A hundred things, viewed through new eyes, made a mockery of his life. Furtive glances and whispers. The anger and coldness that fell around him for no reason, surprising him at unexpected moments. The confusion and the double meanings. [loc. 1356]
Gideon is seven when, with his parents, he leaves behind the life he knew in Bath and goes to live at Ormeshadow. The farmhouse is home to his uncle Thomas and family: there is old tension between Thomas and Gideon's father John, and a different tension between Thomas, his wife Maud and Gideon's mother Clare.
Gideon does not like living at Ormeshadow. The only happy moments are those he spends with his father, up on the Orme -- a rocky ridge which, John tells him, is actually a buried dragon princess, the last of her kind. John's stories of treasure and dragon-wars, and of the role their own family played in protecting the Orme, are a stark contrast to the unfriendliness and lack of warmth at Thomas' house.
Tragedy strikes; Gideon's life becomes even bleaker, as Thomas visits the sins of the father upon the son; and then the world changes.
This novella is constructed, not as a seamless narrative, but as a mosaic of scenes from Gideon's life, told in tight third-person point of view. He observes events without understanding what he's seeing, or reasoning out a story of his own. He's bowed by guilt and solitude. And then the world changes: and subsequent scenes (except, perhaps, the final one?) are told from differing viewpoints: a fisherman, a wealthy lawyer.
I found Ormeshadow very bleak, though beautifully written and interestingly structured. This is a tale of deprivation and poverty, woven through a frame of old grudges and older secrets. The weather is seldom fine, the meat is always greasy, and love begets betrayal. (Sweetheart, Clare, John, Eliza ...) And though the pivotal event of the story confers a kind of emotional reparation, I'm not convinced that it is a fair or reasonable resolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment