seems that this is the lesson that Ivan finally grasped in his final moments. As soon as he realised he could not hang onto life, onto himself, he was embraced by a love and joy that he had never known.

Update 28/07/11: Following a recent newly published edition of this story along with another of Tolstoy’s short stories The Devil, The Guardian have also published a review here.

My Recommended Novels of 2010

It’s that time again were we often review what has gone on over the previous year. Here are some books I enjoyed reading.

This year I have read a lot of John Grisham. I only discovered him a couple of years ago when I won The Broker in a book competition and I’ve been reading a lot of him since. Fast-paced well-written switch off mostly legal novels. The Last Juror is definitely my favourite as the character development is deeper than in the others as the novel covers a period of ten years in one small town from the perspective of the new local newspaper editor. In The Partner a former law partner who had been in hiding after faking his own death reveals himself and is immediately hit with a chain of huge corporate law suits. I’m sure the aftermath of the BP Oil spill will turn into a legal mess like this one.   The Appeal had tension from start to finish (although it didn’t necessarily end as you would have wanted). In The Associate a young law students past exploits catch up with him as he gets caught in a game of bribery. Another of Grisham’s best.  The King of Torts chartered the rise and fall of a small time lawyer after following some bad advice. Character development in this one was a bit weaker than his others but it’s a fun read nonetheless.  I’ve just finished The Testament about the search for a reclusive missionary who has just inherited 11 Billion Dollars. The book is really about the redemption of the lawyer who is send to the jungles of Brazil to find her. The Street Lawyer is another about a man who recently discovered a conscience. The Client follows a young boy who had unexpectedly found himself in the middle of a mafia court case after inadvertently finding out where a body was hidden.  There are two others I’ve read this year that aren’t about law – Bleachers, which I would only really recommend if you don’t mind reading about American Football, and the more ponderous A Painted House which gives insight into  cotton farming in the Deep South in the 1950s. In almost all of the Grisham books I’ve read, at least one character either comes to faith or becomes a Christian. You can’t fail to read The Testament without finding out all about what the Christian faith means and what difference it makes. Surely this is the way to write Christian novels – well written pieces that aren’t patronizing or preachy.

Moving away from Grisham into more weighty fiction I’d also recommend Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (translated from Spanish). Set in early fascist Spain in the 1930s, it follows the mystery of a novelist as a young boy tries to unravel it. Wonerfully written and tense to the end. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, about a slave ship on its way down the Ganges, has excellent character depth is essentially a book about race and the search for identity as several characters struggle to fit in to their surroundings. It is written in authentic sea-faring 19th Century language!

But by far the best novel of 2010 that I’ve read is Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy. Prince Dimitri Nekhlyudov is a well respected member of the Russian upper class who has been called for jury service. Sitting in the jury box he recognises the defendant as a girl who he once had a flirtation with, and to his dismay he realises that he behaviour all those years ago has led directly to her being in that dock before him. This leads to a journey of introspection as he tries to put right what has gone wrong. In the process he experiences not just forgiveness and redemption but, as the title suggests, a resurrection into a new kind of life. Tolstoy’s faith comes shining through this novel.

I’m currently reading Nick Hornby’s latest book, Juliet, Naked, which thankfully returns to his earlier high standard found in A Long Way Down and How to be Good after the disappointing Slam.

 

War and Peace

Having finished Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace about a week ago, here are some thoughts. I think it is almost impossible to fully review a book this big, but here are some of my reflections anyway.

