IN her fourth novel, Unexploded, Alison Macleod delves into 1940 Brighton, England, during the World War II. It is a town grippingly awaiting news of war breaking out and the novel tells a tale of shifting loyalties, troubled relationships and new bridges formed.
Macleod takes us deep into the psyche of the three characters she carves out and the events that leave their lives upended. She creates scenarios that are not necessarily urgent but succeed in letting her build psychological profiles of her various characters — the reader thus begins to understand them completely.
The plot of the novel, however, is a tad clichéd, but Macleod’s character study is extensive and remarkable. Evelyn is married to Geoffrey, with a son, but is dissatisfied and fearful, looking for more from her life. From the very beginning we are taken into her head where her restlessness and vulnerability is palpable to the reader. As the war threatens to wash into Brighton, a little seaside town in the summer of 1940, both begin to reevaluate the parameters of their entire relationship, from the point that they met until the present day, both wanting some sort of emancipation from the impending situation. Geoffrey overreacts to the threat of war, while Evelyn delves into helping out for wartime efforts in an attempt to quiet the gnarling restlessness and anxiety inside her head: “Fear was exhausting, but nothing tired a body like hope.”
First by detaching herself from her wifely self and then from her maternal duties as she begins to neglect her son, Evelyn’s journey of finding herself again begins. Geoffrey, alongside, comes to a realisation that he has in fact “outgrown her, against his every expectation” and “in a way that they both seemed powerless to stop or explain.”
Evelyn’s husband is ironically the superintendent of the internment camp where she meets and falls in love with Otto a “degenerate” German-Jewish painter and prisoner. Evelyn takes on a role to assist at the camp and read to those imprisoned or undergoing medical treatment, specifically turning to Virginia Woolf throughout.
Literary references, or her retreat into literature, offer her and her charitable cause much respite as she makes it a beacon of survival to turn to in anticipation of Geoffrey leaving — the town running on the rumour purportedly that Hitler will be making Brighton his English mainstay. Alternately, Macleod also employs Woolf’s prose to fill gaps in the narrative, making it all the more impactful. For example, Evelyn, on realising Otto’s sincerity, reads out Woolf’s words at the close of a chapter, “the birds that had sung erratically and spasmodically in the dawn on that tree, on that bush, now sang together in chorus, shrill and sharp; now together, as if conscious of companionship.”
Macleod does not let the reader forget that the setting is wartime, ensuring all plot development unfailingly revolves around it. The novel’s closely knitted prose demands more than a cursory look, and therefore draws one in interminably. Her descriptive details are astounding and from a simple barricaded oyster shack to the description of the beach one does not leave the sleepy seaside town for a moment: “On the pier, the rides stood quiet. Only a few defiant anglers tried their luck from the end of the deck. In the tide, mines bobbed at the surface, horned and deadly. Every fishing boat had vanished, as if by some ill-fated sleight of hand.”
The prose is light and poetic, casting a dream-like spell over the novel, even when describing dark and intense situations. For example, when Geoffrey is being apprised of wartime torture of children, Macleod employs only a single line to convey the thought. This succinct technique also adds necessary impact when needed.
The meticulous and painstakingly researched novel comprises details ardently describing the setting — and in fact, it is the setting along with her unique prose that sets the novel apart from other wartime narratives or those about complex relationships.
Her writing therefore maintains a carefully drawn out balance between psychology and poetry, weaving them finely together to tell an intense tale of a family’s travails where three characters remain painful victims of their own shortcomings. Geoffrey, his jealousy and possessiveness, Evelyn, her naiveté and existence in a world of her own, escaping into literature and her private thoughts when life gets too much to take, and Otto, resigning far too easily to his alleged fate.
The title, “unexploded,” has been carefully chosen — referring to all that did not emerge and appear, and that which did not sustain. It further points to the false sense of urgency created in the characters’ lives, leading to their fates. For example, Otto’s “contraband” consists mainly of art supplies that Geoffrey falsely uses to call him a “conman”. Evelyn’s discovery of these facts redeem Otto and incarcerate Geoffrey indefinitely in her mind.
There is no clear denouement as such. In fact, the novel proceeds quite predictably till the end, leaving one to admire Macleod’s prowess in prose, insight into the human condition and a general telling of events as they unfold against a unique setting. A fresh read for those looking for a crafty piece of writing, or those who are fans of Macleod in general.
Unexploded
(Novel)
By Alison Macleod
Hamish Hamilton, UK
ISBN 978-0141016078
352pp.
