How Do People Stay the Same <\/p>\n
Author: Mark Bowles <\/p>\n
ISBN-13: 9781913111755<\/p>\n
Publisher: Galley Beggar Press<\/p>\n
Guideline Price: \u00a311.99, 180 pp <\/p>\n
While autobiographical in nature, Mark Bowles\u2019s second novel does without life\u2019s hallmark events. <\/p>\n
\u201cCanonically big events\u201d don\u2019t import meaning into our lives, according to narrator Patrick Boyd. It\u2019s life\u2019s borderless events \u201cwhich pass unrecognised, unheeded, unnamed\u201d that develop and mark us. Patrick the \u201cbelated recipient of [his] own experience\u201d, yearns to make sense of his days, and rather than relying on cryptic memories, he reads through his diaries in reverse, from adulthood to adolescence, hoping to unearth concrete proof of who, and how, he has been.<\/p>\n
Patrick travels through familiar territory, and the end goal of his depressive teenage years is always in sight, but the novel\u2019s reverse chronology manages \u201ca different kind of expectation\u201d, in which reminiscences form set-ups, scars become wounds and the foresight afforded can make for guilty reading. <\/p>\n
Patrick\u2019s excitement about the end of torrid relationships is inevitably followed by him suffering them. His enthusiasm is infectious, but readers know it to be a spent force in the near future. Above all, this technique endears Patrick to readers, who will cheer for the small victories the past lacks but his future holds, and in darker moments, wish to shower Patrick with reassurances about his future contentment. What can often be a cheap narrative trick is well woven into the plot, which is cognisant of the past\u2019s tendency to invade the present, and the clues to be found in the former.<\/p>\n
How Do People Stay the Same\u2019s titular question remains unsolved. Distant selves are \u201cproof enough that we are not one but many people in succession\u201d. Is there a \u201cthin graphene layer of self\u201d, a sustaining thread running between the depressive teenager and the adult? Beyond scraps of remembered verse and vague aspirations, there\u2019s scant evidence. Patrick dreams of stepping back into past versions of himself, so that unconvincing instantiations might ring true again. <\/p>\n
How Do People Stay the Same is a tender novel, whose meditations on the self\u2019s uncertain parameters urge excavating the past to better understand the present. A misremembered couplet is insufficient evidence of Patrick\u2019s continuity, but a reminder that living is rarely chronological; \u201cthe hands of a clock in an old Jewish ghetto go backwards \/ and you too step in reverse through your life\u201d.<\/p>\n
Colm McKenna is a writer based in Paris<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How Do People Stay the Same Author: Mark Bowles ISBN-13: 9781913111755 Publisher: Galley Beggar Press Guideline Price: \u00a311.99,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6489,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-567086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-book-reviews","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}