It has been years since I last read a book in a day.
I thought that the voracious page after page consumption of a novel was a pleasure that you reluctantly said goodbye to when life got serious and camomile tea became the nightcap of choice.
‘Talking to the Dead’ proved me wrong. I had forgotten what an outstanding author Helen Dunmore is. The elastic band taut tension and the palpable desire shoots right off the page and into the reader; it pulses through the language and the actions and the characters, so that you can’t resist the suspense and you can’t stop turning the pages and you tumble, word over word over word –
It’s a bit of a rollercoaster. It’s raw escapism. I’m not even totally sure what happened, but I most definitely enjoyed the ride – even though the subject’s bleak and the characters screwed with my mind.
Some books are all about the narrative; others, about the people; less, about the language and the words; and, a rare few, a combination of all the above. From what I have read of Dunmore, her works fall into the latter: the story’s strong; the literary voice, distinct; and, the characters are real.
You can probably read her fiction through any – or all – of the above lenses, but it’s the 3D characters that really get me; it’s the intimate invitation into the lives of other people that is so riveting. There is nothing more fascinating than a complex and perplexing character; nothing more gripping than peeling back the onion layers and tracking back through the lives of people who are totally unknown – yet, at times, eerily familiar – to ourselves.
Nina may be a uncertain narrator with a slightly bizarre sexual appetite and a totally warped relationship with her sister; but, she also gives some powerful insights into sibling rivalry and she gets you thinking about memory and perception and all those important things.
Plus, anyone that can come up with phrases like “owl’s fucking the wind” is bound to grab your attention –
If you’re not already totally hooked in.
Helen Dunmore may have started me thinking about sisterly relations and mentally unhinged women and the complexities of human relationships – but she left me remembering that nothing beats a good book – and some pleasures don’t disappear with age.
I need to escape a little more often.
Tags: reading the world
