The Broken Word

I got to interview Adam Foulds for a blog at work. During the interview we spoke a bit about The Broken Word. It sounded like a really interesting read so I picked it up, but only just got to it now.

The Broken Word is the story of Tom, who comes home to Kenya after high school when the May May uprising is happening. He is brought along to with the men (his father's friends) on a hunting party where he shoots an insurgent to the praise of the other men, who feel he has made it through a rite of passage. From there he finds himself a prison guard for the Loyalists, becoming more and more desensitised to violence. In the end though, he decides to go back to university. But he is changed, having become more brutal and violent as a result of his experiences with war.

The Broken Word is written in verse. When I first started reading it, I admit that I had a bit of a hard time following what was going on. But after getting to Chapter 2 or 3, I seemed to "get it," and started to really enjoy the book. Verse was an interesting yet fitting way to talk about the atrocities of war. The sparseness of the text really suited this tale.

I will admit that the ending felt a bit lacklustre. Up until that point I was willing to rate The Broken Word 4/5 stars on Goodreads. After the last chapter I felt like my rating would go down. But in the end I thought it deserved 3.5/5 stars, which I rounded back up to 4.

The Quickening Maze

The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds is an interesting book. It tells the story of poet John Clare's incarceration in an asylum in Epping Forest. The asylum is run by Dr. Matthew Allen and populated with quite an assortment of characters including Allen's family, the poet Alfred Tennyson, the brutish staff, and Clare's fellow inmates. Clare has a hard time living in the asylum because he is a man of nature - being inside is crushing his spirit. But he is delusional, calling himself other names and yearning for his childhood sweetheart (who he believes is his second wife) and so he must remain.

Alongside Clare's narrative are two others: Dr. Allen begins his enterprise in creating a woodcarving machine, and one of his daughters, Hannah, searches for love; Hannah tries to catch the eyes of unavailable men including Tennyson and one of the inmates who is not insane (he's merely being kept at the asylum because he has inappropriate " sentimental attachments").  Both of these narratives were interesting for different reasons: while brilliant, Dr. Allen's scheme faces setback after setback; and Hannah manages to grow up, so to speak, while chasing her unattainable men.

My one issue with The Quickening Maze is that it gives you the point of view of an awful lot of characters (many more than the few I've mentioned here), which can be quite confusing at times. I'm thinking that's mainly a fault with the subject matter: this book is full of many interesting and historically accurate characters, so Foulds probably wanted to ensure the reader got a feel for them all. Despite this issue, The Quickening Maze is a beautiful book, in particular thanks to Foulds' background as a poet; his prose contains many lovely turns of phrases.