Published by LA DRÔME PRESS, 2010
Reviewed by Maggie Rainey-Smith
I was heading overseas and offered a novel about Katherine Mansfield to read and review, so what could I do? Who better than Katherine Mansfield for good company on a long-haul flight to Cuba, via Panama. In Pursuit... declares itself a novel as part of the title. It is also, indeed, very much a pursuit. The author Joanna FitzPatrick, in her introduction tells the reader how she discovered our famed daughter KM at les fleurs bleues, a used book store in Southern France. And it seems the author fell into love, the way many of us have, with both the writer and the writing. And so began the pursuit, the dogged recapturing in imagination and retracing in physical terms (visiting many of the places Katherine lived) to write this novel.
This is an ambitious project written in the ‘voice’ of Katherine, her thoughts, conversations and indeed actual quotes and letters. It falls somewhere I think between a fictional biography and a biographical novel. A complex mix of historical fact woven into fiction. It both annoyed and enthralled me. But if like me, you happen to be a KM devotee, you may well enjoy it too.
The first chapter is the most annoying because already by the second page, I had found three things that really irked me. Katherine speaks of her brother Leslie and says she would “miss our walks in the woods” – well, I’m certain New Zealanders do not say woods, but I’m happy to be corrected if that was in common use in 1908. And then Katherine says this to her father when begging him to let her travel back to England. “... I don’t mean to be ornery and ungrateful for all you’ve done for me...” Hmm, ‘ornery’ is such an American expression and I’m certain that our KM would not have said that (would she?). But the final annoyance is when Katherine is evidently watching ships in Wellington harbour and the ship was now “merely a dot on the horizon”. Obviously the author does not know the shape of Wellington harbour and even if the ship was out in Cook Strait it would hardly be a dot!
But, I didn’t give up and I’m glad that I didn’t because the story improved, and it held my interest with vivid details of Katherine’s struggle with tuberculosis, her imagined relationship with John Middleton Murry and with Ida Baker. The stress here is on “imagined” of course. But, I was happy to have someone finally explore in quite graphic detail, the horrors endured by KM in dealing with her tuberculosis, the endless visits to doctors, the frustrations and the fear. For someone to speak without polite objectivity about the ghastly STD that caused her so much ongoing pain and misery, and to once again recognise, that a modern KM would never have had to suffer such dire consequences for her lifestyle choices. FitzPatrick charts every harrowing cough and setback, the false hopes, the pursuit of a cure, and she imagines conversations with doctors, the cold stethoscopes upon her exposed chest. She imagines conversations with Jack and LM. Many of the conversations are mere ploys to reveal back history or move the plot forward. (I note that the author has had experience in writing Hollywood film scripts.) Some of these conversations are awkward and obvious because of this, but still, if you’re looking for a chronological history of Mansfield and her health battles, here it is. I was in the end hooked and page-turning. Oddly too, the conversations (however fictional – although some were direct quotes) helped me to see the affection and love between Jack and Katherine (something I had never quite grasped before, always thinking what a swine Jack was). And as for the relationship between LM (Ida Baker) and Katherine, the devotion is clear but in this fictional account, Katherine appears much kinder in her thoughts and far more apologetic than perhaps history has recorded. Perhaps this is wishful thinking by the devoted author, or perhaps not.
As for Mansfield’s final days at Fontainebleau, I felt oddly comforted by the retelling of this from an imagined point of view, and couldn’t help recalling Vincent O’Sullivan ‘s comments at the KM Symposium in Melbourne in 2010 when he wrapped up the two-day seminar with a most insightful, carefully construed and empathetic interpretation of Katherine Mansfield’s final days at Gurdjieff’s Institute at Fontainebleau - the fact that this ending of her life in his words “continues to be an awkward biographical fact for many who write on her.” Well, Joanna FitzPatrick has tackled this and rather well. Professor O’Sullivan seemed to imply that Katherine in choosing this particular place to be at that time, was finally, heroically (bravely), meeting life and death on her own times. I felt that FitzPatrick captured this.
In conclusion, here is another tribute to Katherine Mansfield. Joanna FitzPatrick has put a lot of time and energy into honouring Katherine Mansfield. I admire her enthusiasm, the courage in doing this. Mind you, I was pretty cross when I read the credits, to see that she was deeply indebted to Margaret Scott and Victor (yes, that’s what is printed) O’Sullivan (instead of course, of Emeritus Professor Vincent O’Sullivan)...grrr... I think that was even worse than ‘ornery’.
P.S. I’ve just finished writing this and Googled (I don’t do this before I write a review) and see Tim Jones also took umbrage at the dot on the horizon, but like me, he kept reading, and liked what he read.
Footnote:
Maggie Rainey-Smith (right) is a Wellington novelist/poet/bookseller and regular guest reviewer on Beattie's Book Blog. She is also Chair of the Wellington branch of the NZ Society of Authors.
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