It is
rare for me to put down a novel prior to reading the first twenty pages. The
threshold point of twenty pages is a feature of a rule established through experience
– if the novel has not ‘grabbed’ me by the 10% mark I turn to another novel.
Life is too short for a bad
novel.
However, The
Post-Birthday World had me searching for another novel
before the end of the second page.
The problem
was a simple one.
It was
there in the first paragraph.
First
paragraphs of novels play a very important role. One famous opening paragraph
brilliantly frames the whole of the novel. This priceless opening is from Pride and
Prejudice:
“It is a truth universally
acknowledged, that a single man
in possession of a good fortune, must be in
want of a wife.”
The first
paragraph of The Post-Birthday World is:
“What began as
coincidence had crystallized into tradition: on the sixth of July,
they would have dinner with
Ramsey Acton on his birthday.”
And the
problem is with a single word: “coincidence”. For, one recognises before page
two is over that there was no coincidence at all. There is instead a
contrivance.
The
contrivance of dining as a foursome.
The meal
enjoyed by two couples, arose through the scheming of the invitee. The invitee,
a married woman named Jude, found her husband poor dining company (page 2: “One-on-one
he had bored her silly”). The invitee could not bear dining with her
husband alone. The motive of dining as more than a couple lies in Jude’s sharing of
her husband’s fame: “Maybe Jude had loved dragging Ramsey out to impress
colleagues but was not sufficiently impressed on her own behalf.”
Unpacking
the distinction between coincidence and contrivance, I recognised:
>The effort of starting the tradition was deliberate.
The author identifies that on the part of the invitee: “Jude had seemed
driven to nail down a foursome so that her illustrator could meet her husband,
Ramsey”. The author also identifies the nonplussed manner of the invited
female of promoting the notion of the event to her male partner: “[Irina] Jude
wants me to meet her husband Raymond or something”. So, the initiating
event arose clumsily yet intentionally.
>In contrast, a dining tradition that would begin by
coincidence would most likely require a chance of meeting of the diners at the
same restaurant. Perhaps the coincidence would arise as two couples both
approached the same restaurant with individual bookings for tables of two. It
would not commence through any degree of effort.
>Any
element of coincidence is overridden by the invitee’s driving desire to have
another couple accompany her at the meal.
The
coincidence/contrivance distinction perhaps illustrates poverty of other
aspects of the novel – hence the ‘did not finish’. Why continue when other
clangers are likely to be found. The
Guardian’s review of the novel recognises the laboured nature of the
main male character’s fame; his snooker playing. The Guardian cleverly suggests
that: "the novel snookers itself through repetition".
Where
Pride and Prejudices opening paragraph sets the scene of the whole novel and
whets the appetite, The Post-Birthday World’s opening paragraph grinds.
Definitional
Coincidence: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.
Contrivance: the use of skill to create or bring about something, especially with a consequent effect of artificiality.
I found
the novel in a street library. I returned it to a different street library. A
neighbour may enjoy the novel better than me.
This post
links from my Goodreads account where I rated it one star.
Shalom,
Ozhamada
#goodreads #agreatread #books #streetlibrary #streetlibraryaustralia #streetlibraryadventure #loveyourlibrary #book #literature
