{"id":3637,"date":"2013-02-01T07:10:57","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T07:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3637"},"modified":"2013-02-02T07:16:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-02T07:16:37","slug":"in-the-gold-of-time-by-claudie-gallay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=3637","title":{"rendered":"In the Gold of Time by Claudie Gallay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Alison Anderson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by MacLehose Press 10\u00a0 January 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The relationship between a father of seven-year-old twins and Alice Berthier, an elderly woman who lives with her mute sister, Clemence, begins when he leaves a bag of strawberries behind after a chance meeting.<\/p>\n

Staying for the summer at the family\u2019s holiday home in Normandy, the nameless narrator becomes drawn into the world of Alice through her off-beat questions \u2013 \u2018Wouldn\u2019t you like to have an ocean named after you?\u2019 \u2013 and gradual revelations of the past, sparked by a collection of sacred ceremonial masks once belonging to the Hopi, a tribe of Native Americans from Arizona, and said to contain their spirit.<\/p>\n

In a breathless, telegraphic style – playing on the passing of time, and memories lost and regained \u2013 \u00a0the narrative moves between the contemporary family\u2019s summer by the sea near Dieppe and the story related by Alice, who visited Arizona as a child with her father, a photographer, who knew Andre Breton and other such notables of the age.<\/p>\n

Alice starts to confer attention on her new companion, commenting on his appearance, sleeping habits, and marriage as he spends increasing amount of time with her, while his wife, Anna, becomes more distant.<\/p>\n

\u2018Who is that woman you\u2019re seeing?\u2019 Anna asks. \u2018I don\u2019t want to know her name. Just what it is that she gives you that I don\u2019t.\u2019<\/p>\n

A woman of silences and stubbornness, Alice \u2013 \u2018Sometimes I kill them,\u2019 she says of spiders, \u2018but today I don\u2019t feel like it. It\u2019s because you\u2019re here, it\u2019s your presence\u2019 \u2013 \u00a0is tricky but the truth about the past, and her father\u2019s interaction with the tribal Sun Chief, are gradually revealed.<\/p>\n

The book flits along, with Alice revisiting beginnings in an attempt to fill the \u2018the vastness of the unnameable\u2019, while the narrator struggles to understand the gaps in his marriage.<\/p>\n

Their relationship has the fitful closeness of burgeoning lovers \u2013 \u2018I feel like killing you when you\u2019re like this,\u2019 she tells him \u2013 in an atmosphere laced with food and secrets and the power of speaking out.<\/p>\n

Erratic and filmic, threaded with art and literature, the contemporary strand of this novel seems the most effective – the exchange of emotion and information between different generations, an elderly woman recalling her youth and a modern-day father learning how to live by returning to the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/p>\n

The relationship between a father of seven-year-old twins and Alice Berthier, an elderly woman who lives with her mute sister, Clemence, begins when he leaves a bag of strawberries behind after a chance meeting. Staying for the summer at the family\u2019s holiday home in Normandy, the nameless narrator becomes drawn into the world of Alice through her off-beat questions \u2013 \u2018Wouldn\u2019t you like to have an ocean named after you?\u2019 \u2013 and gradual revelations of the past, sparked by a collection of sacred ceremonial masks once belonging to the Hopi, a tribe of Native Americans from Arizona, and said to contain their spirit.[…] 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":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637","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=3637"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3646,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions\/3646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}