WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2006
(www.evesalexandria.typepad.com/eves_alexandria/2006/08/mothers_milk_bo.html)
Mother's Milk - Booker Longlist 2006, #1
ÔÒWhat else is there to do but read too much into things?Ó said
Patrick breezily. ÒWhat a poor, thin, dull world weÕd live in if we didnÕt.
Besides, is it possible? ThereÕs always more meaning than we can lay our hands
on.ÓÕ
At some point, in what sounds
like a distinctly chequered life-thus-far, Edward
St Aubyn must have swallowed the entire psychoanalytical canon. He
loves to Òread too much into thingsÓ; he revels in psychologies. From Freud
through to Lacan, from the oedipal complex to oral fixation to the Òmirror
stageÓ, itÕs all here in his most recent Booker long-listed novel MotherÕs Milk.
The title says it all. Its plain surface meaning sets us up for a narrative
about parenting and childhood, while its sub-textual Freudian connotations
suggest substance abuse and emotional dependency not to mention regression and
a poverty of the self. And you might remember that when I mused on the Booker a
while ago I feared that the things on the cover of my hardback were slices of
breast? Well, the sleeve assures me theyÕre actually figsÉbut I remain
convinced theyÕre meant to evoke breasts, cross-sectioned and rosy with
mammary glands. Surface = figs; sub-image = dissected flesh. Such
double-layered-ness thoroughly pervades the novel, so much so that sometimes I
struggled to find a comfortable level at which to read.
Ostensibly, it is the simple
story of the Melrose family – Patrick, a decaying alcoholic, Mary, his
self-abnegating wife and their children, the precocious Robert, aged five, and
the oblivious baby Thomas – told over the course of four summer holidays between
2000 and 2003. Each year the Melroses spend their long August at Saint-Nazaire,
PatrickÕs mothersÕ idyllic chateau in the south of France, although in more
recent times they have had to share it with her New Age community: the
Trans-Personal Foundation. Dominated by Seamus, a care nurse turned
ÒshamanÓ, the estate quickly becomes the nexus of the books' surface crisis:
Eleanor MelroseÕs decision to disinherit her son and leave everything to her
ÒcharityÓ in a coup dÕetat of spiritual altruism over family loyalty. Her
ÒbetrayalÓ becomes increasingly clear as she deteriorates towards death and
circumstances force upon Patrick (himself a barrister) the onerous task of
legally finalising his own impoverishment. Meanwhile Mary, his wife and once
his saviour, has Òleft himÓ for their new son Thomas, shying away from the
conjugal bed and allowing herself to be utterly consumed by her childrensÕ
needs and her domestic duties. Patrick is forced into seeking sex and comfort
(or, if we like, the breast and itÕs milk) elsewhere – with an old
girlfriend and at the bottom of a bottle. Put simply then: MotherÕs Milk is a study of the decline and fall of a familyÕs fortunes. But
while the central event is material, the resultant fallout is wholly
psychological. Alternately narrated by each family member in eloquently
confused and muddled voices, the book focuses entirely on individual emotional
experience/response. Which is where the psychoanalysis really comes in to
its ownÉ
The novel is about
disinheritance and displacement in more ways than the clearly obvious. Robert
opens proceedings with the perfect Freudian question: ÒWhy had they pretended to kill him when he was born?Ó He remembers his birth as a kind of dying
– his head banging again and again against his motherÕs closed cervix;
his umbilical cord twisted around his throat; the clamps that grabbed his head
and wrenched him from side to side. But more importantly he sees it as a
key moment of separation in which he was Òtaken away from his motherÓ:
ÒÉthey were not together in the way that they used to beÉ They had
been washed up on a wild shore. Too tired to crawl up the beach, they
could only loll in the roar and the dazzle of being there. He had to face
facts, though: they had been separated. He understood now that his mother
had already been on the outsideÉhe used to think he lived at the heart of
things. Now the walls had tumbled down and he could see what a muddle he had
been in.Ó
He is inspired into
ÒrememberingÓ these feelings by the arrival of his brother, Thomas, who makes
him feel even further separated and displaced from the only woman he has ever
loved: ÒHis infancy was being obliteratedÉ
He wanted it back, otherwise Thomas would have the whole thing.Ó In the usual way of things he fantasises about
killing his new sibling, or about convincing his parents to Òsend him backÓ; he cannot understand his role in the family now that he is no longer
the designated ÒbabyÓ. Tellingly, when asked what he wants for his dinner
at a party he responds before he can mediate his feelings: ÔÒI want what Thomas is having.ÓÕ – i.e. breast milk. All this is textbook
stuff – you can read all about it in Juliet MitchellÕs brilliant book Siblings – and, just as he should, Robert finally comes to terms with his
brother by realising that a) his consciousness is a separate and inviolable
thing, and b) that he has extraordinary power and influence over Thomas:
ÒRobert looked down at Thomas, slumped in his chair, starring at a
picture of a sailing boat, not knowing what a picture was and not knowing what
a sailing boat was, and he could feel the drama of his being a giant in comparison
to this small incompetent body.Ó
Similar moments of infantile
predicament pattern the book and seem to sit very near its core. Patrick
Melrose experiences an analogous catastrophe of the self after ThomasÕs birth,
when Mary finds it impossible to divide her attention equally between her son
and her husband:
ÒÉa former beneficiary of MaryÕs maternal overdrive, he sometimes had
to remind himself that he wasnÕt an infant anymore, to argue that there were
real children in the houseÉ Nevertheless, he waited in vain for the maturing
effects of parenthood.Ó
For him the resolution is wholly
more painful and complex, and is preceded by a long period of dependency on
sedatives and alcohol, during which he knowingly berates himself for being a
bad father and for emulating his own parents in his solipsism.
