I mentioned last week that my book-free progress through the library was arrested by the Hilary Mantel quote on the front of this, the superb Blackmoor
I devoured this book in two sittings largely because of the arresting atmosphere but plot and characterisation are both largely spot on as well.
Early in the book we're give a newspaper quotation from 1992:
A Blackmoor woman jumped to her death
from the second floor window of her house
last Thursday.
Witnesses believe that Elizabeth Cart-
wright, 36, of Slack Lane, had watched her
young son fall from the same window
moments before. The boy, a toddler, had
landed safely in a flower basin below the
house.
The tale is told in two strands: in the modern day, in a most unobtrusive and well-handled present tense, we follow the boy, now a sensitive teenager Vincent as he finds out more about his past and his mother; and in flash backs, in the conventional past tense, we follow the decline of a pit village in the Derbyshire moors in the 1980s and early 1990s, the intertwined lives of its inhabitants and the lives of George Cartwright and his near blind albino wife Beth.
Locals are suspicious of Beth with her translucent looks and strange ways of looking out of partially-seeing eyes.
In his teens George was drawn to the scarcity of Beth Fisher, whose distinctions had made a recluse of her. She was an exotic sight - that scythe-slash of long white hair flashing past the window as she walked the right of way between the houses. At school she tilted her head down and to the left and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, nervous, yet appraising. He liked that. He liked the way you could see the network of veins through her skin.
Even in the late twentieth century there is almost an anti-witch reaction against her "distinction" and George is not equipped to handle it nor can he cope with Beth's depressions where her personality becomes as bleak as her colouring.
Critic and poet Tom Paulin calls the opening of Mrs Gaskell's Wives and Daughters "white gothic" and I thought immediately that that was a brilliant description. It applies here in Blackmoor too. In Wives and Daughters the book starts with a brief moment from Molly Gibson's childhood where on a white hot summer's day Molly is struck with a sort of sunstroke. The swirling heat and dizziness in the ultra bright light is terrifying. It is like a white light version of Jane Eyre's red room. In Blackmoor the paleness of Beth is both reflective and translucent, visually visceral, and in the bright light of the open moortop village is a stunning counterbalance to the usual dark and lowering portrayals of moorland. This is the White Peak and the wind squeals like finger nails down glass. Beth scares the villagers with her looks and the coincidence of incidents and accidents that follow her innocent wake. The incidents involving gas and fire are terrifying but also light: light as air, light as smoke, as blazing as fire. This is white gothic done superbly well.
Young Vincent in the modern day is a beautifully drawn character with a believable balance of teenage angst and a sensitive individuality. His dead mother Beth, though fascinating, is less sharply drawn. Perhaps because Beth is so pale on the inside in her depression that she feels she hardly knows herself. As a reader I was drawn to both characters, and was equally involved in both narrative threads.
This was a debut, and though wonderful, it had a few creaky moments. The character of George is very hard to pin down. Unlike Beth there was no real narrative reason for the vagaries of characterisation here, and though people change George did not seem the same man in both threads, and I was never really sure why his relationship with Beth took the path it did. Beth and Vincent are so engaging though, that George's failings become a small quibble. This will be yet another book I want to buy as it returns to the library, as I know it will bear several re-reads. I was so glad I ignored the cover and took Hilary Mantel at her word. It is, as she says, "powerful and confident" and "utterly distinctive".
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Blackmoor is also reviewed by Dovegreyreader and The Fiction Desk . The Hunger Trace
If you want to hear Tom Paulin speak about Wives and Daughters
Blackmore sounds amazing. Thanks for the review. I have added it to my ever growing 'to read' list :)
Posted by: Carola Huttmann | January 30, 2011 at 08:59 AM
I can't remember where I first heard of it, but I've had this one on my list for a while. I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it--it will definitely stay on my list.
Posted by: Teresa | January 30, 2011 at 01:16 PM