{"id":39679,"date":"2021-11-15T06:30:47","date_gmt":"2021-11-14T17:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=39679"},"modified":"2021-11-14T18:47:47","modified_gmt":"2021-11-14T05:47:47","slug":"what-im-reading-akin-by-emma-donoghue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2021\/11\/15\/what-im-reading-akin-by-emma-donoghue\/","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019m Reading: \u201cAkin\u201d by Emma Donoghue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just over eleven years ago, I read and enjoyed Room<\/em> by Emma Donoghue<\/a>—so I\u2019m somewhat amazed it\u2019s taken me this long to read another of her novels!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I read Akin<\/em> immediately after Primo Levi\u2019s The Periodic Table<\/em>, which turned out to be interesting because they are \u201cakin\u201d in a number of ways. Perhaps I should say \u201cstrangely interesting\u201d because there is no real, substantive connection between the two works, but the overlaps between them were fascinatingly coincidental for me as a reader.<\/p>\n

Levi\u2019s The Periodic Table<\/em> may be memoir rather than fiction, but its centres on WW2\u2014as does Akin<\/em>, its focal setting being Nice, a French city that sits on the border with Levi’s Italy.<\/p>\n

In addition, the fictional character at the core of Akin\u2019s<\/em> WW2 history, Margot Personnet, is based on the very real historical figure of Marguerite Matisse. Emma Donoghue states this in the Acknowledgements, calling the character of Margot \u201c\u2026in small part my homage to Marguerite Matisse\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Marguerite, as painted by Matisse<\/p><\/div>\n

Primo Levi\u2019s war experience was initially one of persecution, for being Jewish in Fascist Italy, before being transported to Auschwitz in 1944. Marguerite Matisse was active in the French Resistance and had been arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, and was being transported to Ravensbruck, when she managed to escape.<\/p>\n

Akin<\/em> is not solely, or even directly and exclusively, about WW2, however. The story is set in the present, when Margot Personnet\u2019s son, the 79-year-old Noah Selvaggio, is about to embark on his first visit to Nice since he left it as a four-year-old in 1944. Three days before his departure, he is dragooned into acting as caregiver to his eleven-year-old great-nephew, Michael. Michael\u2019s father, Noah\u2019s nephew, is dead; his mother is incarcerated; and his material grandmother has also recently died.<\/p>\n

Akin<\/em>, therefore, is primarily about the unexpectedly thrown-together Noah and Michael, and about the realities of children falling through the cracks\u2014and \u2018safety nets\u2019\u2014of modern society. Although the first part of Noah and Michael\u2019s story is set in the United States, we only have to follow the news here in NZ to be aware of the same issues.<\/p>\n

So Akin<\/em> is what I think of as a \u2018diamond\u2019 in form: the midpoint of the diamond is Noah. One apex is Michael, the facets of the story centered on their developing relationship. The second apex is Margot, Noah\u2019s long-deceased mother\u2014and the story pivots on the realization, once he reaches Nice, that he may never have truly known her.<\/p>\n

Noah\u2019s gradual unpicking of his mother\u2019s past follows, particularly her WW2 activities, interwoven with his relationship with Michael: family, but also strangers to each other.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nice itself, both in the present and past, is powerful in shaping the story, especially through reference to the photography of P\u00e8re Sonne (Margot\u2019s father and Noah\u2019s grandfather), which has been groundbreaking in the early part of the 20th<\/sup> century. His counterweight in the novel is Amber, Michael\u2019s incarcerated mother. Both are (largely in Amber\u2019s case) off-page players; nevertheless, they are significant in shaping the story.<\/p>\n

Akin<\/em> is a book about the familial relationships that bridge present and past, and the network of threads, some tangible, others rarely glimpsed, that connect generations. Although this book is not so dark as Room<\/em>, if you like Emma Donoghue\u2019s writing, and enjoy authors such as Ann Patchett (Commonwealth<\/em>; The Dutch House<\/em>), Kate Atkinson (Behind The Scenes At the Museum<\/em>; Human Croquet<\/em>), and Sebastian Faulks (Charlotte Gray<\/em>; On Green Dolphin Street<\/em>) I believe you may enjoy Akin<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I purchased the trade paperback edition of Akin<\/em> (335 pp), published by Picador UK in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just over eleven years ago, I read and enjoyed Room by Emma Donoghue—so I\u2019m somewhat amazed it\u2019s taken me this long to read another of her novels! I read Akin immediately after Primo Levi\u2019s The Periodic Table, which turned out to be interesting because they are \u201cakin\u201d in a number of ways. Perhaps I should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39679"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39693,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39679\/revisions\/39693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}