The title of The Illuminations has so many meanings in this book: it is a festival in Blackpool, England in which strings of white lights are illuminated all over the resort town to mark the end of the summer season; it refers to photographic techniques (and especially how chemicals can be used to fudge the realism of images); it can mean the tracer fire used in combat to mark an enemy's position; and it can mean an epiphany – whether a sudden realisation of one's own failings or moments of lucidity for someone with worsening dementia. It would almost feel too clever to use this title for a book that covers all of these topics if it wasn't so very well written; as it stands, this is a very illuminating novel.
The Illuminations jumps between multiple points-of-view (sometimes even within a single paragraph), and is divided into alternating sections as it follows Anne Quirk – an old Canadian-Scottish woman with dementia, a fascinating past, and hidden secrets – and Luke Campbell – Anne's grandson, a Captain in the British Army, currently deployed in Afghanistan. In her youth, Anne was a noted photographer, and from the time Luke was a child, his gran had recognised the boy's potential to see the world as she did – deeply – and she took on his early education: collecting shells and sea plates together for their Dickensian “conchological cabinet”; reading the same novels throughout his school years; or advising him:
“The colour red doesn't actually exist. It only exists as an idea in your head. Always remember that. You create it yourself when your imagination meets the light.”Light is everywhere in this book, as is the notion that reality is created within our own heads. As the book begins, Anne is in a seniors' independent living facility, and as her dementia worsens, her neighbour Maureen begins to take care of Anne so she won't need to be moved to an actual nursing home. At sixty-eight, Maureen is the youngest resident in the facility, and by assuming small responsibilities (offering to buy the daily milk, vacuuming the common areas, being a busybody in Anne's life), Maureen is the happiest she has ever been in her a life (a fact she refuses to confess to her children because she finds it more enjoyable to pretend to be miserable). Sometimes Anne can carry on an intelligible conversation, and sometimes she mixes up people and the era she's in (I shouldn't even mention the ceramic rabbit Anne wants Maureen to cook for, but it does come up again later):
(Anne) appeared to be trying to climb out of herself before it was too late. Whatever vessel Anne had sailed in all her life, it began to drift and that was the start of it all. She rolled into a darkness where everything old was suddenly new, and when she returned to the surface her life's materials were bobbing up around her.On the other side of the world, Luke – who joined the army in order to “find” his own father (a British soldier who died while policing “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland when Luke was a boy) – is engaged in a war he's not certain he believes in any longer. These sections in Afghanistan were fascinating and exciting, and more than anything, they just felt so real: the oppressive heat and the boredom of spending longs hours in the belly of an armoured vehicle, interrupted by scenes of panic-inducing danger, surrounded by hard-talking kid-soldiers who are itching to see real combat. The platoon leader Major Scallion notes:
“You all think you know the terrain 'cause you've seen it playing video games.” Half his face lit up as he smoked the joint and sniggered. “But don't give me points man; give me body count any day.”After an interesting observation that video games today are the modern army's most effective recruiting tool (and noting that the operating controls in new American tanks are exactly like videogame joysticks – how backwards is that?), we see a scene where Scullion and Luke take a sight-seeing trip, with two jeeps full of soldiers smoking confiscated Afghan weed, blaring death metal from their stereos, racing past sand-choked poppy farms in a cloud of dust and noise: this felt like it belonged in Mad Max, but I 100% believe this happens out there. The end of this trip and its consequences eventually cause Luke to lose faith in his mission, nationalism, and his life's purpose.
In the end, Luke returns to Scotland and decides to take his gran on a trip to Blackpool – the place where Anne had met his grandfather Harry – in order to help her remember her happiest times; in order to help him forget Afghanistan. Along the way, we meet Anne's daughter (Luke's mother) April, and Maureen's family, and consistently, we see people who don't believe they were loved enough, but who can't bring themselves to give more than they've received. This is a book about memory and keeping people alive through the stories we tell (even if these are just lies we tell ourselves – even photos can be altered to match our visions of reality) and it's a book about the role we must each play in forming our own character. At times exciting and funny and thought-provoking, The Illuminations is a perfect mix of story and craft, a knockout read.
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| Blackpool Illuminations, 2014 |
Man Booker Longlist 2015:
Bill Clegg - Did You Ever Have a Family
Anne Enright - The Green Road
Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings
Laila Lalami - The Moor's Account
Tom McCarthy - Satin Island
Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen
Andrew O’Hagan - The Illuminations
Marilynne Robinso - Lila
Anuradha Roy - Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways
Anna Smaill - The Chimes
Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread
Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life
I was really pleased that A Brief History of Seven Killings took the prize; even more pleased that it didn't go to A Little Life as seemed inevitable.
