Is Beauty Good by Rosalind Belben review â the literary equivalent of free jazz
Combining hilarious detail with harsh observation, this rediscovered novel takes the reader on an exhilaratingly strange journey âBut after all, writing is nothing more than
Combining hilarious detail with harsh observation, this rediscovered novel takes the reader on an exhilaratingly strange journey âBut after all, writing is nothing more than a guided dream,â wrote Jorge Luis Borges. Dreams and dreaming are fertile concerns for Rosalind Belben, too. Her fourth book, originally published in 1979 and reissued last yea r, was titled Dreaming of Dead People. It was followed, a decade later, by Is Beauty Good. Now available in a new edition from the Sheffield indie And Other Stories, this eccentric polyphonic novel contains dozens of considerations of dreams, including dogsâ dreams and horsesâ dreams as well as human beingsâ.
Yet what makes it extraordinary is Belbenâs ability to capture in words the slippery state that is neither dreaming nor sleeping nor waking, but somewhere in the edgelands between all three. âI fall awake and think, I want to go home. But there is no home.â So begins the chapter entitled Exile, a deliciously elusive story that is, most of the time at least, narrated in the first person by someone who is probably a woman, âa grizzled, cropped personâ, and probably quite old and alone.
They might be travelling through mountains somewhere, perhaps on a bus. They arenât sure: âI am quite lost, wherever I am. I want to surrender. I wish to retire. I am tired.â Swishing about are uncertain memories of a childhood âshroudedâ in nightmares: there was an orchard with an abundance of flora and fauna, and larks and swallows and âswifts to screamâ. Like the author, the narrator was âborn in the mud monthâ of February, and longs to disappear into marshlands to âbe touched and stroked by plantsâ.
But Belben never lets us rest in one place for long. Slipping in and out of sleep, âsuffering glimpsesâ, the narrator stares at âa pink and blue angelâ in the plaster of the wall. Which wall, you wonder, and how did we get here? This is the lure of Belbenâs hypnagogia, the dizzying space into which she writes. Continue reading...
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