The Report by Jessica Francis Kane

The Report is slender novel about a catastrophic accident that took place in London during World War II. On March 3, 1943, one hundred seventy-three civilians were killed in a crush of people as they tried to enter a bomb shelter.  Jessica Francis Kane's novel is, as she describes it, a historical imagining of the tragedy. The novel is centered around a local magistrate's investigation of and report about the incident.

Sometimes I finish the last page of a book and turn immediately to the first page to read it again. I can think of probably five novels that have had this effect on me, and The Report is one of those five. I don't know how Kane managed to do it in just 238 pages, but in those pages she transports the reader to the war-weary neighborhood of Bethnel Green and, in a series of short chapters, reveals different characters' perceptions of this tragic accident and the upheaval that follows.

In subtle and brief passages, Kane develops the key characters, from a grieving mother who lost a child to the shelter warden who blames himself for the crush to the magistrate's search for understanding. Kane does not offer back story for these characters, but through delicate and subtle placement of details--how a mother touches her child, a stray comment from one character to another, the smallest of interactions--a deeper picture of each of them is developed in the mind of the reader.

Kane does the same magic with building a sense of Bethnel Green as a complex community made even more so by the daily travails of the war. There are no long, descriptive paragraphs detailing a London neighborhood shredded by German bombs. Instead, by dropping hints, references, and quick snapshots of the Bethnel Green cityscape, Kane shows readers the physical manifestation of living in a war zone: anti-refugee graffiti, wildflowers growing over bombsites, damaged birds, buildings in disrepair, patched clothing, slumped shoulders.

We enter The Report already knowing what has happened. At the beginning of the novel, we know that no bombs fell on London that night, but still 173 people entering a familiar bomb shelter, as they had for years, were killed in a sudden backup of people. Although we know this right from the start, a subtle suspense continues to build throughout the novel as magistrate Laurence Dunne interviews witnesses in his attempt to understand why the accident happend. Who or what can be blamed? Can someone be prosecuted? Could it have been prevented? Is there a cover up? How can a community that has suffered such loss go on?

This novel is so gripping that it's difficult to avoid reading too quickly. That is why I wanted to read it again and why I'm glad I did. That is also why I find it rather difficult to write this review. There's so much here to mull over. This is the story of one incident that took place in a war that recedes more and more from our present-day understanding, but at the same time, it could also be the story of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina or of any community that is forced to face a sudden and unimaginable tragedy. It is the story of how people figure out how to grieve, how to take responsibility, and how to try to move forward.

Tiger Moon by Penelope Lively

In Penelope Lively's Tiger Moon, Claudia Hampton, famous historian, is dying. But she determined to write one last book. "'I am writing a history of the world,'" she tells the nurse. The nurse humors her and then later asks a doctor, "Was she someone?" The doctor looks at his file. "...yes, she does seem to have been someone...."

Yes, Claudia is writing a history of the world, a history of how her life fits into the larger pagentry of the 20th century, but she is not interested in chronology. As far as she is concerned, her life has turned as a kaleidioscope does. All the pieces moving simultaneously, coming together, falling apart. A different design each time it is shaken or the lens is turned: "There is no chronology in my head. I am composed of a myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water. The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and re-shuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once."

Claudia's history runs its course through the war-filled years of the last century and the rapidly shifting cultural upheavals that followed. Her father is killed at the Somme; she and her brother come of age during the brief respite between the wars; she is a war correspondent in Egypt during WWII; she writes her history books against the backdrop of the post-war Communist era. And, except for a brief moment in Claudia's history, when she finds herself truly vulnerable to love, Claudia steadfastly marches on her own path forward, leaving daughter, family, and friends to follow or be left behind.

As she lies in her hospital bed, dipping in and out of consciousness, having her "good" days, we follow the natural course of memory. Scenes which begin with first person narration as Claudia muses, questions, and turns over her preoccupations fold into an omniscient narrative treatment of a crucial moment or series of events, and then we drop into  a third person point of view from someone connected to her (daughter, mother, brother, lover). And, again, back to Claudia's point of view. Lively replays the natural path of memory from Claudia's perspective: close up, fall back, different angle, new cast of light.

We fully understand Claudia's distrust of chronology and roll with it because our memories work the same way, more stream of consciousness than linear. Whatever flaws Claudia has (and to us there are many), she has lived a full life and has influenced, and occasionally been influenced by, those surrounding her. But they don't truly know her, just as she doesn't truly know them. Her history of the world is an effort to understand her story, her place in the world, and how that place is connected to that of others in her life. And instead of being a melancholy meditation on death or the "what ifs" of the protagonist, Tiger Moon is a life-affirming journey through one woman's choices, circumstances, mistakes, and triumphs.

I love this story because it is so real to how we operate in our lives. As Claudia says, we are made up of a myriad of selves, as are those we love and relate to. That is why on many levels we can never completely know even those closest to us--what secrets they hold; what elements of themselves we are not conditioned to see. We overlay our own judgments, our expectations, our own standards on them. And what about ourselves? Do our true selves become fossilized somehow? Hidden, sometimes, like the Egyptian antiquities that Claudia can't tear her eyes from, not to be discovered by those who love us until much, much later?

Claudia says that the unknowable about her, the parts of her life that she has sealed off, might be revealed by an autopsy that shows the toll life has taken on her body. The artifacts she leaves behind will offer more insight. But she will still be misrepresented by the angle of the memories people have of her, just has she has probably misrepresented them. What we perceive to be the truth will out, but as Claudia knows, the historian always gets the last word:

"The voice of history, of course, is composite. Many voices; all the voices that have managed to get themselves heard. Some louder than others, naturally. My story is tangled up with the stories of others...; their voices must be heard also, thus shall I abide by the conventions of history. Of truth, whatever that may be. But truth is tied to words, to print, to the testimony of the page. Moments shower away; the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality....And when you and I talk about history we don't mean what actually happened, do we? ...We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled."