Mary Lawson charms the socks off me. It is very difficult to put one’s finger on exactly what makes her writing so appealing, but the attraction is there and powerful, from cover to cover, unwavering. This is, on the surface of it, just a small story set in a small town in Northern Ontario. It is not a story with high drama, nor a story with larger-than-life characters. Everything is charming, understated, as delightful as a tea party, and strangely decorous too. But from the first sentence, it is the sort of book one does not want to set down. Reading it is like listening to the conversation of a beloved friend who warms your heart, and whose easy chat you do not want to miss a word of.
We first meet the 7 year old Clara, a serious, thinking child, whose adored elder sister has just left home, and who is looking after her neighbour’s cat for her elderly neighbour, Mrs Elizabeth Orchard. No one told Clare, but Mrs Orchard had gone to a hospital and would not be back. She has left her house to a man whom she had not seen for over 3 decades, but whom she knew as a little boy when he lived next door. Liam Kane was just reeling from a difficult divorce, and found it an escape to leave his job as an accountant in Toronto and his life there, to come to Solace, to take possession of Mrs Orchard’s house. In Solace, we have alternating first person narrators in Clara and Liam, and so skilful is Lawson’s writing that when we are seeing through the eyes of each, their actions make complete sense, but seen through the eyes of another, the same actions can be baffling.
At least part of the appeal is the non-linear timeframes of the narrative. Sometimes we are told of something Clara already did, but then is seen through Liam’s eyes later, or vice versa, which compounds the pleasure of the reader knowing something the characters do not yet, drawing the reader and author into that charming complicity. Another first person narrator is from Mrs Orchard herself, from her hospital bed, in a private internal dialogue with her long-deceased but husband, whom she addresses as ‘my love’ or ‘dear one’. Since we are aware from the start that she never makes it home, we understand all those confidences are in the past, although interwoven into the present-day story. The interweaving of the time frames and narratives is beautifully done, so that the information is revealed layer by careful layer, never losing the reader for a moment, as gently as Elizabeth Orchard used to play with the 4-year old Liam, who lighted up her life, as she put it. The interactions of the key characters is what makes up most of the storyline.
Even Moses the cat is not just a prop, he is such a character when drawn by an author like Lawson:
Moses did another very unusual thing; he abandoned the mouse, jumped onto Clara’s chair, curled up in her lap and started to purr. Clara was so surprised and so pleased her mouth fell open. She had heard him purr before – it was really loud – but she’d never felt it. It made her whole body vibrate as if she was purring too.
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Once, when Clara was going round to feed Moses, she was very unhappy, and ended up sitting on the ground with her back against the wall.
But then Moses did something so amazing that it helped after all. He stood up, his paws kneading little pits in her legs, put his front feet up on her shoulders, pressed his nose against hers and looked straight into her eyes from a distance of half an inch.
His eyes were absolutely huge, it was like looking at two great green moons. Clara went crossed eyed trying to focus on them. It made her laugh.
‘Did I forget to stroke you, Mo?’ she asked, her mouth almost touching his. She put her hands on either side of him and stroke his whole sleek little cat body, all the way down to his tail.
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Lawson’s writing is characterised by the tone and texture such as those in the Moses passages; tender without sentimentality, vividly depicted and somehow very immediate. Her kind of writing is the kind which looks so simple and prosaic, precisely because it is anything but. It is luminous in an organic way, everything about this book seems so right, so natural, somehow even so familiar; this is a piece of writing made to look so seamless by exceptional artistry. It is such a quiet book compared to some of the other 2021 Booker shortlists, which have much more by way of grandeur, sweep, range, depth, magnitude, thunder, and power. But for sheer reading pleasure, for sheer contentment and comfort and enjoyment, Lawson’s is hard to top.
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