Contrarily, in MaryÕs case it is
not that she has experienced her moment of separation but that she cannot bear
to. Knowing that Thomas is her last child, she clings to the almost
supernatural bond that exists between them:
ÒMary had been a devoted mother to Robert, but after the absorption
of the first year she had resurfaced as a wifeÉ. With Thomas, perhaps because
he was her last, she seemed to be trapped in a Madonna and Child force field,
preserving the precinct of purity, including her own rediscovered virginity.Ó
She sees that this is terribly
destructive and dreams of returning to a normal life – a sex life, a
personal life, to being ÒMaryÓ in something other than the biblical sense
– but she also understands that it is Thomas that makes ÒMaryÓ into
something special, a superhuman force of nature that provides and provides
without tiring. She understands that no one will ever look at her or reach for
her in the way that Thomas does in his babyhood; she is addicted to being the
milk-mother – the source of all the best nutrients and the best love.
Alienation and the overwhelming desire for connectedness come to shape the
MelrosesÕ psychic lives.
ItÕs clear that St Aubyn is obsessively interested in how
these needs create and damage families throughout the generations. Both Mary
and Patrick have been spoiled by their own relationships with their parents.
MaryÕs mother, the bizarrely named Kettle, is a feckless socialite incapable of
nurturing her daughter and Eleanor Melrose canÕt bond with the son she means to
dispossess. Her stroke, which returns her to a state of communicative
infancy, embodies this reality: all she can do is give away everything he
wants, including his sense of family identity and belonging. But then, in
one of his brilliant vitriolic monologues, Patrick unwittingly reveals that
Eleanor is only playing out the mistakes that her own mother and stepfather
made with her. The burden of familial baggage is inescapable and St Aubyn seems
to envision a vast and unholy network of betrayals and misunderstandings born
out by the inevitable impact of childhood trauma on adult lives. Trying to
compensate for them as Mary does with Thomas only creates new and different
problems. MotherÕs milk poisons even as it sustains; psychoanalysis is
the only way we can riddle it out and find meaning from it.
I suspect that such
doom-and-gloom bitterness and such psychological determinism, sounds terribly
depressing – not the stuff that enjoyable novels are made of. Yet,
strangely, MotherÕs Milk proves entertaining, partly by virtue of its
narratorial quirks and partly because of St AubynÕs thoughtful prose. The
structure, which skips from first-person to first-person in a scheme that runs
Robert/Patrick/Mary/ Robert/ Patrick/ Mary/ Thomas, works very well, offering
fresh perspectives on successive summers at Saint-Nazaire and working in
ironies. St Aubyn is amused by the idea that each family member has a different
central drama – their own – only supplemented by
"subplots" revolving around their family members. On finding Robert
giggling in bed with his mistressÕs young daughter, for example, Patrick
exclaims: ÔÒThis is the most outrageous
subplotÓÕ. Robert balks at the idea of being a character
in someone elseÕs life play:
ÔÒWhatÕs a subplot?Ó
asked Robert.
ÒAnother part of the main story,Ó said Patrick, Òreflecting it in
some more or less flagrant way.Ó
ÒWhy are we a subplot?Ó asked Robert.
ÒYouÕre not,Ó said Patrick. ÒYouÕre a plot in
your own right.ÓÕ
All of the characters are
vitally concerned with their authenticity and with verifying that they
themselves exist and are who they think they are. St Aubyn writes with
astonishing clarity about the resultant cacophony of feeling, thinking and
seeing without ever really devolving into psychobabble. And although his
particular take on the patterns and modes inherent in family life might not
suit every reader, he renders them with a spareness of sympathy. His narrators
might be hopelessly pathetic but theyÕre also understandable, recognisable
even.
There is his humour to consider
too, since MotherÕs Milk is often a funny novel. There is Margaret, the hefty
maternity nurse who accompanies the family on holiday after ThomasÕ birth, and
who reduces the family to rancorous sarcasm with her lectures on baby care and
motherhood. There is Jo, the perky nanny who wears a T-shirt with the slogan
ÒUp for ItÓ and misunderstands RobertÕs solitary nature as a signal of parental
neglect (the very opposite of the truth: it is the result of parental
suffocation!) Most wonderfully there is Seamus, who may or may not be a conman
after EleanorÕs money. Either way he has thoroughly internalised the New Age
rhetoric he peddles to spirit-starved city dwellers, constantly suggesting
rituals, cleansing ceremonies and past life regressions as the panaceas of all
ills. Indeed, he is writing his own book during the course of the novel and seeks MaryÕs
help in titling it:
ÔÒIÕve got so many ideas, itÕs just getting them down. Do you think Drumbeat of the my Heart or Heartbeat of my Drum is better?Ó
ÒI donÕt know,Ó said Mary. ÒIt depends which one you mean I suppose.Ó
ÒThatÕs good advice,Ó said Seamus.Õ
There is only one caveat to all
of this: the flawed final ÒAugustÓ of the novel in which Patrick is forced to
transfer the family holiday from France to America. Here St Aubyn paints us a
United States of stereotype – the ur-land of impersonal materialism (look
at the huge cars!), indulgence (food portions the size of ships!) and imperial
militarism (guns, guns everywhere!) – and in doing so looses much of the
subtlety of the earlier sections. Certainly he shows the Melroses up to be the
snooty upper-middle-class British snobs that they really are, but I doubt this
was his purpose – itÕs difficult to decide who comes off best from the
comparison.
My advice: Best steer clear of
current political comment Edward, it doesnÕt suit you.