Rollicking Entertainment

Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things is an extremely unusual, imaginative, funky and funny novel to be read with a grain of salt. The author claims the first part is based on “Episodes from the early life of Archibald McCandless, M.D. Scottish Public Health Officer”, and the second part is “A letter about the book to a grand- or great-grandchild by ‘Victoria’ McCandless M.D.”

Both the narrators of the first and second parts and the author himself, are unreliable. Hence the tongue in cheek playfulness of the whole macabre story.

The first part is about Bella Baxter, a Scottish pregnant woman who commits suicide by throwing herself in the river. Dr. Godwin Baxter salvages the body, and transplants the dead fetus’s brain into Bella’s head. With the help of some Frankenstein-style electrical shocks Bella comes back to life as a creature with the brain of a newborn infant, housed in the body of a young woman.

What ensues, as Bella takes quick giant steps in learning, is the adventurous life of an intellectually curious, morally uninhibited, and sexually voracious young woman who is loved and financially supported by her creator, Godwin Baxter, (aka God) is engaged to his colleague, Archibald McCandless (aka Candle) and elopes with God’s lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (aka Wedder). Their travels take them to Europe, Africa and Asia. En route Bella meets with interesting and opinionated people, from whom she learns about class divides and politics.

After driving her “weary old Wedder” both physically and financially into the ground, Bella continues solo on her journey for a while before returning home. She writes about all her adventures in detail to God, who dutifully reads them to Candle, who in turn, narrates them to us, the readers.

On her return to Scotland, interesting, and might I add, very cleverly written, – courtroom drama style – developments occur that lead to the second part of the book, “A letter from Victoria McCandless M.D. to her eldest surviving descendant in 1974 correcting what she claims are errors in ‘Episodes from the early life of Archibald McCandless, M.D. Scottish Public Health Officer’ by her late husband”.

The second part negates the first part and presents a totally different version of Bella Baxter’s story, with credible objections and rational causes for the intentional misrepresentations made in the first part by Archibald McCandless.

The book is illustrated with pictures from the book, Gray’s Anatomy, and sketches by Alisdair Gray who was an artist as well as a writer. But he claims the sketches are from nineteenth century engravings 😊

Gray explores social themes, such as gender inequity, sexuality, oppression and poverty with his biting sarcasm. About her upbringing Bella says, “Mother had taught me to be a working man’s domestic slave; the nuns taught me to be a rich man’s domestic toy. When they sent me back Mother was dead and I could speak French, dance, play the piano, move like a lady and discuss events as Conservative newspapers reported them for the nuns thought husbands might prefer wives who knew some things about the world.”

Of the medical practice at the end of the 19^th century God, a doctor, opines, “The smooth bedside manner we cultivate is seldom more than a cheap anesthetic to make our patients as passive as the corpses we train upon.” And, “The public hospitals are places where doctors learn how to get money off the rich by practicing on the poor.” About his own dad, also a doctor, he says, “He had very little interest in people, except as surgical cases.”

When Bella asks a friend she met in her travels to change the topic to a happy one, his answer is, “We could talk of the radiant future of the human race a century hence when science trade and fraternal democracy will have abolished disease, war and poverty, and everyone will live in a hygienic apartment block with a free clinic in the basement run by a good German dentist. But I would feel lost in such a future.”

In the Introduction to the book Gray lists a number of historical facts, echoing events in the book, about McCandless, his wife, Godwyn Baxter, Duncan Wedderburn and others, that happened between 1879 and 1886.

At the end of the book there are 40 pages of endnotes, including pictures, under the heading, “Notes Critical and Historical”. Given the general tone of the book, and an erratum note about one of the illustrations of the book, I wouldn’t bet on the accuracy of either the intro or the notes.

Having said that, it not only doesn’t take away one iota from the rollicking entertainment that is Poor Things, it adds to it.

Variations of Racism

Generally speaking, I am interested in issues of ethnicity and racism. I have read a number of books on the topic of black people living in North America. However, I had no idea there was so much I didn’t know about the topic until listening to Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The book sprawls over a decade and three continents.

But at its core Americanah is a love story. Ifemelu and Obinze, high-school sweethearts in Nigeria, although quite different, are very much in synch with each other. She is opinionated and outspoken, he is serene and mature. She is infatuated with America, he with England. She ends up going to the States, he to England, and they lose touch. Life takes them on a roller coaster ride, in which they both have to do things that go against their nature and principles. They both have achievements, find themselves back in Nigeria, and are drawn to each other again.

In a beautifully crafted and written novel, Adichie covers a cornucopia of problems black people have to deal with, both in their own countries with a majority-black population and in other countries with a majority-white ones.

Her Nigerian characters struggle to have a better life despite the limited opportunities their country provides them. Aunty Uju, a talented woman, has a married “sponsor”, who pays for her education through medical school, rents her an apartment, buys her a car, and fathers her son. She is in this relationship knowing full well that he has a wife and a few children, because without him Aunty Uju cannot become a doctor, despite her abilities.

In England Obinze has to work with the work permit of another black man, and pay him 40% of his earnings, because it’s impossible for Obinze to get any documents legally. He lives in constant dread of getting caught and deported. In the US, because she’s black, Ifemelu can’t get a job even though she’s legally allowed to work and her English is perfect. She lives in constant fear of running out of money.

Adichie covers a myriad of problems black immigrants face, from food to hair, immigration to job-hunts, assimilation to homesickness, assumed accent to natural accent, black Americans to American blacks, differences among blacks born in different countries and continents to differences between blacks and whites. She touches on so many issues, it’s impossible to even list.

Variations of racism are portrayed in an observant, sensitive and nuanced way.

There are white women, like Kimberly, who are friendly to blacks but over-zealous to prove they are not racist. They call all black women “beautiful”.

There are white men like Curt, Ifemelu’s rich, generous, white boyfriend, who loves her and understands her most of the time. But while he notices racism and defends Ifemelu against it in certain cases, he is conveniently blind to it, in others.

On the other side of the coin, there’s Blaine, her American black boyfriend, a political science professor, who at times is closer to his white ex-girlfriend than he is to Ifemelu, because he shares the US black culture with his ex, but not with Ifemelu, who is a newcomer to that culture.

Whatever facet of race-relations doesn’t fit neatly in the nuanced relationships of the story, Adichie includes in Ifemelu’s blog, called Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. “Dear American non-black…Don’t say ‘I’m colour-blind’, because if you’re colour-blind you need to see a doctor.” Or “Racism is about the power of a group and in America, the white people have that power… black police-officers don’t stop white folk for driving while white.”

The lens through which Ifemelu sees America is unique and her language, irreverent and funny. Phrases like, “Infantile optimism of a rich American,” “They drink a glass of antisemitism for breakfast,” and “oppression Olympics” abound.

As in many recorded books, the reading, in this case by Adjoa Andoh, an award-winning British film, television, stage and radio actress, added an enriching layer of dramatism to the book.