August 22, 2009
The Servants' Quarters by Lynn Freed is a novel about the burden of circumstances in life, whether it be an accident on a golf course or on the fields of war, financial entitlements or desperate distress, or the fact of being Jewish or Zulu or an orphan, and how the burden can be ameliorated only through connection, understanding, love. Actually, the novel is much more complicated than my previous sentence suggests, but what I took away from this compelling, shadowy novel is that as much as "luck" or ability can ease passage through life, life's realities -- the burdens of circumstances -- are sharp and heavy, threatening and unavoidable, and only connection -- one person's belief in another -- can offer relief, support, refuge. Frustrated desires for connection can lead to bad choices -- hasty couplings, mistaken affections, harmful alliances -- and the real luck in life is finding a lasting connection with another person. With that luck and that connection, all circumstances (except the only truly unavoidable one: death) can be overcome.
Freed has created a novel rich with atmosphere, set in a white community in Africa following World War II, where Jewish and Christians live in relative acceptance of each other, and the only true barometer of standing is breeding, family background, money, and public behavior. Cressida is the daughter of a woman desperate for validation and connection, and who uses the interest of a wealthy neighbor in her daughter to try to bolster her own fading finances and stability. Cressida will not be used by anyone, she is headstrong, intelligent, wilful, and suspicious of everyone. Her dreams for herself remain unfocussed and undefinable but she knows what she does not want, to end up like her mother. When her mother tells her, as curse and accusation, "You are selfish, and you are ruthless, and you will go far in life", she is only partly right. The novel is a re-telling of Jane Eyre, with added twists of sex, unbalanced mothering, and fears of annihilation.
Told from the point of view of Cressida, Freed masters the art of narrating from a point of view that must mature as the novel proceeds. In the beginning, the events are told from the point of view of a young girl, the details she considers important and the ones she leaves out; as the novel progresses the narration matures, amplifies, ripens: we are witness to Cressida's growth into adulthood, and again, the details she shares versus the ones deemed unimportant tell us much about the character, about what is important to her and what her burdens of circumstance are, the burdens ones she can recognize as well as the ones she cannot.
The character of Cressida is simply brilliant, wonderful and real. She is so real, so compelling and vulnerable, that it hurts to read about her sometimes; you want to drag her from the book and shake her, make her understand what she has before her, what she can do with her life, and how she can escape from her mother's mistakes. You want to befriend her, know her better and know her always. She is a new great novelistic creation, tougher than old Jane Eyre, smart and mixed-up and pained in heart and soul, but still glowing, beating, pumping with possibility. Supported by the equally-compelling and complicated character of Mr. Harding (the neighbor), Cressida's story is enthralling. The beauty of the novel is that she will find her way into adulthood but it is not what you may have foreseen for her, it is not a fantasy ending but instead one firmly grounded in steps and missteps, and in possibility passed on from one generation to the next. Sometimes it takes more than one life to achieve a dream -- but it only takes one person's faith to get that dream started.
The Servants' Quarters is a great book.
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