Homo fabula: October 2019

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Grievous by H. S. Cross

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

Taking place in 1931 at St. Stephen's Academy, five years after the events of Cross' 2015 novel, Wilberforce, Grievous is a sweeping novel with complex inter-related storylines. The central characters are Grieves, a Housemaster who finds his responsibility for disciplining students in opposition to his pacifist inclinations and Riding, a creative student who struggles more generally after the loss of his father.

As with Wilberforce, Cross pays homage to the classic boarding school novels and authors. Riding, who writes fantastic stories which, with the help of other students are acted out in secret, provides a connection to the lives of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Interestingly, while Wilberforce follows the classic form of focusing on games, they are only mentioned in passing in Grievous. The action here is focused more on choir, creative writing and acting.

A central theme of the novel is illness and death. Many characters have experienced the death of a parent or spouse and frankly none of them handle it well. Neither the students, nor the adults seem to be able to talk about their feelings, causing any number of misunderstandings and errors in judgement. Grieves' troubled personal life manifests in his impossible relationship with a married woman who is now ill and traveling with her daughter throughout Europe and America to find a cure.

Riding and Grieves are heavily involved in each others lives but this manifests itself almost exclusively in their relationships with others. Over the summer while Cordelia is traveling with her mother to find a cure, she is engaged in a one way correspondence with Riding about her days. As well, Riding's mother, a nurse, is corresponding with Grieves who is trying to help the woman he loves find a cure.

New York : Fox Books, 2008

Some have described this novel as less claustrophobic than Wilberforce since significant parts of the action take place outside the walls of St. Stephens. While there is the experience of life outside the school, the weight of life's challenges seem to follow the characters wherever they go. There's a certain melancholy and longing for connection that permeates the book in both the adult and adolescent characters. This creation of setting based on emotions or feelings as opposed to lengthy description of locations is one of the strongest elements of the novel.

Grievous is described as Cross' second novel, but it has its roots in a novel called Riding, published by Cross in 2008. Riding was issued in two volumes amounting to over 1000 pages. Following the same structure, Grievous has been tightened up and the writing generally improved. In Riding the bones are certainly there, while 10 years hence, Grievous is a much stronger work. In a July 28, 2008 interview with Amande Green, Cross spoke about Riding and described her next work at the time as a prequel called Wilberforce.