I was a little disturbed by this novel, not so much in respect of the unsettling subject matter, but in the way that subject was handled. I’ve wondered how much of that is me, and how much the writer, and have come to the unbiased or sitting-on-the-fence conclusion (depending on the way you choose to look at it) that it’s a bit of both. It raises a question I’ve considered before on Annecdotal, especially in my review of Jemma Wayne’s After Before, as to whether a novel is weakened by drawing parallels between extreme and milder transgressions or acts of injustice. It also forces me to confront the limits of my openness as a reader to alternative treatments of controversial issues.
Bernadine Bishop, who died in 2013, has an interesting history: the youngest witness in the Lady Chatterley trial, she published two novels in her twenties, taught for ten years in a London comprehensive, before retraining as a psychotherapist. On retirement in 2010, she returned to writing fiction, with her first later novel, Unexpected Lessons in Love, which drew on her experience as a mother undergoing cancer treatment, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award in 2013. If you’ve followed my series on fictional therapists, you’ll appreciate that I was intrigued when I read that Hidden Knowledge stems from her experience as a therapist.
Bernadine Bishop, who died in 2013, has an interesting history: the youngest witness in the Lady Chatterley trial, she published two novels in her twenties, taught for ten years in a London comprehensive, before retraining as a psychotherapist. On retirement in 2010, she returned to writing fiction, with her first later novel, Unexpected Lessons in Love, which drew on her experience as a mother undergoing cancer treatment, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award in 2013. If you’ve followed my series on fictional therapists, you’ll appreciate that I was intrigued when I read that Hidden Knowledge stems from her experience as a therapist.
In the space of twenty-four hours, Romola Tree, a middle-aged English teacher, is given painful news about each of her brothers: the elder, successful novelist Hereward, her soulmate since childhood, lies in a coma having suffered a stroke during heart bypass surgery; the younger, Roger, a Catholic priest, seeks refuge in her house while awaiting trial for the sexual abuse of a teenage boy several years before. Meanwhile, Betty Winterborne struggles with loneliness on the first anniversary of her husband’s death. Her daughter, Julia, a successful dermatologist desperate for a baby, befriends the gay carpenter she’s commissioned to fit some much-needed shelving in her flat. For some reason best known to himself – and perhaps his therapist – Tony feels compelled to tell her (and, off the page, several others) of his childhood abuse by Roger Tree. While Julia doesn’t disclose this to her mother, when Betty reads in the newspaper that Father Tree has been charged, she remembers how, twenty years before, the priest attempted and failed to rescue her son, Mark, from drowning. Each of these characters has some “hidden knowledge”, something they have done or thought for which they feel guilty, ashamed or merely uncomfortable. The novel addresses the difference between the things we keep private from others and what we won’t admit, even to ourselves.
The voice is light and mildly humorous, if perhaps a little old-fashioned, heavy on dialogue and reminiscent of the work of Barbara Pym. This was perfect for portraying the first-world dilemmas of a woman like Julia (p70):
The trouble with being single, she thought she made up her face in front of the mirror, was that you had to have so much social life. She drove to her dinner-party, became fairly engaged in some of the conversation, did not meet a possible man, and drove home, sober.
but felt rather light for the serious issue of child abuse. There is an extremely poignant section where, via an omniscient narrator, we see how the priest was implicated in Mark’s death. But, otherwise, the author gives Roger an easy time: while he fears the bullying he might expect in prison, and is grateful that his comatose brother will never learn of his offence, his sister and brother’s partner, while condemning the act itself, display none of the repulsion one might expect.
Roger, like both Julia and Tony, has had experience of therapy, but unfortunately this occurs off the page. I thought a therapist as character might have enabled a deeper, and more satisfying, exploration of clerical abuse and our reactions to it. Just as, in the late 1950s, Julia’s decision to have a child without a partner would have been so controversial as to require an entire novel, the sexual abuse of minors by those in positions of authority is too heavy an issue not to be the central subject of a contemporary novel in which it appears. The best example of this I’ve come across to date is John Boyne’s A History of Loneliness.
That aside, the loneliness of a middle-aged widow, in the character of Betty, is beautifully explored. Initially, Betty appears much older than her sixty years as she begins to recognise that filling her days with activities is no cure for loneliness. Without benefit of a therapist other than the author, she has a quiet dignity similar to that of Tess Lohan in Academy Street in her gradual discovery of the pleasures of her single state. The true heroine of the novel, she also faces up to the reality of her son’s death, so that I thought it somewhat harsh of Bernadine Bishop to allow her daughter and future grandchild to invade her privacy in the later chapters. But perhaps Betty has only herself to blame for not telling Julia her true feelings?
Thanks to Sceptre books for my review copy.
The voice is light and mildly humorous, if perhaps a little old-fashioned, heavy on dialogue and reminiscent of the work of Barbara Pym. This was perfect for portraying the first-world dilemmas of a woman like Julia (p70):
The trouble with being single, she thought she made up her face in front of the mirror, was that you had to have so much social life. She drove to her dinner-party, became fairly engaged in some of the conversation, did not meet a possible man, and drove home, sober.
but felt rather light for the serious issue of child abuse. There is an extremely poignant section where, via an omniscient narrator, we see how the priest was implicated in Mark’s death. But, otherwise, the author gives Roger an easy time: while he fears the bullying he might expect in prison, and is grateful that his comatose brother will never learn of his offence, his sister and brother’s partner, while condemning the act itself, display none of the repulsion one might expect.
Roger, like both Julia and Tony, has had experience of therapy, but unfortunately this occurs off the page. I thought a therapist as character might have enabled a deeper, and more satisfying, exploration of clerical abuse and our reactions to it. Just as, in the late 1950s, Julia’s decision to have a child without a partner would have been so controversial as to require an entire novel, the sexual abuse of minors by those in positions of authority is too heavy an issue not to be the central subject of a contemporary novel in which it appears. The best example of this I’ve come across to date is John Boyne’s A History of Loneliness.
That aside, the loneliness of a middle-aged widow, in the character of Betty, is beautifully explored. Initially, Betty appears much older than her sixty years as she begins to recognise that filling her days with activities is no cure for loneliness. Without benefit of a therapist other than the author, she has a quiet dignity similar to that of Tess Lohan in Academy Street in her gradual discovery of the pleasures of her single state. The true heroine of the novel, she also faces up to the reality of her son’s death, so that I thought it somewhat harsh of Bernadine Bishop to allow her daughter and future grandchild to invade her privacy in the later chapters. But perhaps Betty has only herself to blame for not telling Julia her true feelings?
Thanks to Sceptre books for my review copy.
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