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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

The meaning of life: The Ship by Antonia Honeywell

18/2/2015

7 Comments

 
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Born “at the end of the world”, Lalla has led a sheltered life, protected by her father’s wealth and her mother’s constant vigilance from the worst extremities of post-apocalyptic London. Although deprived by today’s standards, relative to the conditions of the stateless squatters in the British Museum, which she visits with her mother every day in lieu of school, she lives in luxury, with locks on the door of their flat and the prospect of tinned peaches for her birthday dinner. Her father, Michael, visits intermittently, spending most of his time procuring goods that will stock the ship he has purchased for her salvation and that of another 500 worthy souls.

On her sixteenth birthday, after Lalla’s mother is fatally wounded by a shot through the window of their flat, Michael takes his daughter to set sail for a better life. Initially, Lalla’s unhappiness is attributed to her grief at her mother’s death, exacerbated by her father’s insistence that those on board should renounce all ties to the past. Even her developing passion for football-coach Tom cannot prevent her unease at what is happening. The other passengers, selected on the basis of their generosity to others or resistance to the military regime, see Michael as a Messiah figure and are increasingly frustrated by his daughter’s apparent rejection of his largesse.

The story is a deceptively straightforward one of dystopia married with coming-of-age, that probes some deep issues concerning both timeless dilemmas of human relationships and the way in which our current world seems to be galloping towards self-destruction. It’s not difficult to imagine the overpopulation, lack of care for the environment, depleting energy supplies and financial collapse of today’s world as the forerunner of tomorrow’s “ship”, much like the mission to the planet Oasis in The Book of Strange New Things. But, although Antonia Honeywell acknowledges writing her novel out of her frustration at mankind’s negligence, it’s within the utopia that Michael has created, rather than the dystopia that he and his fellow travellers have escaped, where we find the greatest narrative tension.

The ship doesn’t provide its passengers with merely the basics but, like the Garden of Eden (apart from the lack of soil and plant life), it’s replete with everything they might require. Yet it is this very opulence that so horrifies Lalla: not only have they taken resources that would have met the needs of a much wider population for much longer but, as with any closed system, it can only stagnate (p143):

We were not creating, we were simply existing, building lives upon the flotsam and jetsam of something that had gone. We were not finding new ways to live. We were living in accordance with some ideal of a former age, which we saw in films, read of on our screens, but no longer knew or understood.

Michael’s daughter is particularly vulnerable to seeing past the idyll to the hopelessness that underlies it because she alone has not been selected for the ship, nor has she undergone extreme hardship to get there. Moreover, Michael has established the community on the ship out of his love for her. Yet, naive as she is in many ways, Lalla understands that she cannot become herself without separating from her father, an impossibility on the claustrophobic ship. Thus the doctor’s advice to her must feel dreadfully painful (p224):

Skip the bit of your life where you have to rebel and go straight to the part where you embrace what your parents have done for you. Skip the part where you throw everything away and cut straight to being happy.

One of the many pleasures of reading this novel was continually making links to other novels and blog posts I’ve enjoyed: Michael’s notion of abolishing time reminded me of a discussion with Norah Colvin; Lalla’s creation of her own museum of Station Eleven; her mother’s death of Academy Street; and living on a boat in extremis of The Surfacing. Regular readers of this blog, and followers of the Carrot Ranch, might also recognise the themes of weltschmerz and misplaced meliorism in Michael’s attempt to save his daughter from an imperfect world. The issues seem so relevant in so many ways, so that I’m only half joking when I’ve headed this post: The meaning of life.

I received my copy courtesy of the Curtis Brown book group: thanks to them, fellow members and the author herself for an interesting discussion at the end of last month. Because of this, I didn’t invite Antonia Honeywell to an annethology Q&A, but, if you’d like to delve deeper into the ideas behind the novel, I strongly recommend this interview with Rebecca Mascull (author of The Visitors).

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
7 Comments
Derbhile Dromey link
19/2/2015 12:39:30 am

I love post apocalyptic books that don't rely on mindless violence to tell their stories, and they're hard to find, so thanks for sharing this book.

Reply
Annecdotist
19/2/2015 07:08:59 am

I know what you mean. I found Goodhouse quite gruelling, although the violence was there for a reason. Actually, I didn't think I read much of that genre, but there have been a few recently and a couple of others with reviews waiting to go.

Reply
Charli Mills link
19/2/2015 02:59:26 pm

Derbhile, that's such a good point! I was thinking that same thing when Anne mentioned it's connection to themes of weltschmerz and misplaced meliorism. I love that writers are broadening their imaginations in the post-apocalyptic genre.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
19/2/2015 04:12:53 am

Reading the beginning of this post I thought there would not be much in the book for me. I think I have previously expressed a dislike for dystopian futures, which probably parallels my preference for meliorism. However I could see links to many conversations we have had in what you have written about this book, and many things that remind me of Bec and what she would say. Bec would definitely not like the opulence of the ship while many others suffer (nor would either of us but Bec's voice was strongest, I think).
I did like the quote about skipping the part of life where you have to rebel and going straight to the part where you embrace your parents. How easy would that make life? But then maybe we wouldn't make the progress we (as in humanity) do as there would be no pushing of the limits or stretching the boundaries, no questioning and questing. Maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea after all.
Thank you for linking to my posts. I appreciate the opportunity of joining in these conversations.

Reply
Annecdotist
19/2/2015 07:19:56 am

I'm sure lots of our blog conversations have fed into my reading of this novel and hence my review. I think it's lovely that you thought of Bec in relation to this; I reckoned she'd find a way of taking the ship back where it came from.
Ha, while some people do seem to get through adolescence largely unscathed, I've seen what can happen with an unsuccessful attempt to skip the rebellion. Bad news for a person's mental health.
A pleasure to link to your blog. As you know, I always appreciate your contributions.

Reply
Charli Mills link
19/2/2015 03:10:01 pm

Like Norah, I'm intrigued by this book in part because of all your connections to other books, themes and discussions we've had prior. I also find it very Lord-of-the-Flies sans the violence. Yet an interesting thought about forgoing rebellion. It give me a different perspective on Lord of the Flies. Was that book's violence a period of rebellion from what their elders had save them from? And the passage you pulled from p143 really strikes a chord with me! Sometimes I think that is what ails us in our age of "galloping towards self-destruction" -- we aren't creating new ways of living that build up the excitement of adventure and melorism, but clinging to our unprecedented luxuries as existing good enough. I"ll definitely be getting this book to read!

Reply
Annecdotist
21/2/2015 08:35:43 am

Interesting take on Lord of the Flies, Charli. I suppose they can't NOT have been affected by what had shaped the generation that had gone before. And it to me that a lot of present-day adventures are the manufactured kind and people buy each other "experiences" as presents.
And I'm sure that all the blog discussions we have feed into my reading and hence my reviews … thus I propose an example of an open system taking thinking from the environment and sending stuff out, unlike the brilliantly imagined claustrophobic ship.

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