Troubles - JG Farrell
The Booker prize given to the 1970 novel Troubles, by J.G. Farrell, was not given in the year it was published, but was retroactively awarded much later, due to a change in the Booker judging system meaning that one year was neglected.
I wonder if
the much later award has anything to do with the book chosen, which feels like
a more contemporary selection than I had anticipated. Farrell uses language
beautifully and is able to express layers of meaning even in straightforward
description. An early passage reads:
"Although he was quite sure that he had never actually proposed to Angela during the few days of their acquaintance, it was beyond doubt that they were engaged: a certainty fostered by the fact that from the very beginning she had signed her letters 'Your loving fiancée, Angela'. This had surprised him at first. But, with the odour of death drifting into the dug-out in which he scratched out his replies by the light of a candle, it would have been trivial and discourteous beyond words to split hairs about such purely social distinctions." (page 12)
Following his time on the battlefields of World War One, Major Brendan Archer, finding himself engaged (as in the above passage) to Angela Spencer, travels to the Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough, Ireland, to try and excuse himself from the commitment. Angela and her father run the hotel, which has fallen into a state of disrepair, and the Major soon finds himself entangled in its affairs despite his best intentions.
The time
period of Troubles is given away by
its title; the “Irish Troubles” begin to unfold during the course of the book,
with the country giving way gradually from order to chaos. Farrell reflects
this twofold: firstly, the hotel itself is also falling into chaos, and secondly,
the storyline and characters involved also do the same as the book continues.
By the end of the novel, elements of the story – which is firmly grounded in
reality to begin with – have become almost surreal (the hotel becomes ridiculously
over run with cats, for example), and plot points that seemed set in stone have
gone in completely new directions. This “breaking down” of the plot is
enjoyable from a thematic point of view, even while it does make the story
progressively stranger to follow along with.
Yet,
despite its eccentricities, and some of the continuing Booker sordid elements, Troubles is one of the highlights of my
Bookerworm challenge thus far.
Completed 15 October 2017.
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