Running away to Greeneland
Anne Chisholm
WITH YOUR CROOKED HEART by Helen Dunmore Viking £16.99, pp. 249 Helen Dunmore is a gifted writer and this novel, her fifth, displays her talents to the full; it also indicates her weaknesses. Seductively well-written, it begins on Brookner territory with the self-exposure of a damaged middle-aged woman and ends in Greeneland with vicious, casual murder. In between, she explores her own characteristic themes: the dark conse- quences of the secret acts and the strength as well as vulnerability of the innocent. She frames her story with scenes set in a London garden smelling of 'cat piss and buddleia'. Helen Dunmore's clean, if some- times over-artful prose, is sprinkled with references to scents, colours and flowers; she tempers the ominous aspects of her story more than once with references to narcissus petals. The novel revolves around Louise, a beautiful, sensuous woman who finds herself at 40 an overweight alcoholic about to lose her daughter to her ex-husband. Durunore gives a brilliant account of Louise's visit to a plastic sur- geon who she hopes may restore her lost looks; her insight into his contempt for his would-be patient and the sinister pleasure he takes in the nature of his grisly trade is blood-curdling. . Louise's plight is the result of her Involvement since her luscious girlhood with two brothers, Paul and Johnnie, who have both escaped from poverty and the East End by dubious means. She has mar- ried Paul, the elder and richer of the two, whose property empire operates within the law even though he deals in contaminated land; but it is the younger brother, Johnnie, a risk-taking drug-dealer, who is the father of her daughter Anna. This is the secret, Dunmore implies, which undermines Louise's happiness, destroys her marriage and drives her to drink even though she apparently feels little or no guilt. She and Paul both love Johnnie and they both love Anna too, even though Paul decides to marry a chilly blonde and take the child to live with them in Yorkshire. Dunmore, who writes books for children as well as adults, describes with sympathetic understanding the tender, tricky relationship between Anna and her mother, who is powerless to control the addiction she knows is wrecking their life together.
When Louise is left alone in London and Johnnie falls out with his criminal associ- ates a fatal chain of events begins. Con- vinced that she can protect him, determined not to fail him as she has failed Anna, Louise goes on the run with John- nie, first to Brighton and then to Harwich and a ship sailing for Denmark. Meanwhile Anna and a new friend run away together from Yorkshire and make their way to Louise's house in London; finding it empty, they camp in the garden. By the time Paul finds them, nemesis has overtaken the feckless Johnnie and the deluded Louise; two hired thugs take care of them both.
By the book's grisly climax, Helen Dun- more's sheer narrative skill ensures that the more contrived and sentimental aspects of the novel hardly matter. Nevertheless, there is something formulaic about the way she constructs the story so neatly, with the visit to the plastic surgeon at the beginning echoed by the mutilation at the end and the appearance twice, right on cue, of a wild cat in the London garden. Anna and her friend rear a kitten in Yorkshire and bring it with them on their journey; as a symbol of innocence and vulnerability, it is almost too obvious. Helen Dunmore writes well enough not to need such devices and her novel would be more impressive with a few rough edges.
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