We’ve all read a lot of literature on the mother-daughter relationship, and across many cultures for that matter, so although the theme of this novel interested me – a mother who is a bit of an enigma to her daughter – I wasn’t expecting to be surprised. It is so nice to be wrong sometimes! Riley paints a picture of a mother unlike any mother I have ever come across in novels, because I have never come across a character who is so untrue to herself. It makes for a fascinating study, and Riley shows us this character, Hen (short for Helen) mostly through the eyes of her younger daughter, Bridget, adding another layer of interpretative complexity to the representation.
The novel is all about textures of the relationship between mother and daughter. Troubled of course, dysfunctional of course, even estranged often, and yet, still compelling, still tenacious, and far more complicated than their performances at being a mother and being a daughter might reveal. Bridget’s parents both seem to be very unpleasant people with deep neuroses of their own, and little wonder then, that they separated when Bridget was just two years old. Hen goes on to marry again, and again within two years, leaves her second husband too. She struggles with forming human relationships, including those with her daughters.
Bridget tells us that her mother loves rules, so that she can take refuge in doing what is expected of her, letting that justify all her life choices. However, she also paints Hen as a woman who seems desperate to prove to herself that she is unusual and special and stands apart, even if no one else appears to validate that view. Even in the most ordinary daily interactions, Hen struggles.
If my questions were more than a feed, or if I pressed a point, then my mother quickly got upset. She used to clam up, as if she’d detected she was being duped, or being lured into a trap. […] My mother seemed braced against an interrogation wherever we went. A hello from a neighbour seemed to both affront and frighten her. The mildest enquire from a check-out girl was met with terrible suspicion. I used to watch her strand herself – herself and her interlocutor – with her desperation to make it stop. She over-enunciated, cut people off to agree with them. Again, as if the whole thing were a test: a malicious test, in which such self as she had was staked, and which she could therefore not submit to.
p9
Such is Riley’s writing, analytical and empathetic, taking one right into the heads of her characters.
Needless to say, Hen is so difficult to live with neither of her daughters seem particularly close to her, though both make an effort to keep in touch. For awhile, Bridget met her mother for dinner once a year when her Manchester-based mother would go to London on her (Hen’s) birthday. Those occasions were painful to say in the least, fraught, brittle, hard work, setting one’s teeth on edge – the writing is extremely good – I would agree with the blurb on the back of the book by Elizabeth Macneal, who wrote, “Her prose is so sharp you could cut yourself on it”. Monica Ali wrote, “The dialogue is pitch perfect, The relationships are agonizing. It’s a subtle book, with big themes subtly drawn”. I agree with all that and in addition, it is a slim book, the sketch is swift and sure, and does not linger long, but is deeply resonant.
Still early in the book, Bridget describes her mother thus:
She was mulish, when she wasn’t completely biddable, and each mode always at precisely the wrong time. Like a mime’s recalcitrant prop: the door that wouldn’t give until it did and sent you sprawling.
p28
It is so concise, and so biting – what a way to describe one’s mother – but oh! If it is justified, then what a mother to have! And as the novel unfolds, increasingly, one sees that Bridget’s depiction is already one which has forgiven much, which has excused her mother as far as she can, rather than one which reproaches her mother – which is even sadder in a sense, because what a difficult character Hen is!
In this type of novel, the plot is not of great importance, it merely provides various backdrops on which to watch the characters interacting. Hen grows older, has an accident, needs more care and attention, and as her lifestyle changes, Bridget finds herself drawn into her mother’s orbit perhaps more out of duty than choice. Bridget is pestered by Hen to let her meet Bridget’s partner, John. Eventually, when this happens, strangely, Hen barely engages with John at all, and is pre-occupied elsewhere in her thoughts instead. John however, after that strange dinner with Hen, sums up this character extremely well:
I’ve met people who are insistent, dogmatic, aggressive, but she wasn’t like that. It quickly became obvious that she wasn’t going to engage with anything that was actually being said. She had a stance, she was sticking to that, and that precluded reacting to anything that was actually happening. … There was an absolute refusal to do that. It was disorienting. I see what you mean about that. When she appeared to react, these weren’t reactions at all, were they? But her performing what she thinks she is. Or what she has decided she is. So the performance was desperately committed but gratingly false.
p163
The fun part about the book is how Riley first lets us watch how the scene is played out, then supplies the analysis, such as in this quote, which takes apart the scene for the reader. This unpacking process is done with surgical precision each time, and is both as painful and as healing as a surgeon’s scalpel could be.
Am left tremendously impressed by Riley’s writing and intelligence and perceptiveness. Must check which of her other books I can get my hands on!
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