The events of 1915 are becoming, in modern usage, a "trope": a common or overused theme or device, a needless cliché…Mavi Boncuk |
Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare[1] Harvill Secker, 272pp, £12.99
Excerpt from a review by Keith Miller
Inheritance is, we could say, a “proper” novel about a “proper” novelistic subject: an unexpected and disputable windfall. Feckless Andy, late for his former teacher’s funeral, sidles into the wrong chapel at Richmond crematorium and finds himself at the sparsely attended exequies of one Christopher Madigan. By signing the book of condolence there, he finds he has qualified for a legacy of several million pounds...Madigan is duly discovered to be Krikor Makertich, of Armenian descent, who made a fortune mining iron in the Australian outback after early heartbreak and betrayal...Inheritance is a fable or parable about what we should do if we suddenly find we can do anything. It is artful and ample and ventures to be wise; its language is rich but not overcooked; there’s a good amount of research behind it but one doesn’t smell the lamp; it is moral but not moralistic...The Armenian dimension doesn’t add much to the story beyond the ancestral injury of the 1915 massacres; if Madigan had been born (to pluck a name out of the air) Magwitch, he might still have loved and lost, still have struck his pay dirt just the same.
[1] Novelist and biographer Nicholas Shakespeare was born in Worcester, England, in 1957. He spent his childhood in the Far East and in South America where his father worked as a diplomat. After graduating from Cambridge University he worked as a journalist and was literary editor of both the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers between 1988 and 1991.
[1] Novelist and biographer Nicholas Shakespeare was born in Worcester, England, in 1957. He spent his childhood in the Far East and in South America where his father worked as a diplomat. After graduating from Cambridge University he worked as a journalist and was literary editor of both the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers between 1988 and 1991.
The comment at the opening of this piece should read, "The events of 1915 are becoming, in modern usage, a "trope": a common or overused theme or device, a needless cliché…"
ReplyDelete