This is Paradise – Will Eaves
Picador £16.99
Reviewed by Leyla Sanai
Novels that focus on a single family, exploring the dynamics between members, and tracking the individuals over the years, are a mixed bag. The good ones capture the essence of family life, simultaneously nailing what is common to all families and what is specific to the one under scrutiny. But the mundanities of ordinary family life can render some of this genre dull unless the author has the wicked wit and sharp perception of an Edward St Aubyn, Alan Hollinghurst or Zoe Heller, the depth of insight and profound sensitivity of a Tessa Hadley or Sue Miller, or the ability to tether the development of the family to current affairs over the years, like Jonathan Coe or Philip Hensher.
Will Eaves’s previous two novels, The Oversight and Nothing To Be Afraid Of, tackled the coming of age of a gay boy and a sibling relationship respectively. His third novel encompasses a bit of both but takes as its main focus the changeing dynamics of family life. It is based around an ordinary family, the Alldens. Emily is the glue that holds the family together. She is also a talented craftswoman, but her sewing attracts little interest from the others. She has a tendency to be passive aggressive – hoovering furiously outside her daughter’s room to wake her up, for example, or walking into the kitchen to precipitate the end of phone calls. Don, a picture framer, is Emily’s selfish and immature husband. When he’s not having affairs, he’s goading his awkward elder son, Clive, jealous of Clive’s minor success as a teenage painter. The children, confident Liz, geeky Clive, caring Lotte and baby Benjamin, stumble through the humdrum events of the years.
It’s this humdrum element that is the problem. Although the inter-family relationships are credible and the dialogue convincing, the first half of the book drags because the Alldens’ concerns seem trivial. Family tiffs, discussions and holidays are drawn plausibly but in excruciating detail, and it’s difficult to care about the characters involved, nor summon up interest in their lives. It’s not so much Northern Clemency as No Clemency, with scene after scene of tedious family interactions that are neither entertaining or innovatively perceived in any way. Readers who savour the ordinary – fans of Penelope Lively’s slow-moving family drama Family Album, for example – may enjoy it, but there’s nothing to lift it above the drearily everyday.
And Eaves doesn’t say anything that inspires a jolt of amazed recognition from the reader. Sometimes his apercus are distinctly alien, as in this section: ‘ To her amazement, Liz realised she was crying. She checked herself for feeling, and then remembered she’d been staring at one toe for so long her eyes had begun to water.’ Surely no one ever mistakes watering eyes for crying? The overwhelming sad emotions that cause crying are so omnipresent that they’re uppermost in the mind when one is overcome- completely unlike the benign phenomenon of watering eyes. It would be like suggesting we all question ourselves for misery every time we chop onions.
It’s in the second half that becomes more emotionally intriguing. Emily is dementing and is becoming too much for Don to handle. Always self-centred, Don finds it difficult to cope with not being looked after, leave alone looking after someone himself. He is not as patient or as kind as he should be. There is a strong scene where the family goes out to a crowded pizza restaurant, and Don becomes irascible when Emily knocks over a glass. Emily is placed into a nursing home, first for a couple of weeks, to give Don a break, and then permanently.
Eaves is meticulous about including the details of day- to- day existence in the home. Nursing home duties, such as turning the patients to prevent pressure sores, washing, changing and feeding them, and carrying out unglamorous tasks like cajoling them into stillness for the visiting chiropodist, are portrayed in all their bleak drudgery. The cheerful and dedicated care workers whose genuine kindness makes life tolerable for the care home residents are depicted realistically, trying to create order out of chaos, coping with the confused, fragile and vulnerable patients while battling outbreaks of diarrhoea and other institutional hazards.
The most affecting parts of this novel are when Eaves writes about the family members’ reaction to Emily’s deterioration. Don, in particular, is shown, despite his egotism and petulance, to care deeply about his wife. This is Paradise offers an honest picture of the way families evolve with time, with the ageing process reversing the roles of parent and child, but it’s a bit of a grind to get there.
