The Unloved

An interesting story predominantly about a mother and daughter relationship - and a daughters reflection on her own life.

Bought on the strength of Deborah Levy's three beautiful Living Autobiographies which are all inspiring and full of warmth and empathy, I am so disappointed with this cruel and tainted novel. It appears to be nasty just for the sake of it, presenting a group of unpleasant narcissists whose aimlessness is deeply depressing.

This is what would happen if you crossed Agatha Christie with Angela Carter and I am 100% here for it. A rag tag assortment of wealthy people are holidaying in a French chateau, owned by a hostess who is absent and appears only through brief telephone conversations. As the strangers bond, or don't, their back stories are revealed gradually through conversations and confrontations. At the heart of it all is the mysterious death, possibly murder of an unhappy English woman whose death is being investigated by a sinister, French police inspector. As the group fragments around the central death, their stories come into sharper focus and the bigger picture is more tragic than the death of a woman who was already contemplating suicide when she arrived. Off kilter, slightly surreal and beautifully atmospheric.

All good thank you!

...and pointlessly ones, at that. Ostensibly presented as a conversation piece, 'The Unloved' sees several EU nationals (plus one American and one Algerian) gathered for the Christmas holidays at an isolated Norman chateau. One dies, and is presumed murdered. Not for a second did I believe these people would willingly share a bus, never mind a house. All of them read like constructs (artifice, age, gluttony, vice, ennui, etc.) variously accessorised with sexual hang-ups, addictions, middle-class neuroses and/or unpleasant (somewhat implausible) political histories. The author is very good at creating a sense of claustrophobia and menace, but the novel has no third act and none of the characters interested me enough (with the possible exception of the Algerian whose backstory read as if it were partially taken from the film 'The Battle of Algiers') to want to fill in the blanks or imagine how they went on after the last page. Finally, the author has no ear whatsoever for how Americans speak. This is a real problem as one of the main backstories (set in the 1950s) concerns the unhappy marriage of two educated 30-something ex-pats, who speak like teenage hicks. I suspect this novel may have started life as a collection of short stories, and I can imagine some of the characters being more plausible (and interesting) in a limited format.

I actually finished. It is so dire that it made me think I was missing something, it would get clearer and better. It is chaotic and weird and makes me feel insane just reading it.

Normalerweise mag ich die verschiedenen Stränge, die sich zu einem Ganzen zusammenfügen, aber hier bin ich immer wieder aus dem Tritt gekommen. Deborah Levy verwebt die komplexen Geschichten einer Gruppe von Menschen aus aller Herren Länder, die in einem Haus in der Normandie Weihnachten feiern. Die Besitzerin ist nicht da, sie erwartet ein Kind. Ab und zu telefonieren ihre Freunde mit ihr, aber ansonsten bleiben sich die Singles, Pärchen und ihre jeweiligen Kinder selbst überlassen. Gleich zu Beginn gibt es einen Mord, ein Kommissar tritt auf, aber damit hört die Country-House-Murder-Mystery auch auf. Levy zeichnet mit geschliffener Sprache die Psychogramme der Personen und teilt sie in zwei Lager: Es gibt diejenigen, die geliebt werden, und die Ungeliebten. Und es gibt das Kind Tatiana, das wie ein uralter Geist Dinge feststellt, deren Wahrheitsgehalt die Erwachsenen umhauen müsste, wären sie nicht alle so sehr mit sich beschäftigt. Jede Figur, so scheint es, steht nicht nur für ein europäisches Land und einen Lebensentwurf, sondern auch für eine Version gescheiterter Liebe. Es ist ein tolles Buch, wenn man studieren möchte, wie Deborah Levy ihr Können vom Schreiben für das Theater zum Schreiben von Prosa entwickelt hat. Aber wenn man es mal eben so weglesen will, muss man ein bisschen Zeit mitbringen und immer mal wieder vor- und zurückblättern. Dennoch hallen die Charaktere nach, als hätte man eine Gespenstergeschichte gelesen. Vielleicht hat man das auch.

The above is what I liked about this novel. I generally like something about every book. Perhaps it is the wrong time in my life to read it, but I was completely indifferent to the characters, setting, plot, and cadence of the novel.