If you keep insisting that you’re right, then you’re wrong. — Jewish proverb1.
Having recently finished reading Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie, I thought I’d put down a few thoughts about it. I’d like to focus on the structural aspects rather than undertake a forensic analysis at the sentence level.
Just to say, though, that I very much enjoyed reading it. It had a momentum that kept me going, which was a very pleasant change from the experience of looking at my place in a book and thinking “Oh God, there are still 213 pages to go.”
The reason, mainly, is that the book actually has a plot. It’s all very well being a so-called modernist writer, which seems to give some people carte blanche to be dismissive to those of us who profess not to quite get it, but sometimes it’s nice to just sit down with a damn good story without a load of persiflage muddying the waters.
Yes, one or two situations seem somewhat contrived. Yes, I found it rather unlikely that Aneeka would effectively seduce a bloke on the tube. (At least, that’s never happened to me, and I use public transport a lot.) And yes, there is a bit of infodumping at the beginning. Yet despite these flaws, it’s a great book.
OK, the structure. There’s the visible structure, and a less visible one. The former is that each of the five main characters is given a section to him or herself. I quite like that in films, where you see the same situation from different people’s viewpoints. Here’s an old TV advert that illustrates this idea perfectly:
This is not exactly the same as the way Home Fire does it. In the book, each character sees the situation at a different stage of its development. I think it’s this technique that accounts for the momentum I alluded to earlier.
The less visible structure is harder to write about without littering this article with plot spoilers, so allow me to share my train of thought.
It occurred to me that several of the characters want to fix something between themselves and others, but don’t quite succeed. An image formed in my mind of the kind of situation in which someone walks into, say, a railway station through one set of doors, and the person they’re connected to walks out of the station at exactly the same time through a different set of doors.
This image of people walking past each other through nearby doors made me think of the typical farce, in which people are racing through doors, literally missing each other, but also metaphorically missing each other through misunderstanding.
Thus for me, the underlying structure of this book is that of a farce, but without the laughs, slapstick or madcap mayhem. And that, I think, adds to the sense of avoidable tragedy at the end.
The relevance of this epigraph will make sense if you read the book. It alludes to the character of the Home Secretary.
Just looked and this is on my digital library site. It said it won an award. I wrote it down on my list.
Not heard of this other than your brief mention a few posts ago maybe. Consider it on the wishlist 👍