The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (33 page)

But in emotional terms, his world is rich. For here, with everything else taken away, the extraordinary love that exists between a father and a son is revealed in its purest, most primal form, in which the only thing that matters is making sure the boy is “all right.” If the boy dies, the man knows that he will want to die too. For what is the essence of fatherhood if not the hope for the next generation?

The novel leaves us on this note of hope. Celebrate your fatherhood, then, and along the way pick up the habit of absolute honesty that exists between these two characters. Observe the trust between them, the son’s need for reassurance that they’re the “good guys,” that they “carry the fire”; his need to see that his father will never break a promise, never leave him, and will always tell him the truth if he asks—except, perhaps, if they’re dying. If honesty is there, and love, a firm set of moral principles and a dependable presence, you can’t go wrong.

And if you do, well, you can’t go as horribly wrong as Joseph Hooper does when he brings Helena Kingshaw and her son, Charles, to live in his house. We smell a parenting rat straightaway, as Joseph never loved the ugly house he inherited from his own father, along with the collection of moths that made the old man a celebrity in his dusty field. And he clearly has not earned the respect of his son, Edmund, either. If only he were older, Joseph muses, and he could blame adolescence for the boy’s recalcitrance . . . But he had left all the child rearing up to his late wife. It is a mark of his desperation that he has asked Helena to come live with them as a housekeeper. Her son is almost the same age as Edmund, and both adults assume the boys will grow to love each other as brothers.

They do not count on the deep-rooted dagger of ice that has already established itself in Edmund’s chest. From the moment “Kingshaw” steps foot in his house, Edmund does his absolute best to cow him, scaring him with ghost stories and undermining him in every way he can. When the
boys spend a night lost together in the woods, the tables seem to turn, as Kingshaw is more at home in the natural element, able to light a fire and reassure Edmund when he is scared of the dark. Edmund seems appreciative of this undeserved consideration, but the moment they are rescued, he reverts to type. “It was Kingshaw, it was Kingshaw, he pushed me in the water,” he accuses. Kingshaw defends himself, but his mother takes her host’s side; she has marital designs on Mr. Hooper and doesn’t want to jeopardize things by suggesting his son’s a liar.

Mrs. Kingshaw, unforgivably, lacks motherly intuition and indeed wisdom of any sort—failing even to notice when her son is locked in a concrete shed for several hours. But we lay the ultimate blame for the chilling events that follow at Joseph’s door. By neglecting his son after the death of his wife, he has created the monster that Edmund, by sheer lack of love and attention, has become, and we hereby hold Joseph Hooper up as one of the worst fathers in literature. Anyone unfortunate enough to be in possession of such a father—or indeed a mother like Mrs. Kingshaw—should urgently consult our cure for Abandonment.

As this agonizing novel speeds toward its terrible finale, let it teach you not to be too hard on yourself. The path of parenthood is already strewn with guilt; don’t let self-criticism trip you up along the way. Women are often reassured that there’s “perfect” and “good enough”—and “good enough” is often preferable. It’s time men heard the message too. Even if you occasionally burn the beans, forget the gym kit, or catch your child experimenting with the contents of the medicine cabinet, allow yourself a pat on the back every so often for not being a Mr. Hooper. And remember that how-to manual,
The Road
. Keep it simple: love and honest communication are all you need.

See also:
Children requiring attention, too many
•
Single parent, being a
•
Trapped by children

Birdsong

SEBASTIAN FAULKS

N
o more late nights drinking. No more lazy Sundays with the newspaper and coffee till noon. No more undivided devotion of girlfriend/wife/partner/dog/mother. No more being able to say, without guilt, “Just off for a weekend with the boys. See you on Sunday night.”

It’s easier for women. As soon as they’re pregnant, they start to be changed not just physically but emotionally by the new life that’s growing inside them. This is what happens to Isabelle in
Birdsong
, Sebastian Faulks’s tear-jerking World War I epic. She realizes she is carrying Stephen’s child soon after they run away together from Isabelle’s unhappy marriage and almost immediately discovers a hitherto unnoticed “starving” desire for a child. But in her (perhaps hormonal) confusion, Isabelle decides not only not to tell Stephen about it, but she abandons him and runs to her sister Jeanne instead.

The next time we see Stephen—emotionally shut down and not having touched a woman for seven years—he is in charge of a platoon in the trenches of the Somme. As they struggle to cope with unimaginable daily horrors, and the possibility of death at any moment, the men send and receive letters from home. We become very aware of which of them have children and which do not as, rightly or wrongly, Faulks uses the existence of children in these men’s lives to elicit our greater sympathy. There is Wilkinson, newly married and with a baby on the way, who dies a horrible frontline death. And there is the good-humored Jack Firebrace, who gets word from his wife that his son John is in the hospital dangerously ill with diphtheria. Jack asks his lieutenant—Stephen—whether he has children himself. “No,” comes Stephen’s reply. But we, of course, know that he does.

We may or may not approve of Faulks differentiating between one man and another in this way, but nevertheless a world opens up in this novel in which those with children differ from those without. And we cannot help feeling that Stephen, a father without knowing it, loses out desperately by his ignorance of his and Isabelle’s child. If he were aware of being a father, how might he be different? He does not have Jack shot, but neither is he given hope in the dark days of war by the existence of his child in the way that others are. The novel ends with a birth, one that brings its father such a burst of unexpected joy that he rushes outside and hurls conkers into the air.

If you’re an expectant father feeling nothing but bewilderment and a vague sense of dread at the apocalypse lying ahead, this novel’s for you. If you’re stepping crablike around the issue of commitment and marriage, this one’s for you too. We know of many male partners who confess to feeling not a jot of fatherly love for the embryo they’ve sired while it’s still in the womb, only to fall hopelessly in love the moment the child is born. Journey with Stephen and decide for yourself: a narrow escape, or a lost chance to experience an extra dimension to life?

See also:
Commitment, fear of

See:
Shelf, fear of being left on the

See:
Commitment, fear of

See:
Confrontation, fear of

See:
Dinner parties, fear of

See:
Death, fear of

See:
Tax return, fear of doing

See:
Finishing, fear of

See:
Flying, fear of

See:
Sci-fi, fear of

See:
Starting, fear of

See:
Violence, fear of

White Lightning
JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT

Disgrace
J. M. COETZEE

Spending
MARY GORDON

The Diaries of Jane Somers
DORIS LESSING

The Invisible Bridge
JULIE ORRINGER

The Tenderness of Wolves
STEF PENNEY

The Satanic Verses
SALMAN RUSHDIE

The Stone Diaries
CAROL SHIELDS

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
ANNE TYLER

Young Hearts Crying
RICHARD YATES

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

AGATHA CHRISTIE