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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

Hidden gems: The Sacred Combe by Thomas Maloney

18/5/2016

10 Comments

 
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When she was about six or seven, my youngest niece was obsessed with old books. Too young to articulate what drew her to them, she would spend a quiet hour when she came to visit turning the pages of an antique volume of poetry. Thinking she might prefer something more suited to her reading age and, admittedly, anxious to preserve my small collection of old books, I offered her a modern anthology of the work of Hilaire Belloc, which she vehemently rejected. Ten years on, I wonder if she’d be the ideal reader of Thomas Maloney’s debut novel, which I received courtesy of the publisher, Scribe.
Aged only twenty-five, Samuel Browne is already jaded with life. His wife has left him and his job as a London banker brings him no joy. Coming across an advert for a “diligent volunteer to carry out two months’ painstaking archival work for private library” (p16) within an antique copy of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he offers his services. Early in the New Year, he travels deep into the English countryside to begin scouring the volumes of the ancient (1772) library of a remote manor house in search of a missing letter.

Like the stereotypical librarian, Sam is a quiet character, somewhat passive in his failure to fight for his former wife. He seems more interested in exploring the lives of others than living his own. Through him, we discover the loves and losses of the family that has occupied the hall for over two centuries. With Sam’s unworldliness and the Gothic style of the novel reminiscent of the Brontës, including addressing the reader directly, it’s easy to similarly get lost in the past and overlook the novel’s contemporary setting.

I approached The Sacred Combe as an example of the country house novel. As outlined by Blake Morrison, these tend to deal with Englishness (although the setting is kept secret, I placed it as in one of the prettier parts of the Lake District – in contrast to the small coastal towns just beyond its border – because of the red squirrels which have disappeared from most of the rest of the country); illicit sex (only in fantasy in the contemporary relationships, but present in the history); rightful ownership (here in the question of who will inherit the hall when the current owner dies); poetry (here along with the question of whether the poet was in fact a plagiarist); shifting patterns of wealth (Sam, the banker, can easily afford to jack in his job, while the Comberbache family will struggle to pay inheritance tax); ghost stories (despite Sam’s background as a hard scientist, there’s a strong spiritual element to this novel, with characters from the past casting a strong shadow); upstairs/downstairs (well, I certainly puzzled over the position of Miss Snyder who moves between socialising with the gentry and serving them at table). But the overriding theme is completely consistent with Blake Morrison’s observation that:

What the contemporary novelist finds in country houses isn't greatness but loss, failure and everyday human struggle, writ large.

But, as the story unfolded, I realised that this isn’t the way the author hopes we’ll read it. Although the winter landscape is beautifully captured, and we’re shown the physical toll of Sam’s work (p68):

I had advanced so far down the enormous bookcase that my back began to ache from stooping, so I fetched a cushion from the window seat and continued the search on my knees. These have never been my strongest point, and they creaked audibly as I shifted my weight … Moreover, the solitary and silent nature of the work made me keenly aware of my own body: every ache, every sensation of cold or stiffness, every creak of my suspiciously creaky young bones, gnawed insistently at my consciousness

it’s very much a novel of ideas. Sam, after all, is a philosopher as well as a physicist, but it’s in the concluding chapters, with an underlined refusal to deliver the expected resolution, that this is writ large.

I wondered if there was an intentional parallel process between Sam’s search through the library for a lost letter and the reader’s search for something not quite known in books. Sam turns the pages of thousands of books, but he doesn’t read them; instead, he finds the stories in conversations with his host and other visitors to the house (and I sometimes found the thread difficult to follow because of this distancing and the recycling of names across the generations). In made me question, not just what I do and don’t like a novel but my unstated assumptions that it will be about character at some level and, if not about characters as individuals, about people as a collective in the social structures we humans create (for example, as in Lingua Franca which I reviewed earlier this month).

The Sacred Combe is not about character; that’s not to say that the people are poorly drawn, but that the questions we might have about them (such as why Sam’s wife left him and why, indeed, they married so young) aren’t addressed. Other things are, such as the fictionalisation of the life of the poet Thomas Chatterton, to whose memory Thomas Maloney dedicates the novel, but I’m left with an uncomfortable feeling of having missed the message of the symbols threaded through the text. If you like modern Gothic with a rudderless outsider as narrator, you might also enjoy After Me Comes The Flood.
As sometimes happens, I was about to post this when the call came in for a new 99-word flash. If you click on the image, you’ll see why I had to hold back till I’d composed my story. Not only has Charli granted my wish for a squirrel prompt, she’s written a beautiful account of squirrelling around in graveyards to uncover forgotten histories, which tunes perfectly with Sam’s quest in The Sacred Combe. My response might be slightly twee, but I enjoyed meeting the challenge.
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Lion’s teeth and acorns

Perched on a high branch, I watched the humans kneeling on the lawn. They might have been paying homage but for the daggers they thrust into the soil. Extracting those sunny flowers we call lion’s teeth, with their long tapering roots. I knew humans ate plants, but these were set aside to wither away.

I flicked my tail, astonished, as they tugged at tiny saplings, shiny nuts entangled in their roots. Sadness overcame me, a vision of paws ploughing through snow. My babes would have survived if I’d remembered where I’d buried our winter stores.

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.
10 Comments
Norah Colvin link
19/5/2016 12:04:47 pm

Ha! You've already done your flash and I'm yet to think about mine. I love your little story from the squirrel's point of view. So sad the memory fails even in the squirrel community, and tragic that lives were lost as a result.
I hadn't heard of flowers called Lion's Teeth and had to look them up. Doh! The common dandelion. I should have thought!
The Sacred Combe does sound rather fascinating, and I'd be interested to know if it would appeal to your niece. I wonder if she is able to now verbalise what appealed to her about the old book.
I wasn't sure about Sam's character. I thought you'd said he was a banker, and I can understand his enjoyment of being methodical in the way demanded by the task; but later you said physicist. Or have I misunderstood? It doesn't really matter as I am unlikely to read it, but wish I was more inclined to do so. I do enjoy a little puzzlement from time to time.

Reply
Annecdotist
19/5/2016 05:28:05 pm

Yeah, I'm completely confused with the days of the week in posting my flash the day before I'm used to being prompted – it's a bit like travelling backwards in time. I imagine squirrels don't have much of a memory, at least on the evidence of the saplings that spring up from their buried nuts around our garden. Apologies for confusing you about the dandelion.
With your interest in philosophy, The Sacred Combe might be one for you. If it weren't for the time factor! But apologies for that confusion, I didn't make it sufficiently clear that he worked as a banker, or rather in the field of banking, as we didn't see him in action at work, but his degree is in physics and philosophy.

Reply
Pat Cummings link
19/5/2016 09:44:15 pm

I immediately went to find this book on Amazon. Unfortunately, The Sacred Combe is only available in hardcover and audible format, no Kindle.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/5/2016 05:32:48 pm

Sorry about that, Pat, but I don’t know if this is any good which I came across on Twitter
https://thepigeonhole.com/books/the-sacred-combe
I can’t find you there so I’ll put this link on your blog also.

Reply
Irene Waters link
20/5/2016 09:14:56 am

I really enjoyed your flash from the squirrel's P.O.V. although I found it sad that due to the human's action a memory had to be formed but it didn't and so the babes died.
I like old books for the history they carry with them.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/5/2016 05:30:22 pm

Thanks, Irene, but I didn’t think the humans were deliberately digging up the nuts per se, but to stop the burgeoning trees that had sprouted from them.

Reply
geoffrey le pard link
20/5/2016 04:50:36 pm

the book sounds intriguing; the search through books and yet the story is elsewhere is a compelling idea. And the squirrel eye view poignant.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/5/2016 05:38:27 pm

Thanks, Geoff – alas the poor squirrel, although I did think the story was a bit like Hallmark card.

Reply
Charli Mills link
20/5/2016 05:29:28 pm

The squirrel's perspective takes on a bit of Gothic horror! Great flash, Anne! I'm not sure what I think of a search in a novel that doesn't necessarily reveal some of the human questions, though there may be some hidden code of symbols from the library books. An interest idea.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/5/2016 05:40:04 pm

Yeah, I really wanted to know more about Sam, but never mind. When it becomes a cult book maybe I'll find out what I missed. And I like to think of my squirrel adding a touch of Gothic.

Reply

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