In my last entry, I discussed Clear, the latest novel by the Welsh writer, Carys Davies. I was interested in how the author used two simultaneous political movements from nineteenth century Scottish history, the period in which her novel is set, to bring the central character, John Ferguson, to a tiny island where he would serve removal papers to its only inhabitant, a subsistence farmer named Ivar. Why Ferguson never manages to do the one thing he was hired for, is the strange and lovely story this novel tells. But after I had sent out the newsletter, I realized I had missed something way more crucial—athat Davies use of politics not only provided the reason these two very different men meet, but more importantly, it implanted a strong narrative tension, so that when Ivar rescues and then befriends John, the reader knows he is helping a man who is going to betray him. This tension is one of the qualities that gives Clear the strong narrative momentum that makes it such an exciting read.
I wanted to continue reading Carys Davies, so the next book I read was The Mission House, a novel she published in 2020, four years before Clear. It too is a powerful story. Located in contemporary India, this novel, like Clear, prepares the reader in the early pages, but without involving politics, or at least, not at first. Narrated in the omniscient point of view, The Mission House shifts between numerous characters though our focus is on Hilary Byrd, an unemployed librarian on holiday in India. He is a nervous and timid soul who eschews not only conflict but expensive lodgings, and through the kindness of a pastor he meets on the train, is occupying a small cottage next to the pastor's abode. Middle aged, unmarried, traveling alone, he is observant and thoughtful, a person who clings to habit and normality, so much so that when Hilary finds, in the first chapter, that another man's clothes are hanging on the back of the bedroom door, he is nonplussed.
"It was late when he noticed the other man's clothes hanging limply from a forked hook...
"It amazed him, what he felt when he saw them—how much he would have preferred it if they weren't there; how much, in the few short hours since he'd arrived, he'd come to think of the place as his own" (4).
It turns out the clothes belong to Henry Page, a missionary who, in the past, has been a frequent guest in the cottage.
Much later in the novel, the absent Henry Page will play a critical role in Hilary Byrd's life and midway through, he even wears the alien garments, noting that he and Page are the same height. His own clothes are wet, so it is something he does out of necessity, but at the same time, as soon as he steps into the other man's garments, our hero loses a bit of his drudgery and starts to become the other man in subtle and fascinating ways. This is how the author prepares us for the surprises that will follow.
Like Clear, this novel is the story of an unlikely friendship between men from opposite sides of experience. In The Mission House, Bryd confides in a man named Jamshed, an auto rickshaw driver who becomes his chauffer and constant companion. In Jamshed's mind, Mr. Bryd resembled a scarab beetle.
"A scarab beetle on its back, all its legs and arms waving about, rocking from side to side trying to flip itself the right way up" (68).
Does the scarab beetle ever right itself? That is the story the novel tells in a deliciously peculiar and mysterious fashion, braiding the narrative with such engaging linguistic and visual humor its more serious intentions—about love, religion, and cultural hegemony—seep through in a slow, almost invisible fashion, until, at the end, when it all comes together, I said, "Wow!" out loud, much as I did when I finished Clear. On his first day at the Mission House, as Hilary Byrd finds the empty clothes hanging on the back of the bedroom door and feels affronted by their presence, what surely seems to be only a small annoyance is instead the start of a larger, wholly surprising transformation.
Davies, Carys. The Mission House. New York: Scribner, 2020.
Filed under: Advance Preparation