A Son of the Rock

Polygon, 2007, 276 p, plus 7 p Introduction by Alan Warner.

In an interpolated framing device we have here the story of an author trying to write a piece of fiction celebrating goodness, where the characters are happy because they deserve to be, surrounding that same story which he is writing to find out what becomes of them. The author’s wife tells him his desire is impossible since he has always been severe on his characters and she thinks he cannot change. Still less does she believe he can set such a story in Scotland because he thinks the Scots have lost faith in themselves. The novel he is writing is that story; or an attempt at it.

That novel features the Sempill family, already relatively comfortably off – the father was an architect – but at its beginning lately come into a large inheritance.  The Mama and Papa Sempill have five children, Diana, Jeanie, Effie, Rowena, Rebecca; all named after Walter Scott heroines. All but Diana are blonde, she is dark-haired and at their story’s beginning old enough to fancy herself guardian of them all, parents included. They are on holiday in Argyll when they come across an abandoned house whose proper name is Ardmore but is known to the locals as Poverty Castle. As a family they resolve to buy it and bring it back to its former glory. This involves irritating the Camptons, inhabitants of the “big” house, on an enclave of whose land Poverty Castle sits, but with access rights. An encounter with the children of the house exemplifies all that can be good or bad about aristocratic attitudes. Their sons Edwin and Nigel (Nigel; enough said) are opposites in their demeanours.

Mr Sempill is an easy-going soul, but his wife is racked by desire for a son though perhaps too old and lacking in vigour for the risk involved. The crisis of the tale is when she becomes pregnant again despite her husband’s stringent efforts to avoid that.

There are several time jumps in the narrative, Diana goes off to University, where she takes digs in a humble establishment, rooming with working class Peggy Gilchrist. Both the blurb and the Introduction describe Peggy as the Sempills’ nemesis but there is really nothing in the text which justifies that. What we do get is the middle- and upper-class perspective of Peggy being a member of “a class lacking culture, education, and money”. Her mother resents her not conforming to what she sees as her station in life (a job in a supermarket) but her father is keen for her to do as well as she can. Then again, as described, Peggy’s brain is her only asset.

The Sempills are, by and large, good, and happy enough, but, in novels as in life, there will always be something to disrupt contentment.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; Jenkins’ (several times; Jenkins’s.) Otherwise: crème de menthes (crèmes de menthe?) “Mary Queen of Scots’ effeminate secretary” (x 2, Mary Queen of Scots’s.) “Mr Chambers’ tone” (Chambers’s,) “a plebian habit” (plebeian,) plus marks for “the Misses Sempill”, “none of the other girls were keen to have” (none … was keen to have,) “Keats’ room”, “Keats’ country”, “Keats’ poetry” (Keats’s,) Inverary (Inveraray,) “Roslin Chapel” (original spelling of Rosslyn Chapel,) “Burns’ Highland Mary” (Burns’s,) “Cortes’ burning of his boats” (Cortes’s,) “cooker irradiating warmth” (irradiating [to shine light upon] is the opposite of what was meant; radiating.) “The Monn could be seen though it was not yet shining” (if you can see it is shining,) “a racket” (racquet, the reference was to badminton.)

Seahouses is a village just south of Bamburgh, in Northumberland, with views of the Farne Islands.

This Art Deco building now houses Gift Horse, Seahouses Cafe and King Kebab. Pity the windows have been replaced unsympathetically:-

This is set in a niche/cave in the wall below Bamburgh Castle. It can be seen in the view of Bamburgh Castle in the first photo of this post.

The Memorial has the form of a crucifix on a rectangular plinth. The name plaques are fixed to the rock walls behind.

Cross and dedication:-

Great War name plaques:-

Second World War plaque:-

I heard on the latest edition of Sounds of the Sixties that David Clayton-Thomas, sometime lead singer of US jazz/rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears has died. I have since looked up his Guardian obituary.

I liked what I heard from the band so much I bought their second LP, Blood, Sweat & Tears. I note that the track listing given for that on its Wiki page differs from the copy I bought. (No Erik Satie variations for example.) Perhaps the UK version was different from the US.

Their second single Spinning Wheel was written by Clayton-Thomas (as were later tracks Lucretia MacEvil and Go Down Gamblin’.)

 Blood, Sweat & Tears: Spinning Wheel

David Henry Thomsett (David Clayton-Thomas: 13/9/1941 – 24/6/2026. So it goes.

Tor, 2014, 264 p.

This is a strange concoction, part SF (with more than a touch of Altered History,) part history of the author’s family – including the mystical implications of being born in a caul – part disquisition on the art of fiction.

The first section seems to be from the viewpoint of a child living in a post US Civil War era where the North is ruled by a queen and there are Martians apparently threatening Earth. (Or is that bit an extract from the SF novel being discussed?) The second revolves around a Second World War secret endeavour. The third is less clear cut, with the narrator (or Park himself) looking into an incident in his family’s past that may, or may not, have involved aliens.

The later sections refer to and turn back on the earlier ones, with characters appearing again in different guises, or are the same but in a different situation, all mixed in with the author’s family’s convoluted history. This metafictional aspect of the book does make it slightly less than a straightforward read. And hence difficult to sum up succinctly.

At one point we read, “It’s all metafiction, all the time.” Being told this doesn’t make it any easier on the reader, who, in any case, has already worked out this is metafiction.

A recurring theme is the Battle of the Crater at the Siege of Petersburg, about which I had some previous knowledge but Park subverts that when at one point, in an Altered History twist, instead of a mine exploding, the crater is said to have been created by the explosion of a locomotive on lines dug under the entrenchments to provide swift access to the city when the projected attack is to take place. (Or is this some sort of joke about the Underground Railroad?)