1) Tolstoy has a funny relationship with history. Writing about 5 years after the events described in the book (Napoleons invasion into Russia in 1812), Tolstoy is aware of what the historians have written on the matter. He brings this into his descriptions of the course of the war but also a more down to earth approach based on his experiences serving in the Russian army. Historians like to explain things in terms of orders, plans and strategies of generals and admirals. His problem with that is that generals and admirals are often a long way from the battle lines, so when their strategies are not implemented, it is difficult to respond to the battle play-by-play. Tolstoy prefers to use other forces such as the spirit of the troops, the ideas of the day, the on the ground reactions of the individual army units. All of this combines to produce events of war that no-one is really directing. Tolstoy takes great pleasure in describing how Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, the commander in chief of the Russian Army, defied all the other general’s wishes by stepping back in retreat. This allowed the French army, which was a long way from home, had suffered heavy losses at the battle of Borodino, and crucially, did not know how to deal with the Russian cold, to effectively defeat themselves. This, Tolstoy thinks, was the work of a master who read all the signs and spirit of the war. Tolstoy seemed to think that the French were always going to defeat themselves in this war, and Kutuzov had the courage and the foresight to enable them to do it for him without risking more of his own soldiers than needed.

Tolstoy’s final chapter (Epilogue II!) is an essay on what are the forces that drive nations to war? What is power and how is it appropriated and allowed to flourish by the people. His conclusion is complex, but he remarks that nations do not go to war simply because of an Emperor’s will. He implies that the ancients might have got it right when they attributed this kind of thing to the outworking and sovereignty of God. It is only relatively recently that this has failed to be a good enough answer.

2) Tolstoy’s characters are complex, well rounded and deep. The central character, Pierre, is portrayed as a likeable buffoon who is lumbering through life trying to find truth and meaning and something he enjoys, and he always seems dissatified with the society of nobility that he is a part of. To him, it seems shallow (and is epitomised in his wife, Helene, who is only interested in social advancement). Pierre’s search for truth leads him to join the Freemasons, to get involved in social improvement for his peasant labourers, to try and make a mark on history buy coming up with a ridiculous plan to assassinate Napoleon. In the end he finds it is the simple things of like that make it worthwhile and fulfilling – having one’s personal needs met and being thankful to God for it, having a deep, true, and real relationships including a secure marriage relationship (in his second marriage after his first wife, Helene, dies), and in his family. For Tolstoy, meaning is as simple as this. (If Pierre had discovered this sooner, the book would be shorter)

3) The book is full of examples of how to and how not to do life. As in one of Tolstoy’s other books, Anna Karenina, it is stability, faithfulness and sense that are promoted. The continual lust for money, power, social advancement are all found to be empty, unfulfilling, and the path to destruction.

For the LORD gives wisdom, 
and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just 
and protects the way of his faithful ones.

Then you will understand what is right and just and fair—every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, 
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.

Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, who leave the straight paths 
to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. (Prov 2:6-11)

Too much choice?

I’m currently reading War and Peace by Tolstoy. A good read – once you get over the first couple of hundred paged you can really get into it.

The main character, Pierre, spends most of the book trying to find meaning in his life. He is a wealthy landowner, a count with thousands of serfs working under him. He owns several estates and seemingly has the world at his fingertips. But in many ways he is lost and looking for direction. Initially, he can’t decide what to do with his life, then he dedicates himself to trying to make the lives of his peasants better. Stuck in a bad marriage, he then looks into Freemasonry for the answers, but his satisfaction there is only short lived. He then joins the war effort, seeing a battle first hand (but not joining in) and then convinces himself that he needs to assassinate Napoleon when he comes to invade Moscow.

It is here that Pierre gets captured by French troops and is held in a prison camp for  four weeks. Tolstoy writes:

Here and now for the first time he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow-man when he wished to talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s needs – good food, cleanliness and freedom – now that he was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is, of his way of life – now that choice was so restricted – seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s needs, whilst great freedom in the choice of occupation – such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life – is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult, and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation. (p1116)

It is only when he gets captured and his choices are severely limited does Pierre find satisfaction in his life. He doesn’t have to worry about what to do next week, or next year, because he doesnt’ have the options to do it. All be becomes worried with is having his basic needs of food, sleep, warmth and friendship, met.

