Crustaceans Book

The eponymous crustaceans of Andrew Cowan's third novel are not only the hard-shelled sea creatures of sandy English shorelines, but the hard-lipped, reticent characters who believe that saying nothing is preferable to stirring up any kind of emotion. It begins with a stark cold melancholy--"December and one foot of snow." Paul, once married and a father, drives to the seaside in winter, sleeps "thinly" and talks constantly to his son, Euan. Except Euan is no longer there. On route, Paul remembers his own boyhood, his taciturn, self-absorbed father, whose "eyes flared out at me, his sculptor's eyes, as if I too were a piece of metal he could twist into shape". Paul's mothering was haphazard and inadequate, making him an over-concerned parent, obsessively detailing all aspects of Euan's life with the zeal that accompanies the firstborn: "I was always too keen to instruct you, and too conscious by far of the life you'd grow out of ... I treated you like history." Becoming his curator, the father collects hagstones, cowries and tellins for the son, and learns to emerge from his shell and love for the first time: "I'd never been happier, more at home in myself ... I was what you'd made me..." Paul tries to become everything his father failed to be but is haunted by his mother's mysterious illness and death, which the family refuses to explain. The absence of mother and son are delicately balanced with the reader experiencing some of Paul's frustration and bewilderment as the author withholds the reasons for Euan's absence until the novel's close. The intimate second person address makes Euan pressingly alive, "For you there was only ever what next", although Paul's relationship with his wife Ruth is less well drawn, making the character's isolation even more complete. Crustacean's understated power lies in its ability to show how rigorous self-preservation can inhibit one's capacity for love. --Cherry SmythRead More