An engaging look at human nature and a novel too romantic for its own good
English Passengers****The book is narrated by myriad voices, including not only the principal players but a host of peripheral characters ranging from convicts to female settlers and colonial civil servants. Rather than confusing, the various strands reflect on each other and carry the plot forward from different—and sometimes wholly unexpected—perspectives. The book’s tight construction weaves together these constantly shifting viewpoints to create a rich, complex and rewarding whole.
Many novelists with the imagination and audacity to pull this off would force their cleverness on you at every turn, but Matthew Kneale’s virtuoso writing renders his own presence in the book quite invisible. Each narrator—some of whom we meet only once—is well developed, convincing and distinctive, right down to their expressions and vocabulary. They are warmly human creations, and often, unwittingly, very funny.
With prejudice, malice and cruelty, the book exposes the “gentle” genocide practiced by well-intentioned folk who were blind to the fact that their attempts to “civilize” the Aborigines were just a slower, more insidious way of killing them. The Aborigines themselves are lent a brilliant voice in the character of Peevay, a “half-caste,” who gives us a glimpse into this lost culture, and into the devastating incursion of white people into the Aborigines’ traditional way of life.
Although Kneale has managed to create a hugely entertaining and funny novel, with a gripping plot and engaging characters, he chronicles one of the darkest periods of colonial history. The use of multiple narrators allows Kneale to take us inside the minds of the racial theorists, civil servants, farmers, convicts and “innocent” bystanders, who played a role in the events. In Kneale’s book there are no shadowy, evil institutions or tragic victims, only individuals, with all their human failings and virtues.
The Red Tent**
by Anita Diamant
Macmillan, 2001
In the Bible, Dinah has a cameo role as the only daughter of Jacob. While her brothers father the twelve tribes of Israel, she sinks into obscurity. In The Red Tent , Anita Diamant ingeniously resurrects Dinah and allows her to tell her own story.
Dinah begins with the stories of her “mothers”: Jacob’s four wives. Based on the few details in the Bible, Diamant brings to life these women from the far-distant past. The women run circles around their men as they cook, clean, spin, weave, give birth, raise children and attend to their own pagan rituals and customs under the unsuspecting nose of Jacob. Intimacy alternates with rivalry in their claustrophobic, isolated lives. Dinah continues with her own story, which is largely Diamant’s invention. After a treacherous and violent start to her adult life, Dinah flees to Egypt, where she carries on her aunt Rachel’s vocation as a midwife.
Set in a world of men, this is a matriarchal tale, full of strong women and secret female knowledge. The book overflows with libations, incantations, rituals and goddesses. The red tent is where women go to menstruate (apparently all always in perfect timing with the new moon) and give birth. The book features three generations of midwives, and the cyclical nature of women’s lives is echoed in the coming of age ceremonies, repeated births, marriages and deaths that are described. Often, though, it is simply repetitive, and in her effort to create the women’s private realm, Diamant’s writing becomes self-consciously poetic and reverential.
While Diamant sometimes reminds you that this is a harsh life, she paints a romanticized picture. (If fennel seeds were as effective a contraceptive as this book implies, we would have done away with the pill long ago.) Dinah falls in love at first sight not once but twice, and both relationships are anything but passionate and blissful. Diamant’s fascinating premise is diminished by clunky writing and crowd-pleasing turns. The Red Tent is an enjoyable and interesting read, but it had the potential to be much more.