Park does present some aperçus. “One of the interesting things about autistic people is the insight they provide into ourselves. We all have strategies to distract ourselves from what we cannot bear.”

In his capacity as a tutor of writing, our narrator – we are again perhaps intended to assume this is Park himself – says, “I always warned students against complexity for its own sake, and to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told.” Park is poking fun at himself here, I suppose, for All Those Vanished Engines is very far from a simple story, simply told.

Pedant’s corner:-  “The tiny incised pattern on the plates …. were not identical” (The tiny patterns….,) “I went upstairs and smote for a while, trying to get Captain Lukas to finally make a stand” (‘smote’ here does not seem to be the past tense of smite,) “the kaiser’s government” (the Kaiser’s,) “a font of the kind of wisdom” (the phrase is ‘a fount of wisdom’,) “Burnsides’s Corps” (the general was called Burnside; so ‘Burnside’s Corps’.) “I shined the light” (shone, please.)

These photos were all taken inside Bamburgh Castle.

Model of Castle:-

Painting of Castle by J M W Turner:-

King’s Hall:-

King’s Hall ceiling:-

A passageway:-

Window embrasure showing thickness of castle wall:-

A stairwell:-

Stone arched passageway:-

Stone ceiling:-

Bamburgh from Bamburgh Castle:-

1930s House, Bamburgh, from castle, the leftmost house in the photo. Pity it doesn’t still have its Critall Windows:-

Martello Tower at Bamburgh (Lindisfarne Castle in distance):-

Farne Islands From Bamburgh Castle:-

Bamburgh Castle lies on the coast of Northumberland with views to Lindisfarne and the Farne Islands.

Castle from Bamburgh village:-

Castle from below:-

From south:-

Castle buildings from courtyard (stitch of three photos):-

Tower from courtyard:-

View from lower courtyard:-

Old entrance from lower courtyard:-

Castle from north wall:-

Castle keep:-

Mantle, 2019, 348 p plus 5 p List of characters, 5p Afterword and 2 p Acknowledgements.

This novel’s title is not particularly apposite – though it does allude to its subject, those Greek tales of the Trojan War – as it barely mentions the legendary ships at all. Instead, its focus is on the women caught up in that conflict and more or less sidelined in all the years since they were first written about. And not simply, like Pat Barker’s Women of Troy sequence, on the Trojan women, but also on the those the Greeks left behind and the Muses and Goddesses said to have influenced affairs.

Thus we have the muse Calliope irritated by the importunings of “the poet” for her to sing for him of the events he wishes to describe (Haynes thereby echoing the usual translation of the Iliad’s opening line, “Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles.”) Creusa, woken by the tumult of the city’s fall, fearing for her five-year-old son and wondering where her husband Aeneas has got to. The captured Trojan women on the shore by the Greek camp, their travails only beginning but intermittently returned to through the narrative. Penthesilea the Amazon, fighting for Troy against the Greeks to atone for being responsible for the death of her sister. Penelope, writing increasingly tetchy letters to her husband Odysseus as his long absence is exacerbated by failure to return promptly on the war’s end and then prolonged on – and on and on – (the poet’s missives suggesting he will use any excuse not to come home.) Chryseis, the daughter of Apollo’s priest, who is befriended by Briseis in shared adversity. The sea-nymph Thetis, mother of Achilles, bemoaning her forced marriage to a mortal and her son’s own mortality. Laodamia begging her husband Protesilaus not to be the first onto the beach at Troy, though she knew he would be. Iphigenia, tricked by her father Agamemnon’s promise of marriage to Achilles into being sacrificed for a favourable wind to set sail for Troy. Aphrodite, Hera and Athene using wiles and false promises to trick Paris into his famous judgement. Oenone, who rescued Paris as a baby after he was abandoned due to the prophecy that he would cause Troy’s downfall. Eris, goddess of strife, setting up the business with the golden apple. Hecabe, Queen of Troy, struggling to accept her new diminished status but still able to revenge at least one of her dead sons. Her daughter Polyxena, accepting her fate with stoic dignity. Cassandra, cursed to see the future as the present and not to have her visions believed. The goddess Gaia resenting the ravages humans wreak on the Earth. Clytemnestra nursing her fury at Iphigenia’s death and preparing her vengeance for it for ten long years. The three Fates spinning the threads of mortals’ lives. Andromache slowly coming to terms with her new life as a slave.

Not a straightforward linear narrative, then, and the many viewpoints and scenes mean the whole thing comes across as fractured and a bit scattershot. This stands in contrast to Haynes’s previous novel The Children of Jocasta which was more tightly focused. The lack of linearity of the storyline works, though, and Haynes clearly has a deep knowledge of her source material.

Her main point, that the sufferings and endurance of the women of these wars (and by extension the women of any war) are as – or even more – heroic than any acts carried out by warriors is certainly worth considering.

Pedant’s corner:- “Odysseus’ nurse” (Odysseus’s,) “Aeneas’ heart” (Aeneas’s,) Briseis’ back” (Briseis’s,) Chryses’ character (Chryses’s,) all names ending in ‘s’ are given s’ rather than s’s for their possessives, “to staunch your bleeding” (stanch,) “each head will open its gaping maw” (stomachs are not usually located on heads,) “‘that Hector deserved to die.’ she said” (‘that Hector deserved to die,’ she said’,) “not known to have expressed regret for any cruelty he had perpetuated against anyone” (he had perpetrated against anyone.)

A figure of a kilted soldier in bronze atop a pedestal of granite stones, this lies in a small park area to the side of a roundabout at the junction of Nairn Road, Bridge Street and St Catherine’s Road.

From park area:-

Front view:-

Side view:-

Great War dedication and names:-

World War 2 dedication and names:-

Gulf War name:-