Books
Put on by cunning
by Nicholas Reid
Fiona Farrell is up to something special in Limestone.
The matter of narrative
voice can be a bit of a
bother to some of us
readers. If a novel is
written solely in the first person,
we know nowadays that the narrator
is unreliable and has to be
regarded with a degree of scepticism.
But if there are various narrative
voices, then the author is
seeking to create a different sort
of effect.
Limestone is written in two separate
narrative voices, and Fiona
Farrell is up to something special,
because each voice centres on the
same character.
Clare Lacey is an art historian
from the University of Canterbury,
aged about 50, en route
to an academic conference in
Ireland. As she heads for Cork
and ruminates on the paper she
means to give, she has another
agenda. She wants to find out
what became of her Irish father.
He walked out on her family and
their modest Oamaru home when
she was a little girl.
When Clare thinks about the
more distant past and re-creates
her childhood, Limestone is in the
first person. But “present” events
are in the third person, as is the
more recent past. Chapters alternate
between these two voices, with separate
typefaces in the chapter headings to
point up the duality.
There’s an implied split in Clare’s consciousness,
a radical distinction between
her past and her present. But there’s also
a depth of perspective that couldn’t be
created by one narrative voice alone.
The first-person narrator may sometimes
be a little unreliable. At one point,
Clare rages against “coupledom”, yet
to the very end she is clearly in need of
somebody to share her life. So there’s
some self-deception in the mix. But the
alternate third-person voice gives her
solidity and endorses much that she says.
She isn’t all that unreliable after all, and
reality is presented in its layered complexity.
Farrell’s narrative strategies are wily
ones. Limestone is not an arbitrary
series of events. Nor is it an unreflective
“quest”, even as Clare gets nearer to her
Irish goal. Early in the novel, a wickedly
funny (and accurate) response to The
Lord of the Rings shows what the
author (or the narrator?) thinks of
conventional “quest” stories. This
tale has a tight controlling intelligence
behind it, and what seems
random reflection or digression
falls into its place as the pattern is
revealed.
Yet Farrell’s powers of description
are so strong and her details so
precise that it’s easy to linger over
the novel’s individual episodes.
To savour them. The opinionated
loudmouth whom Clare has
to endure in the seat next to her
on a long-haul flight. The bitcheries
and pecking order at academic
conferences, with show-off
younger lecturers trying to make
their mark. The real Irish pub
night, which stands in contrast
to the version of Ireland sold to
tourists. And, most vividly, those
childhood scenes in New Zealand
in the late 1950s and early 60s,
with the child observing clearly
but not always understanding;
experiencing and rejecting a
child’s version of Catholicism;
and once inadvertently causing
great unhappiness.
Then, of course, there is Dad
Building a limestone wall.
It could be that rather too many
narrative revelations come in the
last few chapters. It could be that
the central image of limestone,
building itself up from millions
of microscopic creatures, doesn’t
quite work as the intended idea
of human solidarity or philosophical
recompense for botched
human relationships. But these
are quibbles.
This is a cunningly contrived, beautifully
written and wonderfully readable
novel. Not only does it say much about
that peculiar New Zealand unease over
ancestral roots, those nagging questions
of identity, but page for page it has the
type of prose that can only be written
by somebody who knows exactly what
effects she means to create and
exactly how to create them. A
novelist at the top of her form, in
other words.
LIMESTONE, by Fiona Farrell
(Vintage, $29.99).
