Maggie O’Farrell won the Costa (formerly
Whitbread) award for her novel The Hand that First Held Mine. This,
O’Farrell’s fifth novel, roughly follows the same format of her previous four
novels: characters haunted by their past, of which they may not be consciously
aware to begin with, but the past begins to assert itself via a series of
apparently chance happenings until the day of revelation arrives, which turns
the protagonist’s world upside down.
The story of The Hand that First Held Mine
takes place in two time frames: the past and the present. The past is the 1950s
London, and the reader is introduced to the feisty Lexie Sinclair, who leaves
her stifling home in rural Devon and arrives in London to follow her dreams.
She starts working in a departmental store but is soon swept off her feet by
the dashing Innes Kent who is the owner and editor of a magazine that has
literary pretensions. It is only a matter of time before Lexie joins the staff
in Innes’s magazine (where she learns the ropes) and Innes in his bed. Innes
and Lexie start a passionate affair, and the knowledge that he is unhappily
married to Gloria (though living separately) and has a daughter named Margot
(who he believes might not be his) does nothing to lessen Lexie’s ardour. Then
Innes dies unexpectedly, and Gloria, who is Innes’s legal next of kin, closes
down the magazine. Lexie’s friends at Innes’s magazine help her to find another
job, as a reporter. In the course of her work Lexie meets the handsome but
feckless BBC reporter, Felix. Over the next few years Lexie and Felix have an on-again-off-again
relationship. Lexie has a son from Felix whom she names Theodore or Theo. Felix
is temperamentally unsuited for, and therefore unable to, maintain a monogamous
relationship. The proverbial last straw for Lexie comes when Felix sleeps with
Margot with whom Lexie’s relationship over the years has been frosty, to put it
mildly. Felix then allows himself to be unhappily married to Margot while Lexie
starts a tentative relationship with another married man, a biographer whom she
meets when she interviews a reclusive Irish painter.
In the present we meet a couple: Elina and
Ted who have recently had a baby. Elina is half Finish half Scottish while Ted
is English. Elina is an artist while Ted works as a film editor. When their
story opens Elina is struggling with postnatal blues and is having a great
difficulty in remembering things and faces. This understandably is a great
source of concern for Ted. Ted’s overbearing mother with incurable busybody tendencies
and once-handsome-and-still-slightly-lecherous father are of little practical
assistance. Into the bargain Elina is plagued by the suspicion that her
mother-in-law does not like her much. Gradually Elina’s mood and memory improve
and she is better able to look after herself and the baby, and can occasionally
muster up enough energy to make a trip to her ‘studio’ (a shed at the end of
the garden) to paint. It would appear though that it is Ted who is now having
problems of memory—of a type that is different from one Elina suffered soon
after giving birth. Whereas Elina had difficulty in remembering—in other words
she forgot—, Ted is from time to time has recollections—images of places, heard
conversations—that he has great difficulties in putting a context to. These
snippets of recollected events are sudden in their onset and overwhelming in
their nature. The puzzle for Ted—and hence the distress—is that until these
memories began to force themselves, abruptly and acutely, on his conscious
being, they were completely subterranean. And what he remembers or sees in
front of his mind’s eye makes no sense to him, as these recollections do not
fit in with his conscious memory of past events; nor do they tally with what
his parents have told him about his childhood.
The Hand that First Held Mine is a haunting and moving tale of how past can’t be repressed
indefinitely and is only waiting to claim what is its due. The novel is
essentially two stories, set in different times, told in alternate chapters.
The link between the two segments of the plot is initially unclear. However, as
the story unfolds the reader becomes aware that the two stories, and the
characters within them, are linked. The reader makes this connection roughly
half-way through the novel. It then remains to be seen in what way the events
and people are connected. Like a consummate conjurer O’Farrell, step by tiny
step—revealing just enough in each chapter—, brings the reader to a gradual
understanding of what is happening to Ted as he struggles to make sense of what
is happening to him.
O’Farrell creates an emotional ambience of
suspense, raising the reader’s expectations and eagerness to find out what is
going on. The resolution (for the reader) happens in steps, and, when the final
piece in the jig-saw falls in place there is a palpable sense of relief. The
novel is a page-turner.
However, to describe The Hand that First Held Mine
only as a suspense drama would be to do injustice to the novel. The novel is
also about emotional bonds between a parent and a child. There are passages of
incredible pathos in the novel, yet it is to O’Farrell’s credit that at no
stage does she allow the narrative to sink into saccharine, hyperbolic
sentiments, which would have been a risk given the plot. It would be impossible
for anyone who has been a parent not be moved by the feelings coming out of the
pages which (to paraphrase L.P. Hartley) gather around you like a mist; its
shape can be guessed at as it approaches, but not when it is directly on you.
O’Farrell has managed the perfect balance of emotions and sensations.
O’Farrell describes the travails and
tribulations of parenthood with great acuity and understanding. The only
(slightly) discordant note—because, though described at great length in at the
beginning of the novel, it plays no further part in the plot—is the post-partum
memory difficulties experienced by Elina. In an interview she gave at the time
of the publication of the novel, O’Farrell said that she herself suffered from
a memory disturbance after the birth of her second child, to the extent that
the date of publication of the novel had to be postponed. The forgetfulness,
mercifully, was temporary; one guesses that the experience must have been so
dramatic for O’Farrell that she felt compelled to include it in the novel,
where at best it is a red herring.
A word about O’Farrell’s prose. It has a
deceptive seduction to it. In sentence after immaculately constructed sentence,
the story of this adroitly plotted novel unfolds for the reader. For the first
1/3rd of the novel, the story of Lexie Sinclair is the more
appealing, more dramatic and faster moving. O’Farrell has created a very
convincing milieu of the 1950s Soho. (In an interview she said that she did
research to get the tone of this section of the novel right.) The present day
story of Elina and Ted, by contrast, is slow to get off the post; however,
slowly it gathers momentum and holds the reader’s attention. When a novel
comprises two stories which run in parallel, it is not easy to get the balance
exactly right, but O’Farrell has managed this difficult feat.
The Hand that First Held Mine is the second O’Farrell novel I have read. Don’t be put of by its
corny sounding title; it is a superb read.