I see this paralysis of choice in this generation (18-30) too. When I left university I didn’t have a clue what do do with my life and it took a number of years to figure it out. I see similar things in many school- and university-leavers today – there is such a vast array of options (which is good) that many are almost paralysed by the choice and are unable to make a good decision or fear there may have been a better one. This wasn’t so with our parents. Their life choices were much more limited. Many people stayed in the family business or line of work. if your father was a farmer, in most cases you would be a farmer. Today it is quite different with many more opportunities. This hasn’t led to the perfect freedom that was hoped, but still a sense of paralysis and in some cases, dissatisfaction.

This choice itself is not a bad thing, but the inability to live in the now and appreciate what is immediately around, as Pierre was, leaves an empty hole. People don’t want choice in everything. The New Labour government in Tony Blair promised choice for the consumer in schools, hospitals and many other things. In these, people don’t want choice because the choice leaves us bewildered. People actually simply want good schools and hospitals and then they don’t need to make a choice! Then we are more able to appreciate the basic things of life that are necessary and are all around us, and ultimately we’ll be more fulfilled.

Quote from Tolstoy on Ultimate Purpose

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower, and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A bee-keeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey. Another bee-keeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely, says that the bee gathers pollen-dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bees existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension. All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life.

Tolstoy in War and Peace (First Epilogue ch. 1)

So what is the ultimate purpose of man then? Procreation – to further our gene pool? Human Progress – to make the world better? Enjoyment of life? Or is there a higher purpose that is beyond our comprehension that might include all of these purposes and add a lot more besides?

Marriage and self-giving (Anna Karenina)

I finished reading Anna Karenina a week or so ago. It is a big classic Russian novel (translated into English) written by Leo Tolstoy in the late 19th century – pre communist Russia. The novel follows the lives and loves of two families, Levin and his wife Kitty, and Anna Karinina, her husband Alexey, and her lover, Count Vronsky. In the telling Tolstoy takes in the grand theories of his time about land ownership, farming, politics and family values.

I want to look at the issue of marriage. In the marriage service in the UK, the couple say to each other these words: “all that I am I give to you, all that I have I share with you“

They give themselves to each other. Giving has always been a part of marriage, whether it is families giving their children in marriage, or individuals giving themselves. But the point is the same, in the giving, the couple no longer belong to themselves, but to each other. What was mine becomes ours. What is good for me becomes ‘is it good for us?’. There are shared possessions, shared ideals, shared dreams, shared goals, shared happiness and sadness.

In the book, Kitty initially rebuffed Levins proposal. After a stay away watching a friend look after an elderly and difficult relative – seeing love in action – Kitty understood the ‘given-ness’ of love. Levin and Kitty marry do everything for each other, and are happy. Difficulties do come along. Levin’s brother lay sick and dying and Levin wanted to visit alone, but Kitty insisted on coming. Her support for Levin and care for his brother as he died taught them both about love and was an example of self-giving. Similarly, when a person comes along who threatens to come in between them, they discuss it and decide to ask this person to leave. The marriage was too important for anything to get in between them. The threat is removed. They self-givingly live for the benefit of each other. This is love.

By contrast Anna: near the beginning of the book, Anna is swept off her feet by Count Vronsky. She had never truly had feelings for her husband, whereas in Vronsky there was passion, excitement and what she thought was love, so she leaves Alexey for him. However, as their relationship progresses things deteriorate. Firstly it is little annoyances. Then she is shunned by society and loses her friends. All her worth now rests on Vronsky, and no man is up to that. She starts to become suspicious, accusing, and eventually destroys the relationship and herself.

In that relationship, the given-ness of marriage was not there. They fell into the mistaken thinking that love is about excitement and passion. They were in it for the passion they could get out of it. There was no given-ness, only the expectation of what they could receive from each other. When these impossible ideals were not met, the relationship imploded.

Love involves giving. Marriage is a public declaration and commitment of giving to the other.  All that I am I give to you, all that I have I share with you. In giving ourselves to the other, relationships are set on a firm foundation of a safe and stable place of love that always looks for the benefit of the other first.