M2C Online Bookclub - The Blue Book (Part 2)

I'm almost finished The Blue Book - and trying to slow down so that I can really enjoy and savour the language and the story. Beth and Arthur's history unfolds gradually as the ship they're on makes it's way tortuously across the Atlantic. The narrative drifts backwards and forward in time from their first meeting to their working partnership to this odd dance they're negotiating with each other on the ship.

Photo via Flickr & Australian National Maritime Museum

Like the rolling motion of a boat at sea my feelings for the characters dip and soar (but I'm wary now and scour the text for suggestive words like 'sway' and 'stagger', the prose is working it's way under my skin) - I'm on the verge of hating Arthur as we're shown his habitual work manipulating rich widows and then swing back again when it seems like he hates himself for what he does yet can't stop doing it.
Neither Beth nor Arthurseems happy, either with or without the other, and they're so tense with each other it's almost painful to keep reading - pity the hapless Derek lying prone in his cabin, (I'm starting to question everything now - has Arthur been somehow able to induce and suggest the seasickness to Derek). Their relationship is so strained and odd now, they couldn't continue as a couple but continued to meet up for weekends together, it takes the memories of how they first met and started working together as fake mediums to begin to understand their mutual attraction and aversion. The description of their way of conducting readings with codes, secret gestures, and reading people who want desperately to communicate with their dead is powerful . I can begin to understand the compulsion they hold each other under, the fierce bond that comes from working together so closely and the attraction of conspiracy.

One thing is for sure - cruises seem like a special kind of hell, weather or not, and I can't help but wonder if A.L. Kennedy went on a cruise as research.

Other books to read if you're enjoying 'The Blue Book':

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk - Very funny, very dark novel that charts a disillusioned young man's meeting with a mysterious and anarchic stranger who will change his life.

The London Train by Tessa Hadley -  A compelling and beautifully written novel of a man and woman whose lives collide on the Cardiff to London train.

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Competition - win tickets for you and your bookclub to see A.L. Kennedy in Dún Laoghaire this September

 M2C Online Bookclub - The Blue Book (Part 1)