England Through Colonial Eyes in Twentieth Century Fiction

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I bit off more than I could chew with this book! I couldn't resist the title, but when it arrived from Brotherhood Books, I realised that it was a very scholarly collection of essays from three La Trobe University History and English academics: Ann Blake, Leela Gandhi and Sue Thomas. I did my best to keep up, but some of the chapters defeated me.

Part 1 consisted of some general essays, and Part 2 looked at several individual authors of colonial origins who had 'returned' to England and explored the 'mother country' in their fiction. I was familiar with Katherine Mansfield (NZ) and Christina Stead (Australia), less so with Jean Rhys (the Caribbean). I have read a bit of Doris Lessing, but I think I was too young for The Golden Notebook; The Good Terrorist did leave a deep impression on me. I have to confess that I've never had much more than a dutiful interest in VS Naipaul and Salman Rushdie, and I struggled with their chapters. I've never heard of Nigerian-born Buchi Emecheta, but I'm definitely intrigued now, and likewise David Dabydeen is a new author to me.

I'm still interested in the subject of authors bringing their various colonial and post-colonial perspectives to the colonising country -- most of them are at best ambivalent, some downright scathing -- but perhaps reading their novels might be a better place for me to start.

More Than We Can Tell

 

I borrowed Brigid Kemmerer's More Than We Can Tell because it includes a teenager who makes her own online game, but unlike Slay, the online world plays only a relatively minor role in this story. This novel is a kind of sequel to Letters to the Lost, and the characters of Juliet and Declan reappear here. However, the novel centres on a different pair: reclusive, damaged Rev (aka the Grim Reaper, because he's always shrouded in a hoodie) and Emma, torn between her distracted computer geek father and her critical, driven doctor mother.

Emma's game features because she's being harassed by a player called Nightmare; she's also befriended by a supportive player called Ethan (we never discover if they are, in fact, the same person). Her parents' marriage is dissolving, and in the midst of all this, she strikes up a tentative friendship with 'weirdo' Rev. We learn that Rev has many reasons to be weird, mostly connected with his estranged, abusive father. These two defensive characters have to overcome their inner demons to help each other.

I quickly became hooked by More Than We Can Tell. It's a very YA novel; especially early in the book, I felt like shaking both Rev and Emma and urging them to just tell their parents how they were feeling -- it would have saved a lot of drama! But I can imagine adolescent readers gobbling up this tortured romance with a spoon. 

I think I was most horrified to learn about Lucky Charms, allegedly a breakfast cereal, eaten by Rev and his foster brother, which consists of MARSHMALLOWS and 'frosted oats.' It sounds horrific, and definitely not something anyone should eat for breakfast.