Quite by accident I have read three books in a row that are relentlessly grim. I say “by accident”, I was the one who picked them out and started reading and then kept reading even when they were clearly going to be relentlessly grim. I wonder what this says about me?
I suppose the thing about this genre, sometimes meanly re-named “misery porn”, is that it can be very compelling. Why is this? Perhaps we keep reading because at some point, we think, “God almighty, this is has got to turn around and get better.” The human response to story-telling propels us through the darkness to get to the light. That’s my theory anyway, it’s not because we’re all prurient and sadistic. Definitely not.
First up, Chasing The Dragon by Jackie Pullinger. This is an old book, first published in 1980 but relating to events in the late 60s. This is a journey in two parts: first, the literal voyage to the Walled City, a vast slum in Hong Kong; second, the journey into the mind of an evangelical Christian, (the author), called by God to the Walled City to work with its destitute residents. I don’t mind evangelical Christians. Their core belief is that Jesus loves you and if you get with the program, he will save you. This is the Good News that they want to tell you. They also believe in the literal healing power of prayer. Personally, I think this is harmless and charming and Pullinger puts her faith to good use in the stinking, grimy streets of this slum, working day and night to convert the hundreds if not thousands of heroin addicts to Christianity and thus get them off drugs. If the addicts withdrawing from heroin pray, observes the author, their withdrawal is painless. Pullinger also writes about how she prays when her community projects need money and weirdly, the next day someone calls her up with a donation. This happens more than once. Like I said, this book is a multi-layered journey for the reader. The descriptions of the slum are grim, though, and Pullinger doesn’t hold back. There are some paragraphs I wish I could un-read.
Second, Exiles by Christina Baker Kline. This is about the transport of convict women from England to Tasmania in the 1840s, (then called Van Dieman’s Island), and also of the mistreatment of native Australians. This is grimness heaped upon grimness. It’s just one long line of injustice, mistreatment, mouldy bread, rape, sad children, shackles, shame and helplessness. The story is also ultimately a bit unsatisfying. I do despair at times at the formulaic nature of commercial fiction plots, (Hero with a problem! Struggle! Dark Night of the Soul!), but this narrative is resolved suddenly and rather quickly, via a simple word in the right ear. And I am all for a feminist reading on things, but this is quite clumsily done with a very faintly hectoring tone. I am also aware of prevailing Men Hate Women motif right now but in this book, all women (with few exceptions) are basically lovely and all men (with few exceptions) are monsters or cowards or both. Still, the research here has been meticulous and I absolutely ripped through it, so it can’t have been all bad.
Third, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way. This new book, by Rebecca Wait, markets itself as a domestic drama, which fans of Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss will enjoy. This is less because it is a domestic drama and more because it is about narcissistic personality disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. (Although it is never spelled out what mental illness the heroine of Sorrow and Bliss has, whatever it is is certainly schizophrenic-adjacent.) I’m Sorry You Feel That Way is not quite as relentlessly grim as the other books, but it is certainly pretty gloomy. We spend a lot of time with a range of characters who simply cannot connect with others, cannot make friends, cannot fit in. The periods spent dwelling specifically with the paranoid schizophrenics are sympathetic and sad. When under extreme stress even the most mentally well will know what it feels to be paranoid, to be scared that a person or people are plotting against them. Wait captures the true fear that paranoid schizophrenics must live with. Just generally, a searing clang of loneliness, this failure to connect, reverberates through the prose and it’s a little unsettling. It reminds me of the work of Richard Yates, who is obsessed with overbearing mothers and people who can’t make friends. This is a very good book, just don’t read it expecting it to be something it’s not.
If you feel, as I do, a little dead inside after rattling through this salacious stuff, (perhaps we, the readers, are the ultimate victims of misery porn?), spend some time at The Whalebone Theatre. If this book was a piece of furniture, it would be a lovely dark-brown four-square chest of drawers. If it was a foodstuff it would be a hearty plate of beans on toast or a baked potato. This really is a domestic drama, or perhaps family saga is more accurate, trapezing lightly over the heads of Downton Abbey, Gosford Park and friends. It starts just after WWI with a new wife arriving at a stately home and wondering what to make of it all, and ends just after WWII and all the upheaval that went with that. This book is neither especially funny nor especially tragic, flimsy nor political, neither clichéd nor particularly original. There is an obviously gay character who is never referred to as such, not even obliquely. I don’t know if the author is frightened to address the issue or is trying to be super-modern but I’ve decided that it is a refreshing approach. This book is a masterclass in soothing, un-scary, reasonably interesting, well-researched historical fiction. And it is so long! There is so much of it. It was not brilliant but I read every single word and I am usually on a hair-trigger when it comes to discarding new fiction. So in fact, maybe it was brilliant. Maybe brilliance is exactly that.
How about you? Any strong feelings about misery porn? Perhaps, at the tail-end of the long school holidays that’s just your life all day right now.
I’ve enjoyed Rosamund Pilcher’s Coming Home, a family saga similar to The Cazelet Chronicles. Lots of reassuringly cosy domestic detail, well drawn characters and satisfying plots. I also - unusually for me - regularly reread Catherine Bailey’s Black Diamonds and The Secret Rooms. Both are non-fiction accounts of early 20th wealthy family sagas. She is such a crisp but evocative writer and the research is so detailed that you can really immerse yourself. I also picked up a copy of Rosamund Lehman’s Invitation to the Waltz from a book swop. It’s a story of young woman ahead of her first ball in the 1930s. Such minutely observed characters and the scene where Olivia is ripped off by someone selling a lace collar is so true to life that will cringe / laugh out loud at how close it is to all those times you’ve fallen for the patter, only to blush with embarrassment later.
Marian Keyes - wonderful writer, I particularly liked Grown Ups. But really, anything goes. As the great Richard Madeley once said, ‘it if nourishes you - read it’. Sometimes for me that is something fairly heavy non-fiction and other times I spend weeks guzzling up the garden centre chick lit: Christmas / Summer / Easter / Wedding at the Butterfly Cafe / Cottage / Island etc. Utter shite but exactly what I need.
I read the Jackie Pullinger about 25 years ago when I first met my husband (then a missionary). Astonishing book. Personally not a fan of misery fiction/ memoir at all. I skipped your comments on the Whalebone Theatre (after the line about it NOT being miserable!) in case there were spoilers. I bought it earlier this month in St Ives as a holiday souvenir but I’m waiting until autumn to read it because like you I’m getting solid chest of drawer vibes and to me that says autumn/winter reading! If anyone is still looking for summer reads I can recommend Emily Henry’s Book Lovers. Haven’t read anything by her before but it was like a Nora Ephron film in book form. V nicely plotted. Also, The Feast by Margaret Kennedy which was absolutely superb. Set late 1940s in Cornwall. Modern morality tale meets Agatha Christie (but Who will survive? rather than Whodunnit?)