Drama: November 2005 Archives

The story is one of waiting. Long years of waiting for Odysseus, who left to fight the war against Troy, to find his way back home, via Cyclops, sirens and the rest. (I hadn’t read Troy, the first of these two volumes, and it’s many years since any scanty contact with The Odyssey, but that didn’t prove significant). Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and queen of Ithaka, is struggling to remain true to her husband, to believe in his survival, and to keep all ready - herself most of all - for his eventual return. To a greater or lesser extent, the royal servants and the whole of the island do likewise. Clearly the memory of Odysseus, the tales of his heroism and the need for a king have left a long shadow over the island, even affecting those who were no more than babies when their lord left. The goddess Pallas Athene adds to Penelope’s straitjacket of duty and faith by telling her that 'as long as you are here, unchanged and unchanging, he will come to no harm'. To this end, the queen spends endless hours at her loom, weaving the images of her husband’s adventures and of his ship always heading for home. Meanwhile the hero’s ancient dog, Argos, pads around the place and dreams also of his master returning, whilst Telemachus, Odysseus’ son returns again and again to the armoury to take down his father’s massive hunting bow and marvel at it.

Yet the nature of life is change, and as time goes on, the strain of the waiting becomes a curse to the islanders. Soon, many are arguing that Penelope should declare her husband dead and marry again. The queen herself is emotionally and physically unfulfilled and restless, and the palace starts to fill up with a rabble of violent and unsavoury suitors, bringing chaos and disorder. As with a Shakespearean comedy, the idyll of Ithaka becomes tainted and corrupted by misunderstanding, deception, doubt: the reader can only wonder whether order is ever to be restored.

Much of the tale is told through the eyes and the growing pains of Klymene, the queen’s maidservant, and this is its strength, for the loves and losses of the younger characters around the palace are often the most touching and immediate. As a whole, however, there is a distance, a lack of either an emotional hook or a compelling, urgent story, that mars the narrative. Add that to the air of gloom that prevails – 'How much wickedness there was in the world. It was a wonder people found even a small amount of happiness in the midst of all the anguish' - and we are firmly in the realm of Greek tragedy, where the gods have their sport of poor mortals. For those who desire such a read, you couldn’t do better.

Mal Peet's first novel, Keeper, was a miracle. A novel that finally revealed to me - a cricket lover - the poetry and magic in the game of soccer. Second novels are often disappointments, and when the author himself told me (at a summer party) that he was working on a novel set in Holland during the war, I confess I felt disappointment was on the cards.

How wrong. This is an outstanding novel. Outstanding in every regard. It establishes Peet as a novelist of immense gift and versatility, for no two novels could be more different than Keeper and Tamar and yet be so equally brilliant.

The two principal characters in Tamar are undercover operators working in Nazi-occupied Holland in support of the resistance. There is many an episode of nailbiting excitement in the book, but for much of the time the undercover agents have to cope with the boredom of waiting and watching, and with the interpersonal tension of loving the same woman.

Parallel to this is a more contemporary narrative, set in 1995, which is properly subservient to the war story, and yet utterly convincing.

Throughout the book the writing is of the highest order, crisply figurative description falling from Peet's pen with apparent ease: "the mud had solidified into frost-capped peaks and ripples that looked like mountain ranges seen from the cockpit of an aircraft" or "the sky was the colour on old knife" to give just two examples.

Published by Walker Books as a Young Adult novel, Tamar is a novel worthy of standing with the very best of contemporary British fiction.

As in Geras’ Troy, the romantic lives of her characters are bound up in complex love triangles, and the themes of unrequited love and jealousy run rife. Also similarly to Troy, the Gods walk amongst the mortals freely, either wreaking havoc or protecting the humans respectively.

Geras writes beautifully, and as ever, engagingly. The plot is fast-moving and dramatic and the characters are well-drawn and easy to sympathise with. The only problem I had with this novel is a strong sense of déjà vu. Echoes of Troy resonate through the narrative, the characters, and the plot, to the extent that you start to wonder if you are in fact reading the same book, simply told from a different perspective, and in a different setting.

Setting this aside, the novel stands alone as a highly accomplished and thought-provoking work, and an incentive for more dedicated readers to proceed on to Homer’s Odyssey.