THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE

TITLE: THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE

AUTHOR: BRIAN MOORE

Pages: 223

Date: 28/05/2013

Grade: 3

Details: Book Club read for Dialogues

            Through Literature

Own

 

The blurb:

“The lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is the story of a respectable and religious piano teacher who has moved into a boarding-house in Belfast. Miss Hearne, like the house, has known better days. The landlady, her monstrous son and the other tenants make her nervous, but the landlady’s brother, Mr. Madden, seems attractive, possibly a suitable husband. Judith thinks he owns a hotel in New York, but in reality he is close to penniless and he has a drink problem. So does Judith. As her emotional and social life begins to fall apart, she also loses her grip on the faith that has sustained her. At last she does something shameful in a church.

Judith is an intensely sad heroine, but the way she is portrayed by Brian Moore is vibrant with life and dark comedy.”

A story without a single sympathetic, relatable or pleasant character in it is hard to like, and I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy this book very much. This is the second time I read this book and I really hoped that my dislike of it, the first time around, was due to me still being fairly unfamiliar with life in Ireland. Alas, it turned out that after another 10+ years in Ireland I don’t like this book any better than I did back then.

On the plus side I have to admit that this is a well written story. Brian Moore knows how to put a story together and build it up to its inevitable climax in a convincing and compelling way. For me to end up disliking the book and the characters in it as much as I did in this case both the story and people in it have to be written in a convincing manner.

My problem is that this story was compelling in the same way an accident or natural disaster can be hard to look away from; you can’t stop staring but feel kind of disgusted with yourself for not turning away. I mean, it is not unusual for me to come across a character I would love to slap around for a while. What is unusual is to read a book in which none of the characters appear to have any redeeming qualities. This book appears to be a study in human pettiness, determined to show-up the middle classes in Belfast about 50 years ago as small-minded, selfish and lacking in most forms of human decency. It really doesn’t matter which of the characters you look at; from Judith herself to her landlady, the landlady’s horrid son, the landlady’s brother returned from America and even the parish priest, everybody seemed to be thinking only of themselves, their own interest and the image they would like to uphold. It painted a very sad picture.  Although there were characters who, through their actions, appeared to show some human kindness near the end of the book you’d have to wonder if that was the result of their goodness or just to silence their guilty conscience.

Regardless of whether or not this book paints a faithful picture of Belfast in the 1950’s I can’t find many redeeming qualities in it, least of all the dark humour described in the blurb. And it is safe to say that I won’t be reading this book a third time, not for any reason or occasion.

THE PANOPTICON

TITLE: THE PANOPTICON

AUTHOR: JENNI FAGAN

Pages: 324

Date: 20/04/2013

Grade: 5-

Details: Received from Windmill Books

            Through Nudge

Own

Anais Hendricks is only fifteen years old when she finds herself in the back of a police car on her way to the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders. She can’t remember how the blood got on her school uniform but she is almost certain that she didn’t beat a police woman into a coma, as she has been accused of doing.

To say Anais’ life hasn’t been easy would be the ultimate understatement. She has never known her mother or her father and has been in care for as long as she can remember. Moved from one bad situation to the next she is, by the age of fifteen, an expert when it comes to sex and drugs; or maybe not so much an expert as a heavy user. Anais’ past is bleak enough to break the strongest person, her present is scary and her future really doesn’t hold any positive prospects, yet Anais manages to hang on to hope. In order not to succumb to desperation Anais has created her own personal history as well as her own vision of what her future will look like.

The Panopticon is a sort of last-chance-saloon for youngsters who can’t be trusted to live anywhere else. Built in such a way that the residents can never have privacy; the place seems to confirm all of Anais’ suspicions about the world. She “knows” she is part of an experiment and that “they” are constantly watching her; every minute of every day “the experiment” is observing her, waiting for her to destroy herself. At the same time, the Panopticon is also the place where Anais finds friends, people to care about, who care about her. Of course, caring about people also means that whatever happens to them suddenly starts to matter to you. For Anais the Panopticon is a last chance before they lock her up until she is 18 and life seems determined to make sure she’ll fail this last opportunity.

This story is set in Scotland, and the use of certain Scottish expressions reminds the reader of that. I firmly believe though that Anais’ story could have been set anywhere. Anybody, regardless of where they live in this world, will have seen and heard the stories about kids who fall between the cracks in the system. This is the story of one of them; a story that will break your heart and make you smile. But most of all, a story that needs telling.

It is not always easy to establish what is real and what is imagination in this book. The lines are blurred. Anais’ use of drugs and alcohol makes her an unreliable narrator and yet the way in which she tells her story makes it very easy to believe everything she shares with the reader. I found myself admiring her for the simple fact that she is still alive, loving her for her hopes, dreams and plans and despairing about every single mistake she makes. At times it is almost impossible to believe that this character is only fifteen. So much that should never happen to anybody has already happened to her at this young age, that it seems a miracle that she is still alive to tell the tale. And yet, despite everything life has thrown at her, Anais continues to believe that a better future is possible for her. Life and “the experiment” may be out to get her; they’ll have to catch her first.

On the surface this is a very bleak story. It is very hard to read about Anais and the other youngsters in the Panopticon and not have your heart break time and again. Anais’ voice is so vibrant and real that it is almost too easy to picture her real-life equivalent trying to survive somewhere in the world. And yet, this book is as warm as it is bone-chilling. The youngsters in the institution form a family of their own; they look after each other, share what they have, feel each others pain and enjoy each other’s triumphs. In all their dysfunction they are a close-knit and loyal group of friends.

This is a very realistic book, at times painfully so. And that is hardly surprising, considering that Jenni Fagan spent her own youth in the care system. She clearly knows what she’s writing about and gives us a vivid and balanced picture of a life lived outside society’s perceived norm. So there are no magical happy-endings or sudden changes in fortune. What we do get is a spirited, brave and fragile teenager trying to survive against the odds; a girl who appears to be only one step away from destruction and yet refuses to give up on her dreams. This amazing book manages to be both a condemnation of all that is wrong in our society and the care system in particular, and a wonderful testament to a person’s will to live a better life, all at the same time. It is no surprise that Jenni Fagan was included in Granta’s list of twenty most promising British authors under the age of 40. If she can bring her clear voice and wonderful storytelling skills to future books, Jenni Fagan is one writer we will be hearing a lot more about in years to come.