RSS

Contact us

Friday 5 December 2008

The Beacon

Terrors of the imagination

The Beacon, by Susan Hill

Of the four Prime siblings of the Beacon farm, Frank, the second boy, was, throughout their early lives, ‘almost invisible’. He did everything late, spent most of his time alone, and was a dunce at school, where he bemused teachers and children alike.

They never knew what to make of Frank, they said; what went on in Frank’s head was one of the great mysteries. He did little speaking but a great deal of staring out of large green-grey, slightly bulbous eyes. He followed people too … Turn round, and Frank would be there, silent, watching, following.

Beware of the individual close to you whom you have never got to know, whose mental life you have written off as ‘mysterious’. For when Frank leaves the Beacon, indeed quits the north of England altogether, he discovers and projects a personality utterly dissimilar to that ascribed to him by his brother and two sisters, one wary of neither the external world nor interior depths. Frank becomes a London journalist who refuses to confine his talents to newspapers. No, he must write a book, and when he does, it is a huge success, with many spin-offs. Its subject? His early life at the Beacon, which apparently he loathed. As depicted by him, it was a set-up eminently worthy of loathing, a scene of compound, continuous, deliberate cruelty.

Frank’s book, we initially feel, is pathological, morbid distortion harnessed to literary fashion (this is the period of Angela’s Ashes). We ourselves know his brother and sisters; they are utterly incapable of the acts accorded them. Brother Colin, who went into farming and was a husband and father young, is called by a close relative ‘the kindest man on earth’. Younger sister, Berenice, if somewhat spoilt and self-centred, is no sadist, and as for May, who stands at the centre of this deftly worked, deeply moving novel, her dignified passivity completely disqualifies her for any misdeeds to her brother. And yet…? Why does Frank’s book so touch a nerve in his family?

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment   |  Apollo Art Books

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved