On Green Dolphin Street

There are books that you read to get through time. Purely escapist books that drag you under their surface and you sink happily, knowing that in a few hours time you'll be shaking it off and striding off without a backward glance. These books do not have power over you; there isn't any risk involved. You have simply chosen to give them time and mind and once the last page is turned, you will emerge unscathed. I suppose these have been my diet of late. Sebastian Faulks' On Green Dolphin Street is NOT one of these books.

I have always respected the power of novels. I know that 'like wine through water,' there are novels that can 'alter the colour of my mind.' I know this. It is one of the things I suppose I have loved most about reading--the fact that it is not just a passive activity. A novel IS the monster under the bed; the fears and lies you have promised yourself you would let lie like sleeping dogs. It is that ledge you play with, dangling yourself over the drop; and when you're ready, the superbly reckless and ecstatic dive into the unknown. It is the enormous boulder in a Canadian lake that you climb on a summer holiday only to realise you now have to jump into the lake and it's a long way down and the water will probably be cold, but that you will do it ANYWAY. It is making it to the top tier of the jungle gym that you could never bring yourself to climb onto as a child. And the rewards have always outweighed the gamble.

Like every other Faulks novel I have read, I came by it second-hand and through necessity. I needed a book and the universe provided one. I should have felt a tickle of premonition. I did not. I began reading it on and off, mostly interrupted by the end of the Harry Potter franchise (which required me to jump into the Deathly Hallows again for full on HP immersion before the big show), but also occasionally through anxiety. Reading OGDS on the train home or at lunch, I would come to and realise that my shoulders were hunched and tight, my breath held and my knuckles white from clutching the pages. The backdrop of the story, set in a time of quickly waning innocence and trust in American history, could account for some of my anxiety. We all know that Kennedy doesn't last his first term and that Nixon will bring home that presidents and governments do lie. Through the lens of history and hindsight, it is a time that always seems like a coil tightening and tightening until it simply snaps. All that glamour and glory reaching a pinnacle and then just falling to ruin: the end of Camelot, Icarus flying too close to the sun. So yes, I was grimacing for these people, unaware that their world would shortly change. Add to that, the emotional baggage from the second World War, the Civil Rights struggle and McCarthyism weighing the characters down. It's no wonder I was a bag of nerves.

Let me stress that that was just the backdrop. The main show was a tightrope of human relationships. Yes, into this already brittle and burgeoning world, Faulks threw in the spectre of human frailty, made all the more poignant because most characters were unaware of their awful frailty. At first glance, it was that old chestnut, wife has affair and ultimately has to choose between love and husband and kids. But somewhere along the way, ( I scarcely know how it happened, credit must go to Faulks' skill as an author), it transcended that cliche. The three central characters became people. Not just husbands, wives and lovers. They were suddenly individuals who needed more from life than life had given them. Which made it all the more devastating when the constraints of morality trapped them in the end. Like Frank, I couldn't believe that bog standard morality would get them in the end and much like Mary, I began to feel as if they had created a time out of this world and their reckoning would never come. But when it did, oh boy.

The whole of the novel was so restrained, so still waters run deep, that the last few pages broke like a dam and demolished all my defences. I felt raw, unadulterated grief. I could have howled with it. I still cannot believe how shaken I was. Silly lady that I am, I thought I could finish it in company--you know, like in a living room with others. Mistake.

The slow burn and the detached depiction of the characters made me believe I could walk away unscathed. Far from it. I set the book down, excused myself and had to stand in a room on my own, clawing my way back from the dark. Maybe the inclusion of airports and goodbyes resonated too deeply with my life. Maybe the conclusion wasn't as powerful and visceral as a fist to the stomach to anyone else (given some of the reviews on Amazon). But it knocked me down. And it's been a while since a book truly leapt out of the dark and knocked me down. I suppose it's because I forgot the power of books and let my guard down.

On Green Dolphin Street dragged out into the light my worst despair, my monster under the bed: saying good-bye to the man you love more than you love friends, life and country and not knowing if you'll ever see him again. It shocked me that even though it's been years and that man and I are happily married, the despair is still there and it will always be there, glinting darkly under the surface. For that reason, the denouement of OGDS will stay with me a long long time.

I begin to think that the human condition is haunted and that Emily Dickinson was right all along:

'One need not be a chamber to be haunted,

One need not be a house;

The brain has corridors surpassing

Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting

External ghost,

Than an interior confronting

That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop

The stones achase,

Than, moonless, one's own self encounter

In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,

Should startle most;

Assassin, hid in our apartment,

Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,

He bolts the door,

O'erlooking a superior spectre

More near.'

Still, I should gamble more often. Reading dangerously keeps you on your toes.