Scripting tender invitations to the reader
Bill Clegg’s journey, from penning two memoirs on drug addiction to this, his first novel, charts a riveting topography indeed. One would expect then, that ‘Did you ever have a family?’ would be a continuation in the confessional tenor that brought him acclaim, however this is a placid tome on death, written with almost priestly inconspicuousness. Each chapter concerns a character affected by the fire that destroys June Reid’s home, killing her boyfriend Luke, along with her daughter and her fiancé. This tragedy engulfs the small town which these people inhabit, drawing in an ancillary set of speakers, who are both astonished and moved by the suddenness of such catastrophe.
The most affecting narrations are provided by the central protagonist, June and her lover’s mother Lydia. June is a woman who is relatively independent of the quotidian concerns of the middle aged, she is free of re-probations for the young, for she does not lend herself to the proclivities of the aging
The most affecting narrations are provided by the central protagonist, June and her lover’s mother Lydia. June is a woman who is relatively independent of the quotidian concerns of the middle aged, she is free of re-probations for the young, for she does not lend herself to the proclivities of the aging. Even as her only child is lost to the fire, she does not bewail her loneliness in declining age, but instead mourns profoundly the loss to the world of her mesmerising daughter. Her voice in the book, does bear the grey and suspended peculiarity of the grieving, but also hints at reserves of fortitude. Her grief renders her almost insensate but also gravid with reflection. She revisits the seaside motel, which her daughter mentions as her happiest space, in her journal, and endeavours to entangle herself somehow to those energies of hope her daughter left behind: ‘ She needs to see the inside of that room, hear the wind howl and the waves crash as Lolly described the same stars and moon, breathe the same salt air. It is not her daughter she is driving to but it is as close as she will ever get. She will drive until the road runs out, and she will find that room, and she will stay’. As she holes herself in the motel for a considerable stretch, a veritable recluse, she appears to be shellacked to the memory of her child but is in fact seeking out the concourse of her bliss. There is a reverence in her intention in fostering this solitude, in the space where her daughter was most free, and a stranger to abjectness. Clegg’s portrayal of June, undertaking this pilgrimage of sorrow, acceptance and gratitude is gently poignant. Clegg adopts no manner as an author but does script tender invitations to the reader, drawing their regard to the roots of those rougher emotions.
Lydia is the mother of Luke, June’s younger boyfriend and is described at one point in the novel as a ‘small town Elizabeth Taylor’ an appellation that says much about her dark, fascinating persona. She is plagued with notoriety for her various clandestine affairs, and relegated to the status of a lone wolf. When she gives birth to a little black boy, Luke, who is the result of a short relationship, her alienation from the community is complete. Luke grows up, shouldering much of the scrutiny and derision that his mother battled, eventually gritting through and gaining a scholarship to Stanford, but ultimately ending up as a victim to fate, much like his mother. Lydia is shown to survive an abusive marriage, having her resilience tested in a world that sheathed her in contempt, rather than offering a measure of confidence and trust. She is a creature who has willed herself to the periphery, as a safeguard against anguish, appropriating a steely and intractable lonesomeness. The loss of her son, serves to heighten her seclusion, conferring on her a despair that seems impenetrable. However Clegg does grant Lydia a moment of repose at one point in the novel, when Jane and Lydia reunite after the deaths of their children, and share a moment of sweeping abandon, partaking in the kind of exhilarating remembrance that is truly redemptive. This is one of the finest instances of writing in the novel, where Clegg grants his characters the acceptance of each other’s savage dearth and impaling pain.
The best passages in the novel gleam with a kind of crepuscular yearning, however the crisis at the core, and the resultant osmosis of grief are handled with a clinical almost formal aloofness
The testimony of characters at the margins of the story offers some of the more pulchritudinous passages in the book. Silas, another addition to the score of outsiders in this tale, is a druggie prone to the most febrile, stunning hallucinations. He witnesses a dragon behind the moon at one juncture. ‘His ruby wings and infinite tail filled the sky but now they are invisible, cloaked in the blue black night. Only the snout, the devil’s eyes and the smoke pouring from its throat are visible. It’s him. The dragon’s face is fully articulated; snout high, mouth wide. The eyes do not shift their gaze from him. He looks behind the moon and begins to see the outline of its mammoth body, the silhouette of its bat-like wings etching the sky’. The inscription of this subliminal pageant provides a welcome relief from the almost hackneyed cordiality of the author’s tone, lending his prose an interlude of colour and verve. Silas is present at the crux of the fire, but is ultimately helpless in diverting the course of tragedy. The enormity of such a calamity draws Silas back into the cove of desperation and listlessness he had long inhabited. This fatalism is a core theme, in Clegg’s narrative, endowing the text with a slightly leaden quality and hinting at a paucity of decisiveness. Clegg offers his creations too meagre a berth, there is a profusion of retelling throughout; much more is expected of his authorial prowess.
The best passages in the novel gleam with a kind of crepuscular yearning, however the crisis at the core, and the resultant osmosis of grief are handled with a clinical almost formal aloofness. Clegg’s structure is episodic and shy of anxiety, one wishes for a measure of tempestuousness to underscore the placability of his tone. On the other hand, Clegg’s depiction of his gaggle of floaters, is touching and true. He leaves us with thoughts concerning both mortality and the irretrievability of destiny, for example, how does the benevolence of the creator devolve? How can such abstract solicitude be apportioned, received? For all his reticence, Clegg’s words have the power of honest lament, posing lyrical questions and offering no certainties.
Did You Ever Have A Family
Written by: Bill Clegg
Published by: Scout
Available at Readings
Pages: 304; Price: $26
