{"id":2147,"date":"2012-11-01T06:51:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T06:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2147"},"modified":"2012-11-13T21:03:20","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T21:03:20","slug":"rook-by-jane-rusbridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2147","title":{"rendered":"Rook by Jane Rusbridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Bloomsbury 2 August 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

352pp, paperback, \u00a312.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Rachel Hore<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Cledgy; sleech; slommocky\u2019. <\/em>I read Jane Rusbridge\u2019s new novel whilst camping in torrential rain on the other side of the estuary to Bosham, where it\u2019s set, and the squelchy sounds of these old Sussex words for mud, which one of her characters mulls over, conveyed all too accurately to me the pungent, marshy landscape. A powerful sense of place is just one quality of Rusbridge\u2019s writing that marks it as above ordinary.\u00a0 Bosham, near Chichester, is believed to be the spot where King Cnut famously shamed his fawning courtiers by demonstrating that he couldn\u2019t hold back the waves.\u00a0 A grave inside the church cradles the bones of his illegitimate eight-year-old daughter. This book is as richly textured with history as the ancient layers of the estuary mud.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s to her rambling childhood home, Creek House, that a young woman named Nora has returned. Her international career as a virtuoso cellist has ended abruptly, and the reasons for this form the story\u2019s central mystery. As Nora jogs in the early morning half-light, when \u2018a mist ghosts the land\u2019, she\u2019s visited by memories of a passionate man with gold-flecked eyes. Whilst practising the cello, teaching the instrument to local schoolchildren, or playing to the residents of the old folks\u2019 home, the magic of music threatens to overwhelm her with sorrow.\u00a0 The music and the man, her mentor, were her life and she cannot let them go, nor can she forget a terrible mistake she has made.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At Creek House she tries to get along with her ageing mother, Ada, who drifts about in a haze of alcohol and French cigarettes, glamourizing a rackety past. The burden of the narrative shifts between mother and daughter, but whilst there\u2019s definitely a coherent storyline, this is not a novel about events particularly, rather about the characters\u2019 interior lives, concerning revelations and shifts in perspective.\u00a0 Rusbridge works by building layers of their thoughts, reactions and memories in supple, sensuous prose.\u00a0 Episodes from past and present slip in and out of focus so readily that the reader sometimes has to turn back a page to be sure of chronology.<\/p>\n

In her version of Bosham the author convincingly presents a traditional community that\u2019s evolving: Harry, Ava\u2019s handyman, is a painter and free spirit; Nora\u2019s pal Evie, a scatter-brained young mother married to a Greek, is preparing to open a new caf\u00e9;\u00a0 the schoolmistressy local historian, Miss Macleod, becomes one of Nora\u2019s pupils; the wife of the vicar, Steve, has upped sticks, leaving him managing their three children.\u00a0 A gang of destructive teenage tearaways casts a menacing air.<\/p>\n

This semi-rural backwater is stirred up by a modern invader. Jonny, a too-charming Londoner with a voice like treacle, is determined to make a television programme about Cnut\u2019s little drowned princess. He also applies to exhume a second tomb in the church, once excavated by Nora\u2019s archaeologist father, which contains the headless body of a Saxon warrior, around whose identity there is much excited speculation.\u00a0 The novel is bookended by tantalizing snatches of scenes from the Saxon era, which link to Rook<\/em>\u2019s themes of grief and loss, of the clutching power of the past. Somehow I wanted more of these, but perhaps that would have turned it into a different kind of book.<\/p>\n

As for the novel\u2019s title, Nora finds a half-dead fledging in a ditch and, with Harry\u2019s help, nurses it back to rude, cantankerous health.\u00a0 Rook might be viewed as a powerful metaphor for Nora\u2019s difficulties, but he\u2019s a strong character in his own right, unsentimentally evoked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rusbridge\u2019s fine perceptions of the natural world, the way her writing is steeped in the landscape, history and culture of West Sussex, help define her as a talented new regional voice. Rook<\/em> makes me want to seek out her acclaimed first novel, The Devil\u2019s Music<\/em>, set in the 1950s, but I\u2019m hoping this time I\u2019ll learn some old Sussex words for sunshine!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Rachel Hore<\/p>\n

It\u2019s to her rambling childhood home, Creek House, that a young woman named Nora has returned. Her international career as a virtuoso cellist has ended abruptly, and the reasons for this form the story\u2019s central mystery. As Nora jogs in the early morning half-light, when \u2018a mist ghosts the land\u2019, she\u2019s visited by memories of a passionate man with gold-flecked eyes. Whilst practising the cello, teaching the instrument to local schoolchildren, or playing to the residents of the old folks\u2019 home, the magic of music threatens to overwhelm her with sorrow. The music and the man, her mentor, were her life and she cannot let them go, nor can she forget a terrible mistake she has made.[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2147"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3167,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}