TD 1
PRINT Aisling Arundel Hannah Clarkson The plot is
lathered in bubbling, perilous doom. Where I End Sophie White [Tramp Press] Cells: Memories for My Mother Gavin McCrea [Scribe Books] Sophie White’s new novel Where I End offers a raw portrayal of humanity, and is reminiscent of her recent essay collection, Corpsing: My Body and Other Horror Shows. In White’s literary debut, she interweaves unthinkable events and thoughts on a mystical Irish-speaking island through teenager Aoileann’s eyes. The plot is lathered in bubbling, perilous doom as we follow Aoileann’s struggle to care for her bedridden mother with her grandmother Móraí. From birth, Aoileann has endured complete ostracization from the taciturn islanders – the reasons why are initially unknown. Consequently, White harnesses and controls us with her wickedly tense narrative as the thirst for truth intensifies. The opening chapters of the novel are theatrical in setting as Aoileann is trapped in a dreadfully monotonous routine at home, caring for her mother in stark isolation. Their house’s location on a dreary cliff edge is symbolic of their placement within the small island community. White’s style infuses Hitchcockian suspense in its pace of the mundane. The psychological impact of this repetitive seclusion and confinement conjures a sheer trepidation of what will unfold. Described as ‘it’ or ‘bed-thing’, Aoileann expresses unreserved details of caring for her decaying mother during her stagnant existence; ‘Her pale tongue is dusty. Breathing is slow. It’s loud but perhaps it only seems so because of her stillness.’ Aoileann’s mounting frustration about her mysterious and disturbing state effortlessly sculpts a tantalising narrative. White lures her readers further through cryptic droplets of information as she pours them into her potion of words. Laced with personification, we are taunted by the ‘wheezing wall’ and ‘murderous ocean’; she brings everything to life with impeccably imaginative language. The trickling of eerie descriptions continues to amplify the building tension in Aoileann’s household. Subtly, White 54 taps into Irish mysticism through the radical superstition that exists amongst the islanders as they regard Aoileann as a ‘cursed thing’. It is a perception that is indeed true; a familiar, unexplainable superstition inherent in Irish people. But where do these peculiar beliefs stem from? Aoileann is equally perplexed behind her ‘silent’ walls. The plot shifts dramatically once the artist Rachel arrives on the island, catalysing Aoileann’s rebellion. After they get to know one another, Aoileann is overwhelmed by the simple attentiveness that she was drastically deprived of her whole life. The juxtaposition of Rachel with her mother unleashes a monstrous hunger for one of the most instinctual human needs: a mother’s love. Aoileann begins to obsessively channel her love into Rachel and, in a Freudian manner, forbidden voyeurism and arousal ensues. The maternal craving burgeons into infatuation as an imminent climax on the island looms. Each chapter draws closer to the revelation of Aoileann’s family history, as the terror of human complexity heightens simultaneously. The imagery of the rope and hook are thematically symbolic as White pulls us through the labyrinth of uncovering Aoileann’s truth. White’s spectral novel will awaken the darkness in everyone as she unmasks how “the real horror is to be found in people”. AA Gavin has returned home to spend quarantine with his eighty-year-old mother in her small south Dublin flat. Hoping to use the time to write a novel, he finds himself writing about her instead. Back in the cells of childhood rooms, he comes up against the trials and limitations of family relationships, and the pains and joys of remembering. He writes with candid humour of growing up in a place he never felt he belonged; of illness both physical and mental – his brother’s, his father’s, his own – of what it means to be a writer; and most of all, of his relationship with his mother, and all the intimacy and resentment this entails. She, in turn, in the early stages of dementia, fights to make her voice heard through Gavin’s prose, as he tells her story through his own. Raw, courageous and heartfelt, this memoir doesn’t shy away from the topics that are hard to approach, addressing the dark corners of life, as well as its spotlit highs: drug addition, love, grief, loss, gender roles and sexuality. This is a brutal, tender book, and one which merits reading with all the same attention and care with which it is written. From within the walls of quarantine cells, there is in this memoir a glimmer of hope, a reminder not to forget those things – those people – who matter most to us. HC