I managed at the last minute to catch online the session with
Jon McGregor
at this year's Edinburgh Book Fest . He is an author I have been
meaning to read yet never seemed to get round to him. He was not at all
like what I had imagined, younger ( should have done my homework),
somewhat hesitant in his words but clear so I concluded he thinks about
what is he saying. He spoke about this book which was published earlier
this year, about his trip to Antartica as art of his research for it,
his experience of teaching creative writing at the University of
Nottingham. He is one of the
Guardian's 10 writers to see live I was pleased I did, immediately fascinated by the book, went and
bought the audio and borrowed the ebook from my local library very
surprised to not find a waiting list for it. The audio version was read by
Matt BatesThe book starts of
with one old hand Robert "Doc" Wright and two novice youngsters post
docs Luke and Thomas arriving at a research station in Antartica. This
section is as gripping as any thriller as they are unexpectedly and
suddenly caught in a storm with Doc up a hll to provide persective for
Thomas' photographs, separated from them he returns to base and
***SPOILER ALERT ***suffers a stroke, Luke makes it back, Thomas does
not.
The second section transfers us to England, to Robert's
wife, Anna, how she finds out what has happened, her trip to the
hospital in Chile, their return home, the impact of the incident on her
life. Robert is trapped behind a barrier to the articulation of words.
How often have we ourselves said "we'd been lost for words", unabe to
explain or recant something. My own father, had several strokes, first
loosing the ability to communicate and then to move. Reading this
section I found myself thinking back to how my own mother must have been
in Anna's position, how on earth did she cope and to the unsaid
frustrations that must have been going on in my father's head as he
struggled to make himself understood. McGregor writes these very well,
quite realistically in my opinion.
The third section is in many
ways about bravery. Robert gets discharged and ends up going to group
sessions for asphasics which address communication through non standard
means such as movement, sound, strategies for communicating that
circumvent the word that cannot be found and said. Robert initially
resents and doesn't want to be at the group. Many would say he was brave
going of to the Antartic for months every year, that Anna was brave to
soldier on without him, bringing up their children, repairing their
house, having her own career, alone for long peroids of time. But this
section is about the bravery of tackling the loss of the ability to
undertake that most fundamental of human activities, namely to tell
stories, to tell another person what you had done in a day, to say how
you feel, to ask how they are, to respond to their stories all because
you have lost the ability to speak, and to make progress towards
communication.
This is a book that will stay with me for a long
time. I thought it was extremely well written, with an insteresting
construction of being part like a thriller, part an insight into how
people recover from brain injury and how it effects their family, from
mapping the terrain of the Antartic contenant to mapping the terrain of
recovery this book has exquisite word use, for example some of the
distorted word grouping that the group members say are rhythmic others
poetic as they grapple with the complexity of language, McGregor writes
it beautifully. I couldn't put the book down. Highly recommended.
