The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

tk

I read this one last year and found it very moving - highly recommended

I really wish I had kept notes on books I read pre good reads. All I recall now is a beautifully lyrical and very Irish novel which is somehow all jumbled up with the Secret Scripture in my head. I think I would need to reread both this one and Dirt Music to definitely determine their placings.

this book introduced me to the brilliant Trevor Williams. His short stories are among my favorites.

I just finished this and also found it incredibly moving. While it is very difficult to imagine today that you could not find someone for decades, I enjoyed being transported to the time and place of the book. I found the reconciliation at Lahardane especially well done, because it was strange, slow & lovely all at the same time.

This is the kind of book that originally made me a Man Booker fan.

I'll give my apologies to all of you who love this book because I just didn't get it. I can see that it is well loved by many people, but it passed me by, I'm afraid. I found the choices made by the main characters to be rather unbelievable and that meant I spent most of the book wanting to slap them all rather than empathise with them.

Oh well, we can't all like all the same books.

There wouldn't be much to discuss if we all felt the same way about the books we read.

Now I also finished the book and found it very moving - I see how the decisions the characters make can seem rather odd (and I would certainly say that some of them are just wrong and pointless), but I enjoyed pondering why they acted as they did. Here's my review.

Neil wrote: "I found the choices made by the main characters to be rather unbelievable and that meant I spent most of the book wanting to slap them all rather than empathise with them."

Neil, I suppose that I wanted to slap them all too. But my wanting to slap them all—and William Trevor's refusal to make the choices and consequences of those choices less tragic—just made the novel even more affecting for me. Heartbreaking and sad as I found this novel, I was glad that Trevor did not take the easier route of a more redemptive and happier ending.

Meike, thank you for your excellent and helpful review. Your paragraph that started "Some decisions these characters make might seem strange at first" was especially revelatory for me.

Dan wrote: "Meike, thank you for your excellent and helpful review. Your paragraph that started "Some decisions these characters make might seem strange at first" was especially revelatory for me."

I am happy that you liked my review, Dan! Just as Neil and you, I thought slapping the protagonists seems like a sensible option, but at the same time, I found the mental patterns upon which they acted to be believable. When I read Neil's review in which he said that the character's actions do not ring true to him, I wondered why I thought that they are wrong, but not random - it was only then that I checked my notes and realized some of their motivations (but of course one might still uphold that these motivations are strange, it's just that a Catholic might be less likely to feel that way, I suppose).

(Background info: When we discussed Solar Bones, we already encountered a part of the text that was read differently by the Protestants and the Catholic, i.e., me :-) - which is funny because I am a Catholic agnostic and not very religious. I guess you can't hide from your upbringing! :-)).

This discussion is very interesting - should lack of sympathy for a character's decisions affect our judgment of the work more generally or should we not just accept that the writer wants us to accept his version of the situation?

I loved this book, but I read and reviewed it at a time when I rarely wrote more that a few lines when reviewing a book. My review.

I also read this book back in 2002 before I wrote any reviews but I do recall thinking it was so beautiful, which is really the only sensory impression I have of it. So I can't add specifically to this discussion.

In terms of the question posed by Hugh - I would answer that on a case by case basis ;) but generally I don't mind characters making bad decisions - isn't that partly what drives a story ? People doing things that I personally would not do and sitting back to see what happens ?

But as Meike says " the mental patterns upon which they acted" need to be believable. I guess that is the point at which opinions may separate, how well has the author set you up to go with this ?

For me, it is not about bad decisions but unbelievable ones. Bad decisions make a story interesting. Unbelievable ones make it, well, unbelievable.

I would also say that bad decisions are not the issue, but that what drives the characters needs to make sense - otherwise, they are just people doing random things! :-)

I do agree that it seems impossible to justify the father's actions. Is it flawed to write a plot that depends wholly on a character's perverse and indefensible behaviour? For me that was the only part that didn't make much sense, and everything that followed was beautifully realised.

Hugh wrote: "I do agree that it seems impossible to justify the father's actions. Is it flawed to write a plot that depends wholly on a character's perverse and indefensible behaviour? For me that was the only ..."

Well, as I wrote in my review, I don't think the characters' actions are perverse and indefensible, even though I would act differently! :-)

I don’t think it is necessarily flawed, but it does mean you have to accept that some people will go with it and others won’t.

Neil wrote: "I don’t think it is necessarily flawed, but it does mean you have to accept that some people will go with it and others won’t."

I agree - that's also what I meant in "message 10" ("but of course one might still uphold that these motivations are strange").

As Trudie wrote: "I guess that is the point at which opinions may separate, how well has the author set you up to go with this ?"

Neil wrote: “I don’t think it is necessarily flawed, but it does mean you have to accept that some people will go with it and others won’t.”

Yes, as almost every thread on M&G makes clear, reaching consensus on any single novel among even knowledgeable and devoted readers may be impossible.

Neil, I’m genuinely unsure of why you regard the father’s actions as unbelievable (or Hugh, why you regard the father’s actions as indefensible). Abandoning Lahardane? Abandoning Bridget and Henry? Spending a lifetime fleeing from tragedy? Please excuse me if I’m incorrectly interpreting your comments. I respect both of your views here and on other novels, and I’m genuinely interested in your responses to this.

Perhaps one sign of a fine novel (or film) is taking us so far into the plot and characters that the otherwise unbelievable (or difficult to believe) becomes believable.

Dan, for me it wasn't just the father, but also Lucy herself. And I think this is what made the whole thing unbelievable for me. I could not make sense of her staying away. Even without injury it wouldn't make much sense, but with injury it didn't seem realistic to me that she would stick it out. Did I miss something and there was another more compelling reason why she didn't seek help?

And, as a father myself, I couldn't get to grips with leaving without knowing what had happened to your child.

As Neil said - it was leaving so quickly that seems indefensible but maybe our modern perspectives are clouding our judgment.

Neil wrote: "Dan, for me it wasn't just the father, but also Lucy herself. And I think this is what made the whole thing unbelievable for me. I could not make sense of her staying away. Even without injury it w..."
I thought the point of Lucy's injury was that it made her unable to move even when she wanted to return to the house - it is a couple of years since I read the book, but didn't she have to be found and rescued?

I am worried that I have misunderstood. When I read it, I thought Lucy made a decision to stay away despite being injured, but maybe it was because of being injured. I read a library book, so I can’t check!

The main thing I remember is getting to the end thinking “that would never have happened like that”.

Ok, so I have looked at a few reviews and probably have to admit I was wrong about Lucy and her not coming back. But I still struggle with her father’s coming and goings and with the way Lucy treated her suitor.

Neil and Hugh, thanks for both of your helpful responses. Trevor's writing was so convincing to me that I found the hard-to-believe believable. Thinking about it now, perhaps the inexplicability of Heloise's, Everard's, and Lucy's decisions is what made the novel so tragic for me.