‘All memory is constructed and fictionalised’ – And This Is True by Emily Mackie

I read this book in a day; it’s a tale that’ll grab you and throttle you until you submit.  Nevis Gow is fifteen years old and has lived in the back of a white transit van with his father, Marshall, for eleven years, ever since his mother left them for another man.  Nevis adores Marshall, an itinerant writer, but, starved of all other companionship, his love turns to obsession and sexual desire.  When Marshall crashes the van, they’re forced to turn for help to a family of strangers.  The Kerrs have their own problems:  Nigel’s wife has recently died of cancer, and he’s teetering on the brink of suicide, and his son, Colin, aka Duckman, is left to deal with his grief alone.  Duckman’s aunt and cousin have moved in to help the men cope, and they quickly embrace Marshall and Nevis into their lives.  Holed up in a caravan in their farmyard, Nevis is thrown amongst other people for the first time in his memory, and he feels his life, and his father, slipping away from him.

And This Is True is a hugely compelling story.  Mackie’s characterisation is adept; the story is told through Nevis’s point-of-view, but the reader can see beyond his teenage confusion and anger to his father’s misery – Marshall’s regret for how he has allowed his own obsessions to dominate his son’s life is poignant, and his fumbled failing attempts to restore some normalcy into their lives is touching.  Nigel Kerr’s misery, and Duckman’s attempts at stoicism are all filtered through Nevis’s eyes; there isn’t a flat note in the book, character-wise; only the wise old teacher, Galbraith, seems a little clichéd, but Mackie rescues him with a neat, and again, miserable, backstory. 

This isn’t an optimistic text; it’s bleak and sad and rules out the idea of a happy ending.  The plot is a slow-burner; Nevis, the son of a writer, and home-schooled in literary theory, is conscious of his own role as narrator and admits to the unreliability of his own memories and stories.  He’s obsessed with ‘truth’, but lies to his readers before confessing and (presumably) lying again.  By the end, he can barely tell fact from fiction and is unwilling to accept the truths he so longs to hear about his past and his relationship with his father.  Memory and reliability are at the heart of this novel – Marshall transcribes his past, over and over, while denying the usefulness of memory because of its instability and fictive nature; Nevis insists on hearing facts and the truth, while obfuscating his own narrative and blending imagined events with remembered ones.  His omissions are both deliberate and accidental or bewildered; he needs external validation, somebody to sign off on his version of events, and, as his father and his teacher tell him, that’s never possible, because all memory is constructed and fictionalised, as is a novel. 

The self-conscious nature of the narration is partly the key to Nevis’s character – his interest in tale-telling and fact-finding and accountability – but it’s also the novel’s weak point.  The overt references to Vladimir Propp and narrative theory are too knowing and clever; despite Marshall’s being a former English teacher and a writer, Nevis’s familiarity with these ideas is too glib and convenient – the author using her character to wink at her audience.  This is especially noticeable towards the end, where Nevis’s deliberations over dénoument and resolution take over his narrative; I would have expected Duckman’s reaction to be considerably more scathing – it certainly annoyed me.  The characters also split off too neatly into mirrored pairs; Ailsa copying her mother’s behaviour may be realistic, but Nigel’s depression is perhaps to close to Marshall’s extended avoidance of real life for their meeting to seem accidental.  Duckman, as a socially-functional version of Nevis, is sometimes more of a device than a fully-fledged character.  That said, these are quibbles; the novel is impressive and believable and a real-page-turner.  The author has a real ear for dialogue – Ailsa’s lines, in particular, stand out – and she sketches the most disquieting of scenes with real emotional acuity.  Some scenes, I should add, are not for the faint of heart; Mackie never shies away from the dark corners of desire.

Overall, this is an accomplished and memorable debut.  It reminded me of Ross Raisin’s God’s Own Country, in its evocation of people and place (it’s set in the Scottish Highlands) and its disturbed and yet sympathetic main character.  It’s got a touch of Helen Cross’s My Summer of Love, too, with the confusions of teenage sexuality mixed up with a miserable family dynamic. 

Any Cop?: I think we’ll be hearing much more about Emily Mackie in the months and years to come.

Valerie O’Riordan