Diana Evan’s makes a return to the literary scene with ‘The
Wonder’, her long-awaited follow up to her sublime first novel,
the 2005 Orange Prize for New Writers winner ‘26A’.
For anyone who fell in love with her debut, the four year wait has
been a particularly long one. Whenever I come across an exceptional
breakthrough novel, I have the naughty habit of comparing the author’s
subsequent work to their original tour de force. Lately and all
too often, writers who’ve shown such ingenuity in their first
book lose some of that spark with the novel that follows. Thankfully
Evans does not disappoint with The Wonder. True, it does
not take your breath away in quite the same manner as ‘26A’
but on its own merit it is a solid work of fiction.
The story is told through the eyes
of Lucas, a disaffected and idle 25 year old living on a barge in
West London with his stroppy but hardworking older sister Denise
circa 1998. New Labour has recently swept into power, Lauryn Hill
is ruling the air waves with ‘The Miseducation...’ and
Lucas has not got a clue what to do with his life. He senses perhaps
his inability to establish himself in any given field has something
to do with the gap left in his life by his father Antoney Matheus
– a prominent contemporary dancer in the 1960’s and
founder of the successful but short-lived African-Caribbean ‘Midnight
Ballet’ dance company.
Antoney’s absence from Denise
and Lucas world is shrouded in mystery. He is believed to have
drowned but Lucas soon discovers that the story is not quite as
simple as that. Denise deals with things by keeping busy as a florist
and mentally burying the past. She is keen to keep the little knowledge
she has about their father to herself. Their maternal grandmother,
welsh Toreth, who looks after them after their mother Carla passes
away, is equally as tight-lipped. All the secrecy only heightens
Lucas’ curiosity. By exploring his parents’ remaining
relics left on the boat plus some of his own detective work, he
unravels a complex world of dance world politics, betrayal, mental
illness, unrequited affection, diva antics and the puzzle that is
Antoney.
Handsome, enigmatic and narcissistic,
he is a man continually searching for his true self after his own
father abandoned him. At the centre of Antoney’s story is
his doomed and turbulent relationship with beautiful Carla; as intense
sometimes as it is fragile at other times. It’s in the depiction
of this saga –the troubled dance between pain and reprieve-
that the author truly excels. To paraphrase a Paul Simon lyric,
the arc of Carla and Antoney’s love affair is crafted beautifully
by Evans.
The Wonder spans several
decades but it never loses its continuity or the reader’s
attention. Although the story is not told completely in linear
fashion, interspersing flashbacks with Lucas’ melancholy here
and now, Evans is mindful of not flitting between the past and present
in a confusing way. There is a vast array of characters that people
the book and the author does justice to most of them, even the bit
players.
There’s Oscar, Antoney’s
eccentric mentor obsessed with Russian ballet dancer-extraordinaire
Vaslav Nijinsky. Simone, the fiercely ambitious and haughty prima
donna of the Midnight Ballet and the only one with any formal classical
dance training. Bluey, the ad hoc percussionist who has acquired
his sobriquet because of his piercing azure eyes. He remains taciturn
and hopelessly in love with Carla. Riley, the laconic, hermitical
ex-journalist enamoured with all that relates to the Midnight Ballet
– especially Antoney. The wonder, whose presence in the dance
company is a quiet but sagacious one, always showing up with timely
and well needed advice. The list of weird and wonderful personalities
in the book goes on.
Evans compelling narrative draws them
all together, capturing the highs and lows of the Midnight Ballet
so well the reader is every bit as involved in the rollercoaster
ride as the characters. She handles just as well the world of late
1990’s London. The novel is a nostalgia-fest with the references
to the now defunct Touch magazine, the rise of UK Garage music and
the mention of once-promising-now-all-but-forgotten artists such
as soul starlet, Hinda Hicks.
Evans herself was a dancer before
finding her present calling as a writer. Her expertise in this
field helps to flesh out the story as she paints as vivid a picture
as possible of the kind of dance moves the Midnight Ballet would
have performed – even if some of these descriptions might
be lost on the untrained. As a whole The Wonder is painstakingly
researched from the geographical representations of Antoney’s
native Jamaica and Cuba to the nitty-gritty of what happens to a
barge that hasn’t been anywhere for a very long time. But
don’t be intimidated by this wealth of information; Evans
doesn’t overload us with useless facts in a desperate attempt
not to let her newly acquired knowledge go to waste. Every piece
of background information has its place and relevance in The
Wonder even if it’s simply to make the sights and sounds
of the novel all that more real to the reader.
Evans exploration of the spirit world’s
interaction with the physical isn’t as dominant this time
around as it was in her previous outing. Nevertheless there is
still a strong presence of the supernatural in The Wonder and
Evans can’t resist a touch of magical realism here and there.
At times it can leave the reader slightly befuddled as characters
try to make sense of their other-worldly experience but it doesn’t
overwhelm the story. It serves, if anything, to highlight an element
of quirkiness in Evan’s writing; not in any way derivative
instead perhaps proving that she has established her own distinctive
style with the second book. This might also explain Evans’
continued fascination with mortality. Her approach to the subject
is immersed in a sort of grotesque, elegiac splendour. No one writes
about death quite like Diana.
Apart from the author’s indiscriminate
and often unnecessary use of brackets (a faux pas in fiction as
far as I’m concerned), The Wonder is a very satisfying
and engrossing read from start to bitter-sweet end, confirming Ms
Evans hasn’t lost form. Let’s just hope we don’t
have to wait so long for her next novel.
The Wonder is released in Paperback in August.  |
![African Writing Online Home Page [many literatures, one voice]](http://www.african-writing.com/nine/images/logo9.png){kind=logo}
