Guardian Review
A novel can be approached in a number of ways: as a narrative pure and simple, as a picture of manners and time, or as the vehicle for a certain philosophy of life. What we don't often get is a work which encompasses all three. Remember Me is one of those. This is not one of those clever little books, those cocktails of fiction, which for so many years have replaced longer, more elaborate works of storytelling. It is the account of a man called Joseph, now old, recalling his youth, and an event which has shadowed his life ever since. He is putting the past into words for his daughter as well as himself, in an effort to lay to rest the pain and the guilt. Joseph was a student at Oxford when he met Natasha. He fell in love at once. She was French, older than he, an art student and a depressive devastated by the desertion of her lover, Robert. There were things in her background that had activated her state of mind - a too-strong father and an apparently cruel stepmother. There was something in Joseph that propelled him towards her - like is always drawn to like. In adolescence he, too, had suffered a breakdown, but while she remained imprisoned in the belief that she deserved unhappiness, he was ambitious, shy, unsure of himself yet determined to succeed. In many ways he had no choice - not if one believes that everything is mapped out at the moment of conception. Natasha allows herself to trust him; she feels love again. They visit Paris together, talk endlessly, marry, set up home, sit up at night writing fiction and poetry. Then they have a child. But it isn't enough: it never is. Joseph, becoming successful in his career in television and writing, begins to spend less time with Natasha, although the love remains. She is going to an analyst. They live in a house near an aerodrome. When he returns at night, often the worse for drink, they are like two people playing blind man's bluff, bumping into the furniture of their old lives, grappling with the stranger who is now more evident than the lover. While Natasha hardly seems to hear the deafening roar of the descending aeroplanes, Joseph's mind is blasted by the sounds. By now he too is undergoing analysis. He moves the family to Hampstead to be away from the noise, spends less and less time at home. Finally he leaves her, but still loves her. He meets Helen and loves her too. The breaking moment comes when the analyst treating Natasha commits suicide. Natasha is distraught; the woman was her friend, her confidante, her healer. How can she survive without her, so many truths and secrets and dark shadows still unresolved? One of the final chapters of the book sets down Natasha's unbearable last thoughts. "So at last she was alone. This was it then, this everything, this nothing. Particles of dreams, splinters of nightmares, colours of happiness, here, there, the slow whirl of it all so full of life, and that was all, that was everything, it was done. It was finished." This is a bleak, powerful, remarkable work: not entirely fiction, for in this fourth novel of a semi-autobiographical series, Bragg is recording a true remembrance of time past. It may seem long, too explanatory in detail, but that's because in ridding the mind of guilt nothing can be left out. Though Joseph does his best to convince the reader that he was mostly to blame for his wife's state of mind, I didn't believe him. Women are always older than young men; men take longer to grow up and know themselves. She was touched with a sadness bordering on madness before he met her, and yet he insists on taking the blame. It's as though every beat of his heart echoes the words "through my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault". While reading this book I kept thinking about what I would feel if my father had chronicled the events leading up to my own birth and the often mysterious happenings that took place in my childhood. I've come to the conclusion that if it had been told as truthfully and with as much loving force as Remember Me I would have welcomed it. Beryl Bainbridge's An Awfully Big Adventure is published by Abacus. To order Remember Me for pounds 16.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop Caption: article-bainbridgebragg.1 The breaking moment comes when the analyst treating Natasha commits suicide. Natasha is distraught; the woman was her friend, her confidante, her healer. How can she survive without her, so many truths and secrets and dark shadows still unresolved? One of the final chapters of the book sets down Natasha's unbearable last thoughts. "So at last she was alone. This was it then, this everything, this nothing. Particles of dreams, splinters of nightmares, colours of happiness, here, there, the slow whirl of it all so full of life, and that was all, that was everything, it was done. It was finished." This is a bleak, powerful, remarkable work: not entirely fiction, for in this fourth novel of a semi-autobiographical series, Bragg is recording a true remembrance of time past. It may seem long, too explanatory in detail, but that's because in ridding the mind of guilt nothing can be left out. Though [Joseph] does his best to convince the reader that he was mostly to blame for his wife's state of mind, I didn't believe him. Women are always older than young men; men take longer to grow up and know themselves. She was touched with a sadness bordering on madness before he met her, and yet he insists on taking the blame. It's as though every beat of his heart echoes the words "through my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault". - Beryl Bainbridge.