Post-traumatic reading: "The Optimists" by Andrew Miller

So back to real books after the audiobook interlude, and indeed back to a book started a week or two before the two audiobooks did their thing. Back also to a writer who has featured a couple of times recently on this blog, the author of Pure (currently one of my most frequent recommendations) and Ingenious Pain, Andrew Miller. These two books, set at opposite ends of the eighteenth century impressed me hugely and have stuck with me, leaving a strong sense of the weird, the unexplained and the unaccountable, perhaps in nature, perhaps in human nature. The sheer admiration they provoked led me to the 'M' shelf in Nottingham Waterstones in search of more by Miller.

Unlike the two historical novels, The Optimists is a contemporary tale, set somewhere in the mid-1990's. It tells the story of Clem Glass, a photo-journalist recently returned from a place we rapidly understand to be Congo, where he recorded the aftermath of an atrocity, a massacre of unarmed civilians, in a remote church. Details of the event, and Clem's experience of it, emerge in dribs and drabs over the course of the novel, but it is clear from the outset that the vision of hell and human depravity has completely derailed Clem, leaving him listless, without compass, disengaged. Ironically, what restores at least some purpose to his life is the acute mental breakdown suffered by his sister, Clare, a danger to her which outstrips even Clem's danger to himself and which prompts him to act. 

The bulk of the novel recounts the halting progress made by Clare, as Clem, together with family and friends, edge her back from her personal abyss over a summer spent in an old family property in the West Country of their childhood. Her recovery (of sorts) is matched, it seems, by Clem's re-engagement with the world, and his implicit acknowledgement that the pure evil he witnessed in the Congo does not define all of humankind, all of the time. 

The story takes a sudden turn (actually sudden turns are not unusual in this novel) when new reaches Clem that the man he believes to be the perpetrator of the church massacre, has been arrested in Brussels under an international warrant, and though subsequently released, is at large in that city. Whence a section of the book set in Brussels' Matongé district and environs in which Clem seeks to confront the man who sits at the heart of his nightmares. How this pans out, and what Clem experiences in Brussels prove that nothing is quite as simple as it might be. 


Parenthesis: of course, for a Brussels, indeed Ixelles, resident of some 24 years' standing, this section is also quite fascinating, following Clem's peregrinations around a clearly well-reseached location (it includes for example, besides familiar streets and landmarks, a very recognisable bar in Saint-Boniface and the Saint-Gilles municipal swimming pool). 

Does any of this resolve anything? Miller is far too sophisticated an author to suggest that there are any easy answers. Indeed, Clare's real, but fragile, recovery, is juxtaposed with apparent backsliding by a Clem who didn't really find closure. At the same time, it is a novel which, in its avoidance of the simplistic, offers hope and a message that the only way to tackle the world, good and bad, is to engage with it.

All this said... All this said, I can't shake off a certain relative disappointment with this book. After the wonderful historical weirdness of Pure and Ingenious Pain, this novel simply does feel so distinctive, so much the product of an extraordinary imagination. For me, it is a decent novel by an accomplished and sophisticated writer, not a work of near-genius by an supremely gifted author. Just now and then some plot points seem a little contrived, some actions just too random, some of the language a bit ... off. The pervasive strangeness which was so much a part of the historical novels, is not - perhaps cannot be - present in this contemporary work. Big Themes were done brilliantly in the historical stories, here, Miller seems less comfortable with them, better when in the smaller domestic environment of Clem and Clare's childhood refuge.

This is, nonetheless, a good thoughtful novel, with some strong moments. But if, as I did, you come to it hoping for more of the Miller you found in the historical novels, you might feel left wanting more.