Landing Gear, by Kate Pullinger

Review copy courtesy Doubleday Canada

It is safe to say that Kate Pullinger’s last novel, The Mistress of Nothing, took me by surprise. As a read, the book (her sixth novel but the first that I had read) seemed a conventional society-based historical novel, a cultural conflict, travel story narrated by Lady Duff Gordon’s maid who has accompanied her to Egypt where the aristocrat is seeking relief from consumption.

Enjoyable, but hardly challenging, the surprise was that it won Canada’s 2009 Governor-General’s award for fiction and was long-listed for that year’s Giller Prize — a sign that two juries saw significant literary value in a book that I would have (and did) characterize as escapist fiction. While she was born and raised in Canada, Pullinger has been based in the U.K. for some time and the novel had no Canadian content, so recognition from Canadian juries was just as surprising on that front.

All of this sparked curiosity on my part when I read descriptions of her new work, Landing Gear. The author says she was inspired by a 2001 story in The Guardian concerning a Pakistani who had stowed away in the landing gear of a British-bound jet and somehow survived the fall when the airplane approached Heathrow. The promotional stories promised that the author uses this as the framework for the exploration of tensions in a modern English family. For this potential reader, at least, that seemed a long way from Lady Duff Gordon heading to Egypt when it is still part of the Ottoman Empire.

A brief prologue alerts the reader that the novel will involve the story of Yacub, the stowaway, and the fact that he “arrives” in England by crashing on the roof of Harriet’s car just as she is approaching it with her cartload of groceries. She decides to take him home. The prologue also alerts readers to a device that Pullinger will occasionally return to throughout the story — it recounts the event in snippets of less than a page, each told from a different point of view.

The fictional version of Yacub’s fall takes place in 2012, but when the novel proper gets into motion, Pullinger moves back to 2010 to introduce Harriet and her family — Landing Gear is more than anything else their story. I was willing to give the author licence to use the highly-unlikely fall as her centrepiece; she gained credibility immediately when she used another “aeronautical event”, the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano which shut down European air travel for days, as the device to introduce her characters.

It was the day after the volcano erupted that Harriet noticed the sky. Extraordinary.

The day before, she’d been too caught up with the chaos in the radio newsroom [where she works as a presenter] as the airports had closed, one by one, north to south, like roman blinds being pulled down over the entire country: Glasgow — Edinburgh — Manchester — Birmingham — Heathrow — Gatwick. In order to read the news properly, she’d had to learn how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, along with a host of other Icelandic names. News bulletins had been bumped up from once an hour, to twice, to every fifteen minutes. She’d stayed late and left in a car her boss, Steve, ordered, the underground having long since stopped for the night. Once home, she found her son, Jack, asleep on the sofa, clutching his gaming handset, surrounded by pizza crusts, sticky glasses and other debris.

(Full disclosure: Pullinger may have had an advantage with this reader when she used that volcanic eruption and resulting flight shutdown to frame her story. Mrs. KfC was on a trekking vacation to Spain when that Iceland volcano erupted — both her trip there and scheduled return home were disrupted by the highly unusual shutdown of virtually all European air space so I have some personal experience with the uncertainty that it created.)

Harriet’s husband Michael (a boring actuary) is in New York on business when flights back home are halted. He chooses to head to Toronto to stay with an old flame to await the resumption of air travel — it is a decision that will lead to an event that disrupts the entire family balance for much longer than the air travel shutdown.

And then there is 14-year-old son Jack:

Jack had lived through what felt like millions of school holidays, with their distinct combination of freedom and boredom, like a weekend that never ends, a whole string of exciting Saturdays that turn into dismal Sundays. The Easter holiday was always very long — sixteen days this year, Jack had counted — and his family hadn’t gone away. Sometimes they did go away, Jack and his parents, city breaks in posh hotels with swimming pools. Why did his parents think that all he needed was a swimming pool to compensate for being dragged around endless churches, museums and art galleries? But this year Jack’s dad was in New York on business and Harriet was busy at the radio station.

Jack will be using this freedom to head to the Dukes Meadows for a party, a sort-of outdoor rave. It will prove to have two features: the silent sky (the family lives in Richmond on the Heathrow landing path where the noise of overhead planes is normally a constant feature) and the drug-related death of well-known local lad, a death in which Jack has a minor part.

And finally the author introduces Emily who “buried her father the day the planes stopped flying”. In her own way, Emily is also part of the family. As part of a personal search, she has been stalking Harriet — as a project, the stalking has also involved preparing a video documentary. Indeed, Harriet has been surreptitiously filming Harriet in the supermarket parking lot when she sees Harriet look up and directs her camera into the sky — she captures Yacub’s fall, his non-fatal landing and Harriet’s response.

Those excerpts and descriptions should be warning enough that Pullinger continues to demand licence from her readers as the novel progresses. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that she rewards this with some highly perceptive observations on what is involved in modern family life, whether or not the planes are flying.

For the most part, I would say that Pullinger succeeds in this project — the novel is both entertaining and engaging and there are a number of chuckle-inducing comic set pieces. I am not certain just how memorable it will turn out to be, but during the reading I was more than willing to go along with the author.

I’ll conclude by noting that there is an aspect to Landing Gear in which I did not take part. Pullinger is Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media at Bath Spa University and has expanded this creative project to include that latter discipline:

The digital world gives authors and publishers completely new opportunities for experimentation.

With Landing Gear, Random House created an API (application programming interface) that allows programmers to get content in multiple ways. An excerpt-length section of Landing Gear is stored in a content management system and tagged to define characters, locations, events and times. Programmers can access this data and build new products with it.

To get access to the Landing Gear API or see some of the resulting projects, please visit
http://www.randomhouse.ca/LandingGearAPI

I am a reader, not a programmer, so I admit that note was a large “No Go” sign for me and I have not visited the sight. I also acknowledge that that makes me an out-of-date curmudgeon — I would be delighted to receive comments from anyone who has. 🙂

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Governor-General’s award winner a surprise

Kate Pullinger’s The Mistress of Nothing has won the 2009 Governor-General’s award for English language fiction — a major and stunning surprise. Told from the point of view of her servant, the book is the story of Lady Duff Cooper’s mid-nineteenth century retreat to Egypt to alleviate her consumption and how the household adapts there ( my full review is here). I said in my original review that I was surprised to see the novel shortlisted for the G-G and longlisted for the Giller — while it is very competently done, it is not the kind of book that wins literary competitions. As well, Pullinger, while Canadian-born and (I presume) still a citizen, has lived in London for almost a quarter century and the book has no Canadian content.

Juries for the G-G have a history of being contrarian. Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness (reviewed here) would seem to have been this year’s obvious choice (and would have been mine) — one can only assume the jury decided that the Man Booker International Prize was award enough for Munro this year. Given that the last two G-G winners were established Canadian “names” (Nino Ricci for The Origin of the Species in 2008 and Michael Ondaatje for Divisadero in 2007), one could understand a jury wanting to look for something less obvious.

Even then, one would have thought the jury would turn to Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean (reviewed here ) as its next choice. This first novel about Aristotle and the young Alexander the Great is the success story of this year’s Canadian season, making the shortlist for all three major prizes. Alas, like Rawi Hage’s Cockroach last year it is now on track to lose all three.

The other two finalists would also have been surprise winners. Deborah Willis’ Vanishing and Other Stories (reviewed here is a wonderful first collection of stories, but not up to comparison with Munro. And Michael Crummey’s Galore (reviewed by Shadow Giller juror Trevor Berrett here) seems a bit too regional and offbeat — although that is often a strength in G-G competitions.

None of those comments is meant to discourage anyone from reading The Mistress of Nothing. While both the subject and style mean it is not for everyone’s taste, it is well done and an enjoyable read. It is, however, a surprising winner in a competiton where the “literary” usually takes precedence over the “readable”.

While I only follow the English fiction award, there are actually 14 Governor-General literary awards, seven each for English and French-language work, in categories including poetry, drama, children’s and translation. You can see the full list here.

The Mistress of Nothing, by Kate Pullinger

Purchased at Chapters.ca

The 2009 Canadian book prize season has had two surprises — Annabel Lyon’s debut novel The Golden Mean has made all three short lists; Kate Pullinger’s The Mistress of Nothing was longlisted for the Giller Prize and is shortlisted (EDIT: and has now won) for the Governor-General’s fiction award. In many ways, Pullinger’s performance is more of a surprise — she has lived in England for more than a quarter of a century and her book has no Canadian references. I was going to give this novel a pass but when it showed up on the G-G shortlist (known for a preference for edgy books), I thought I should give it a try.

