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Reviews | |
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Tenderly drawn, Bernard MacLaverty has once again
produced something of genius. The dialogue exposes choices and the
people who face them as well as any stage play. But the interior
world of Martin is where the real illumination lies. You see him
as clearly as you would yourself. MacLaverty's work travels on with
you, long after the book has been closed. Bernard MacLaverty's beautifully written portrayal
of how a mind changes as it acquires new knowledge is masterful… MacLaverty is a master of many moods and this genial,
intelligent novel finds him at his relaxed best. The Anatomy School adds up to a celebration of
friendship, an exhilarating reconstruction of male adolescence,
and an unembittered swipe at rebarbative educational practices.
But revenge is not the mainspring of Bernard MacLaverty's literary
impulse; what he's engaged in, instead, is a scintillating exercise
in re-creation. Exceptionally skilled at
entering into the lives of the lonely or impaired, he depicts unfulfilment
with an authenticity unmatched in Irish fiction since James Joyce's
Dubliners… Until now, his books (triumphs of exactness in which
time, place and personality are caught with unshowy authority and
not a word seems wasted) have tended to be as melancholy as they
are masterly. Their humour has had a bleak edge. With The Anatomy
School, exuberance breaks through. Zestfully funny scenes intersperse
more caustic comedy. Especially entertaining are the novel's visits
to the supper evenings where three garrulous Belfast women get together
with their parish priest to munch dainty sandwiches and chew over
theological niceties… Not the least of the factors making The
Anatomy School outstanding even by MacLaverty's standards is that
it seems deeply rooted in his own life. This tender, funny and gripping novel says as much
about the state we're in as many a history book. Yet it still manages
to entice the reader with its familiar characters and teasing storyline.
Like the best of drama, The Anatomy School draws pictures in the
imagination, and offers a lesson of the most enjoyable kind. Perhaps
one of MacLaverty's best and most exuberant books. In what is possibly the best of MacLaverty's novels,
he brings the clearest insight - and wonderful simplicity of structure
- to an organic unity; and by vivid presentation of the symbols
of emotion, kindles the emotive sympathy of the reader. But the marvellous qualities of this long and splendid
book are the affection and humour which grace it everywhere. This is a brilliant novel about adolescence…
the steel core of the novel is the boys' evolving friendship and
their relations with treacherous teachers. It's mostly done through
dialogue, but the boys also express themselves by jumping, pushing,
punching. Reading the book is like watching a movie. …his book's the best I've read all year… …a funny and poignant coming of age story… James Joyce invented the modern novel when
he wrote A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. J.D.Salinger wrote
perhaps the definitive coming-of-age yarn, featuring Holden Caufield
in The Catcher in the Rye. Mordecai Richler and Alice Munro gave
voice to their own country'scoming of age when they wrote The Apprenticeship
Of Duddy Kravitz and Lives of Girls And Women. They gave the tried
and true structure fresh life by making it relevant to a particular
place and time. Into this tradition comes Bernard MacLaverty's The
Anatomy School. |
