When art mirrors life

I wrote this post earlier and took it down… I felt somehow sad for Kit paying her father back for his long absence in the novel Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson that I show case below. But anyway for what its worth I am posting, I am only half way through the book :

I sometimes wonder if books choose us or whether they call out their name to us and we hear that call drawing us to just the right place at the right time. I find this happens to me a lot and I am always reading. This week I came across the English novelist Rupert Thomson, many accolades have been used to describe his writing and rich, inventive imagination : classy, brilliant, bold, astonishingly creative, gifted, original, dazzling, powerful just to name a few. I am currently reading what I think may be about his 9th novel which I just ‘happened’ upon at the library on Monday, it drew me in from the very beginning it is called Katherine Carlyle and is about a woman born using IVF who loses her mother to cancer when she is fifteen and then goes on to develop a troubled and difficult relationship with her father.

I was not aware the death of her mother was a central issue until I was a short way through the book and I was interested to do some reading on Thomson yesterday and I found out that his own mother died when he was around a similar age to his female heroine. I was also interested as the last novel I read also featured a female character who lost her own mother around a similar age.

I didn’t lose my own mother, rather my father however, the issues of emotional distance and abandonment and reaction patterns to them loom large in this book of Thomsons. Kit the central character goes on the run from Italy to Berlin and then Warsaw in the novel, all places I believe Thomson has lived. I just sat and read the following letter which Kit writes to her father when she seduce him to travel to Berlin from Italy to meet her at a cafe, only to disappear with the breath of the wind, leaving the letter with a waitress.

I’m enjoying the book so much and with no one much to share about it with I wanted to write a post about Thomson as I adore what others have called his ‘cinematic’ writing style and maybe some readers may too. Some paragraphs and sentences in this particular novel are pure poetry and I have another book lined up to read which I just picked up from the library.

I will end the post with this excerpt from Kit’s letter to her father. when I read it I thought more of my own Mum’s emotional absence and the thought came to me “why did you have me, if you didn’t want to spend any time with me.” This was how it was when I was young and parenting seemed to be pretty low on the priority of parental concerns, I have more compassion now for my Mum and see its not all about me, but never the less as many know it has made it hard to me to sustain close, loving relationships with others. So in this case by some weird case of synchronicity in picking up and reading this book it is a kind of weird case of art mirroring life. Some lines in this particular letter of Kit’s really resonated with me.

You’ll have noticed by now that I’m not there. It’s not because I’m late. It’s because I’m not coming. I’m not even in Berlin any more, I left days ago.

I imagine you looking up after reading those last… paragraphs and rubbing the back of your neck like you always do when you’re annoyed. I don’t blame you for being annoyed. Please don’t think it’s a wasted trip though. There are things I need you to hear, and this is the only way to get your attention.

When I was growing up, you spent a lot of time away from home, and even though I missed you I got used to it. Normal’s whatever happens – when you’re a child, anyway. And you have to live for yourself – we all do – or you risk losing sight of who you are. Isn’t it also true that you avoided me, though? Or was that only later?

After Mum died, you certainly went missing. You left me with relatives, the parent’s of my friends, au pairs. They were nice enough, but they weren’t you. And even when you were there, you weren’t there. I know you were grieving, but still. You seemed to find it hard to be at home. Was it because I reminded you of her? Maybe you blamed me for the whole thing. Because in a sense I was responsible. If she hadn’t had a child, she would still be alive. There’d still be the two of you. I know we never really talked about her death, but sometime I imagine us having an argument and that’s what you always say. Why her? Why not you? Because if you had to chose between us I know you wouldn’t have chosen me.

.. Yes, you wanted her, not me. But she wanted me. So when I lost her I lost everything. Is that fair? If so, I’m sorry. It’s how I feel, that’s all. Its how I’ve always felt. Some things you always thought were solid turn out to be made of fucking tissue paper and rubber bands. It’s not until you touch them that you find out. Not until they fall apart in your hands.

I’m not coming home, Dad. I’m going in the opposite direction, returning to something I’m used to. Something that makes sense to me. I don’t expect you to understand that.

I’m not even sure you are reading this.

Are you reading this?

Your daughter,

Kit.