‘Like’ written by Ali Smith took much longer than the time it
normally takes for me to finish reading a book. The writing is very good but it
is a little heavy going particularly when I cannot relate to the characters though the theme is familiar in
that it is about two childhood friends whose stories are told in two separate
parts of the book. The book begins
with describing Amy Shone , a single mother with a seven year old
daughter, Kate Shone and they live a nomadic life. Amy seems to have lost her
ability to read and write and from reading the second part of the story told
through Ashling McCarthy as she reminisces, we know that Amy has a glamour past
and was a Cambridge scholar in her young days. The story leaves many questions unanswered but the author’s
prose is fabulous. Smith writes,
‘Amy
Shone. A surname like that will haunt your life. Everything becomes something
you did better then, before, in the shining days. But not if you don’t let it
.’
‘Snow is
a good idea. Snow will cover everything, that’s its grace. Lie quietly
everywhere, quieten everything, cool everything to a standstill, blow into the
barky crevices of trees, fill the spaces between the light low blades of the
grasses, bend and hold them down, settle without question over anything cold
enough left in the open. Good dry snow will fall without sound and leave
everything white. Up here it can cling for days to the sides of houses and
along the tops of walls and fences, depending on the direction of the wind.’
After reading Smith’s debut novel, I
resumed reading The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. It was a light read and the characters
are endearing. Then I moved on to reading Amstersdam
by Ian
McEwan, the book
that won the Booker Prize for him in 1998.
Amsterdam
is about two
friends whose friendship was tested at the time when they should really need
each other. Both of them had high regards for their own aptitudes and commitments in the work they had respectively made a
career in. Vernon Halliday was a newspaper editor while Clive Linley was a
musician. Both Clive and Vernon were two old friends who shared some similar attributes and common interests, one of which was that their former love, Molly Lane had died after
losing her mental faculty and they felt that the feisty girl they once had an intimate
relationship with would have
killed herself rather than ended up perishing in that manner.
“ Brain –dead and in George’s clutches,” Clive said.
After witnessing the unceremonious
death of their former lover, Clive and Vernon became weary of their own
deteriorating health and made a pact between themselves that they would assist
one another in their euthanasia should they suffer the same fate as Molly. That raises the morality issues about
euthanasia that is made legal in Amsterdam. Both friends somehow turned to hating each other when they could not agree on some other
morality questions. What happened was that Vernon had been given some pictures
by Molly’s husband, George Lane.
Those pictures were taken by Molly of one Julian Garmony, the foreign secretary who was about to
challenge the prime minister at the next election. Julian happened to be one of Molly’s lovers too. These pictures might just ruin Julian Garmony’s chances of winning at
the next election. Vernon planned to publish them although Clive had objected
strongly as he had felt that it was definitely not right for Vernon to violate
the private arrangement between Garmony and Molly. Clive argued that printing
these pictures would simply carry out what George wanted and it was an act of
betrayal for Molly. After the row, Clive regretted.
‘Perhaps
he had been too hard on Vernon,who was only trying to save his newspaper and
protect the country from Garmony’s harsh policies. He would telephone Vernon
this evening. Their friendship was too important to be lost to one isolated
dispute. They could surely agree to differ and continue to be friends.’
It also dawned on Clive that there had always been some kind of
imbalance between him and Vernon.
‘Put
most crudely, what did he, Clive, really derive from this friendship? He had
given, but what had he ever received? What bound them? They had Molly in
common, there were the accumulated years and the habits of friendship, but
there was really nothing at its centre, nothing for Clive. A generous
explanation for the imbalance might have evoked Vernon’s passivity and self
–absorption. Now, after last night, Clive was inclined to see these as merely
elements of a larger fact – Vernon’s lack of principle.’
Both friends are absolutely
egocentric and petty. Although I do not find the plot convincing and the
characters likeable, the writing is superb and the description of the
characters credible as some men can be self- absorbed,vindictive and calculative and that such men have a tendency to put the blame of
their failures on others and are inclined to adopt
a no holds barred approach when they are vengeful. Amsterdam poses the reality question about
friendships between two long time friends and the story leaves you cold and feeling bleak
about how reliable friends can be.
.
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