His daughter was like someone from another age, he thought, or someone – a less kind thought – from a cult or family of religious extremists. He watched her jaw setting when he tried gently to argue with her. She was immovable. I believe, she said, in fate.
To introduce Everything Under, I think it's best to let Daisy Johnson herself explain her inspiration, from her Man Booker Prize interview:
The seed for Everything Under was a Greek Myth that I’d wanted to write a retelling of for a long time. It was the challenge that first drew me to it. It’s a myth that I wasn’t sure would translate to contemporary times and I was excited to try. Though the seed was there from the start the novel is unrecognisable from those early drafts. It only really became the book it is today after a trip along the winding rivers of Oxford on a canal boat which I knew instantly was the place these characters would live.And that's everything this book is: A modern retelling of a classic myth – which acts as a constraint on characters, forcing them to be bound by fate and behave in ways that don't quite seem believable in our day – set primarily in lushly described rivers and canals, exploring a difficult relationship between mothers and daughters, and throwing in thoughts on words and language (which, along with family influences, are presumably the “everything under” of the title). The myth is mashed up, too, with a fairytale – the main character is named Gretel (sometimes called Hansel while growing up), who is abandoned in the wild by her mother, there are a couple of references to “following breadcrumbs”, and when her mother gets old and is suffering from dementia, she even puts her hands in a burning oven a couple of times “to see if it's hot enough”. Reading this book felt like a special experience in the moment – timelines and perspectives are just confusing enough to give the feeling of a compelling mystery (although recognising which myth is being retold makes the experience more creepily inevitable than thrilling) – and Johnson certainly has a gift for the nature writing (and while I kept watching for a perfect passage in order to quote it, I never did end up finding the “right” one; maybe not so perfect?). And the Bonak – the monster (or is it a canal thief?) that was conjured by Gretel's mother and stalks them throughout – lends a truly eerie edge to this world, whether real or not:
It was only, also, in the later drafts that the mother and daughter relationship became so central. Once it was there it became clear this was what the book was really about. I wanted to write about women who are mothers and daughters and who find it difficult to sit within those roles. I wanted to write about the impact of family on the people we become when we grow up. I also wanted to write about language and how the language our family speak to us in a way makes us the people we are.
Again and again I go back to the idea that our thoughts and actions are determined by the language that lives in our minds. That perhaps nothing could have happened except that which did. Effing along, sheesh time, harpiedoodle, sprung, messin, Bonak. Bonak, Bonak, Bonak. Words like breadcrumbs. As if all along Bonak didn’t mean what we were afraid of, what was in the water, but watch out; this is what is coming down the river.Riddles and jigsaw puzzles, myths and folklore, working as a lexicographer as others lose language to dementia, the blind leading the lame, foundlings and gender fluidity: there is so much going on in this book that feels so meta, but in the end, I don't know if it was meaningful. To have this inventive and moody writing employed to strictly retell the details of a classic myth felt like a disconnect; as though Johnson wrote herself into a corner and had no choice but to follow Sophocles out again (which led to plot points which I simply didn't believe; family and language might predetermine some of a person's behaviours, but Fate does not). I did like everything about Gretel and her mother (they lived isolated in a canal boat for Gretel's early years, with the mother shaping the girl's reality with her stories and made up vocabulary):
I understood suddenly what you had done by creating your own language and teaching it to me. We were aliens. We were like the last people on earth. If, in any sense, language determined how we thought then I could never have been any other way than the way I am. And the language I grew up speaking was one no one else spoke. So I was always going to be isolated, lonely, uncomfortable in the presence of others. It was in my language. It was in the language you gave me.Although an extreme case, we're all made alien to others by the families we are raised in (I remember the first time I ate dinner at a friend's house and thinking, “This isn't spaghetti!” because her Italian Mom didn't sweeten her sauce with Campbell's tomato soup like my Mom did), and it's interesting that as the book begins, Gretel has finally found her mother again but now must play the caregiving role. However, these themes would have been much more interesting if Everything Under wasn't also retelling the myth; this concept leads the narrative to some noncredible places. Overall, I think that this is an intriguing debut from a young writer and I would be both interested in reading her earlier book of short stories and watching for whatever she comes up with next. But should it win the Booker? I really think it lacks the literary heft and maturity; a solid three and a half stars, rounded down against the shortlist.
Man Booker Longlist 2018:
Snap by Belinda Bauer
Milkman by Anna Burns
Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
In Our Mad And Furious City by Guy Gunaratne
Everything Under by Daisy Johnson
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Long Take by Robin Robertson
Normal People by Sally Rooney
From A Low And Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan
I just barely squeaked in reading the Man Booker Prize shortlist this year - after having to order half the titles from England - and I really don't know if any of them stand out to me as "a real Booker winner to stand the test of time". In order purely of my own reading enjoyment, I'd rank the shortlist:
The Long Take
Washington Black
The Mars Room
Everything Under
The Overstory
Milkman
The Long Take
Washington Black
The Mars Room
Everything Under
The Overstory
Milkman
* The prize was eventually won by Milkman, my least favourite of the shortlist, so what do I know? *
