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shewhomustThere was a time last autumn when I seemed to be surrounded by David Almond's Skellig. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler was reading the book, preparing to accompany Gail-Nina to the opera at the Sage, the Graphic Novels Reading Group was reading the book as part of some city-wide project. I had read the book years ago, and not particularly enjoyed it, and I don't like opera at all, so I tried to escape a re-reread. Instead I read The Savage, David Almond's much more recent collaboration with Dave McKean; but even this turned me back towards the earlier book: a boy struggling with grief in the family turns to a vivid secret life in which the boundaries of the real and the imagined are denied, and in which a feral being who does not speak helps him to deal with his own unspoken, unspeakable feelings. I know when I'm beaten; I re-read Skellig.
Reading it now with opera, so to speak, in the air, I was struck by how musically the book is structured. The Guardian's reviewer comments that the book is full of noises: the hooting of the owls, the baby's heartbeat. It wasn't so much this that had struck me as the way the narrative uses repetition. At first I was uncomfortably about this, because I was anticipating a straightforwardly linear narrative, and here we were, going round again on the same motifs; when I relaxed into the book's way of telling its story, I began to see the way the themes repeat and reappear as an almost musical development. David Almond himself says much the same thing.
I envisage opera as something which is by its nature expressive rather than naturalistic; and I suspect that this is also true of the book, and explains much of my failure to warm to it. The opening of Skellig suggests that what will follow is a realistic narrative, full of the detail and difficulties of real life: Michael's family have moved house to be ready for the new baby, only to discover that both the house and the baby are more fragile, more in need of care and attention, than had been anticipated. The garage might collapse; the baby might not survive. Even when the mysterious enters into the tale, with Michael's discovery of Skellig, it is presented in factual, mundane terms - Skellig lives on brown ale and Chinese takeaway food, on insects brought to him by the owls.
This sounds precise and factual, yet reading the story as a naturalistic account is unsatisfying; elements which you would expect to be straightforward refuse to come into focus. For example, how old are the children? Michael is at secondary school - he has stayed at Kenny Street High with his friends, rather than move to a new school nearer his new home. Why did I keep picturing him as younger? Is it simply the arrival of the new baby, without any suggestion that this is an unusually long age-gap between siblings? (Oh, yes, there are all sorts of possible reasons - and the kind of story I was expecting would have told opted for one). Was it his friendship with Mina? When his school friends turn up, they tease him for making friends with this strange girl, but their mockery hinges on their perception of her as strange, not, as I might have expected from adolescents, on the fact that she's a GIRL. Come to think of it, how old is Mina herself? I read her at first as being Michael's age, but then my mental image of him is as someone younger than he actually is (and even looking at the evidence, I see him as only just secondary school); she could in fact be younger. Her knowledge of birds and bones and Blake is presented as precocious - very well, then, it can be even more precocious. When we actually see Mina at her studies, she is painting at the kitchen table - perhaps she is as young as I thought. Anyway, in an opera these two major roles must be taken by adult singers, and the audience must simply accept them as 'children' - I shall try to do likewise with the book.
So the narrative is concerned with the presence of the non-rational into the mundane, and it expresses it in a way that is not itself rational. And if I'm to read the book that is here, rather than some other unwritten book, I have to accept this. But there's a strand of almost anti-rationalism in the book, which I find harder to accept. This starts in the very first paragraph, with Michael's nickname for the doctor (the family's GP? He could be a specialist, but it seems less likely), who is "Doctor Death". This is personal: he dislikes this particular doctor, and later at the hospital finds medics whom he views more favourably. Nonetheless, this is a keynote - if the baby is to be cured, it will be because Michael has succeeded in internalising her heartbeat (and has stopped the cat getting the fledgelings), not because the doctor has done his best. (I'm also deeply uncomfortable with the refusal to name the child: it makes a fine moment at the close of the book, when she can finally be given the name 'Joy', but it seems a terrible omen for her to carry through her illness. Would any real family do this?)