On the surface, The Mistress of Nothing is about Lady Duff Gordon and is a story of the soon-to-be-declining English aristocracy set in the mid-nineteenth century. My Lady is consumptive and her only option is to leave England — and her noble family — for the arid climate of Egypt. She does and eventually settles up the Nile at Luxor, goes native in habit and dress and, in her own way, survives, at least for a while.

That story line is so strong that it is the normal description of this book, but it is most misleading in terms of what the book is really about. The Mistress of Nothing is not the story of Lady Duff Gordon, it is the story of her lady’s maid, Sally Naldrett, who accompanies My Lady to Egypt and finds in that removal her own set of opportunities and challenges:

I am Lady Duff Gordon’s maid; I am thirty years old, a very great age for a single woman. I reckon I became a spinster some years ago although the precise moment it happened passed me by. I have been in the Duff Gordon household for more than a decade, and those dozen years have been good years for me. Before then, penury. My sister Ellen and I were orphaned when we were very young; our parents, Battersea shopkeepers, were killed in a train derailment at Clapham. We were staying with our Aunt Clara in Esher at the time — our parents were on the way to fetch us home — and that is where we remained. But Aunt Clara could not afford, or was not inclined — I never knew which was more true, though I have my suspicions — to keep two extra children and we went into service, me that same year, and then Ellen one year later.

As is implied in that quote, Sally has done well by her time in service. Now, while the move to Egypt is a choice of survival for her mistress, it is a chance for Sally of adventure and experience. She is eager for the opportunity — Pullinger in a piece of foreshadowing lets us know early on that it will not turn out well.

Very early on in the Egyptian experience, the Duff Gordon party is introduced to Omar Abu Halaweh, a factotum who soon becomes an essential part of the household. Not long after (this is a spoiler but essential to the novel, so I apologize and it is hardly a surprise) he becomes Sally’s lover. She becomes pregnant and will eventually bear his child.

That plot is central to Pullinger’s novel but it is not the centrepiece of the book. Rather, the writer’s portrayal of the noble Englishwoman and the adaptation of both herself and her household to Egypt is its strength. Egypt is part of the Ottoman empire and the Pasha is transfixed by updating it — not the least by building the Suez Canal, but with a public works program that means taxes and labor demands that destroy the inidiginent economy. Lady Duff Gordon, Sally and Omar settle in Luxor to a redolent life but around them the turmoil of the Pasha’s rule reigns. While both local and foreign dignitaries visit often for My Lady’s salons (a reminder of British life deserted), they are a reminder of life that was, not what will be. My Lady adapts:

One morning I entered my Lady’s room and found her already up; we had adopted the Egyptian custom of rising before dawn long since. This morning she had dressed already.

“This is it,” my Lady said with a flourish, spinning herself around, “this is the new a la mode.”

“Lady Duff Gordon!” I said, unable to say more.

“What do you think?” she asked and spun around again. She was wearing the most extraordinary outfit I had every seen. She had on a pair of Egyptian trousers — men’s trousers, brown cotton, loose flowing, tied at the ankles — and a long white cotton tunic on top — a man’s tunic, plain — and sandals on her bare feet. That was it.

When Sally becomes pregnant, she and Omar make the mistake of assuming that Lady Duff Gordon’s “going native” has extended beyond dress. Omar is already married in the Muslim tradition and has a daughter, but it is quite legal in the Egypt of the day for him to have a second wife. Sally understands and accepts this and both she and Omar delude themselves that My Lady will also adapt, although not so sure in that decision that they actually tell her about the impending arrival.

It is at that point that Pullinger’s story begins to take on another form and, at least for this reader, unravel. For example, Sally’s adoption of Egyptian dress means that her mistress does not even realize her maid is pregnant until the baby arrives. And when it does, Lady Duff Gordon retreats into a caricature of her traditional English behavior. The last third of the book — I am afraid equally unconvincing for me — is the story of Sally’s recovery from these circumstances.

The Mistress of Nothing was an enjoyable and satisfying read, with some quite intriguing digressions on Brits hanging around Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century. It does have the elements for a very good movie with beautiful scenary — Pullinger co-write the novel for The Piano with film director Jane Campion, so it is hard to ignore that angle. Alas, it does not have much more. A very entertaining book, but not one that you are liable to be thinking a lot about in the week or two after you have finished it.