Similarly, school has very little to offer. It is a place where boys play football. The teachers do their best, and Miss Clarts reads Michael's story and tells him he has a true gift, but they cannot compete with home schooling. Mina, upset that Michael's friends are trying to draw him back to school, away from her, quotes Blake:
On a re-read, in short, Skellig is still not for me; and I'm happy to admit that this is probably because I'm not for Skellig, either.
durham_rambler was reading the book, preparing to accompany Gail-Nina to the opera at the Sage, the Graphic Novels Reading Group was reading the book as part of some city-wide project. I had read the book years ago, and not particularly enjoyed it, and I don't like opera at all, so I tried to escape a re-reread. Instead I read The Savage, David Almond's much more recent collaboration with Dave McKean; but even this turned me back towards the earlier book: a boy struggling with grief in the family turns to a vivid secret life in which the boundaries of the real and the imagined are denied, and in which a feral being who does not speak helps him to deal with his own unspoken, unspeakable feelings. I know when I'm beaten; I re-read Skellig.Reading it now with opera, so to speak, in the air, I was struck by how musically the book is structured. The Guardian's reviewer comments that the book is full of noises: the hooting of the owls, the baby's heartbeat. It wasn't so much this that had struck me as the way the narrative uses repetition. At first I was uncomfortably about this, because I was anticipating a straightforwardly linear narrative, and here we were, going round again on the same motifs; when I relaxed into the book's way of telling its story, I began to see the way the themes repeat and reappear as an almost musical development. David Almond himself says much the same thing.
I envisage opera as something which is by its nature expressive rather than naturalistic; and I suspect that this is also true of the book, and explains much of my failure to warm to it. The opening of Skellig suggests that what will follow is a realistic narrative, full of the detail and difficulties of real life: Michael's family have moved house to be ready for the new baby, only to discover that both the house and the baby are more fragile, more in need of care and attention, than had been anticipated. The garage might collapse; the baby might not survive. Even when the mysterious enters into the tale, with Michael's discovery of Skellig, it is presented in factual, mundane terms - Skellig lives on brown ale and Chinese takeaway food, on insects brought to him by the owls.
This sounds precise and factual, yet reading the story as a naturalistic account is unsatisfying; elements which you would expect to be straightforward refuse to come into focus. For example, how old are the children? Michael is at secondary school - he has stayed at Kenny Street High with his friends, rather than move to a new school nearer his new home. Why did I keep picturing him as younger? Is it simply the arrival of the new baby, without any suggestion that this is an unusually long age-gap between siblings? (Oh, yes, there are all sorts of possible reasons - and the kind of story I was expecting would have told opted for one). Was it his friendship with Mina? When his school friends turn up, they tease him for making friends with this strange girl, but their mockery hinges on their perception of her as strange, not, as I might have expected from adolescents, on the fact that she's a GIRL. Come to think of it, how old is Mina herself? I read her at first as being Michael's age, but then my mental image of him is as someone younger than he actually is (and even looking at the evidence, I see him as only just secondary school); she could in fact be younger. Her knowledge of birds and bones and Blake is presented as precocious - very well, then, it can be even more precocious. When we actually see Mina at her studies, she is painting at the kitchen table - perhaps she is as young as I thought. Anyway, in an opera these two major roles must be taken by adult singers, and the audience must simply accept them as 'children' - I shall try to do likewise with the book.
So the narrative is concerned with the presence of the non-rational into the mundane, and it expresses it in a way that is not itself rational. And if I'm to read the book that is here, rather than some other unwritten book, I have to accept this. But there's a strand of almost anti-rationalism in the book, which I find harder to accept. This starts in the very first paragraph, with Michael's nickname for the doctor (the family's GP? He could be a specialist, but it seems less likely), who is "Doctor Death". This is personal: he dislikes this particular doctor, and later at the hospital finds medics whom he views more favourably. Nonetheless, this is a keynote - if the baby is to be cured, it will be because Michael has succeeded in internalising her heartbeat (and has stopped the cat getting the fledgelings), not because the doctor has done his best. (I'm also deeply uncomfortable with the refusal to name the child: it makes a fine moment at the close of the book, when she can finally be given the name 'Joy', but it seems a terrible omen for her to carry through her illness. Would any real family do this?)
Similarly, school has very little to offer. It is a place where boys play football. The teachers do their best, and Miss Clarts reads Michael's story and tells him he has a true gift, but they cannot compete with home schooling. Mina, upset that Michael's friends are trying to draw him back to school, away from her, quotes Blake:
"Thank God I was never sent to school,Which is fine for her, with a mother who is able to devote herself full-time to her daughter's education, with poetry and owls there within reach. But it isn't on offer to Michael, let alone to Leakey and Coot.
to be flogged into following the style of a fool."
On a re-read, in short, Skellig is still not for me; and I'm happy to admit that this is probably because I'm not for Skellig, either.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 08:04 pm (UTC)Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 10:39 am (UTC)