Home Page Front Page E-Mail April 11, 2000

by Kay Kimbrough

OUR FATHERS
Andrew O'Hagan
Harcourt Brace, New York, 1999, $23.00.

Andrew O'Hagan's first novel sets a high standard for any future novels he may write. The style is magical, drawing the reader forward even when the action stops. This novel justifies his being named Scottish writer of the year in 1998. He writes for the Guardian, wrote the highly praised nonfiction book THE MISSING, and is on the editorial board of the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS.

Jamie Bawn is the son of a Scottish hero, Hugh Bawn, a builder of towers that were to serve as safe, comfortable and healthy homes for residents of Glasgow. His work is a continuation of the efforts made by his mother to force the government to provide decent housing and health care for the poor wives and children of soldiers serving in World War I, fatherless families who were being evicted from tenements when they had no money to pay the high rent unscrupulous landlords were charging. Euphemia Bawn led the women in a revolt that changed politics in Great Britain:

“The rent strikes began. Life would not be the same again. Not for those women, nor the babies they held. And not for the country either. The stuff of Mary Barbour's heart, of social change, would be bred in the bone, and Scotland would make a legend of change, of socialist leaders, and future bliss. A century of hopes would stand in our blood. We'd stir them up, and bleed them away. But Effie Bawn was in at the start. Her family would never leave houses alone."

Lloyd George adopted Effie Bawn's cause, and Effie liked to point out that "they had given Llowd George something to talk about." Jamie's grandmother became a politician after the war and the death of her husband in the war. She was a Glasgow councillor, a Socialist leader, and a tireless worker for "Fresh Air. Windows. Gardens. Clean Bedding."

Her son Hugh attended Socialist Sunday school where the martyrs and heroes were honored. "The past was held in evidence. But the world Hugh loved was a future world. A Scotland of turbines and giant engines." He loved the world of construction, the building of bridges and buildings, the building materials of concrete and plywood.

After World War II Hugh and men like him saw their Socialist ideas become realities. Hugh made housing a holy cause, building prefabs under the motto "The maximum number of houses in the shortest possible time." Meanwhile, his son Robert, the future father of Jamie, was growing up without a father, for Hugh had not time for him, no time for anything but building. Robert grew up to hate his father, calling him "A selfish, crazy bastard."

Hugh does have time for Jamie, who lives in a family hell with his alcoholic and abusive father Robert and his overworked and battered mother. Eventually, Jamie "abandons" his parents and lives with Hugh and his gentle grandmother Margaret. The time comes when he must abandon Hugh and Margaret as well, and he stays away for quite a long time.

Jamie's memories furnish the material of the book, yet the painful but sympathetic examination of the family relationships is the true subject matter. Jamie had two fathers, one he hated and one he loved, but he learns that love and hate are not that simple when he confronts the two fathers as one is dying and one is just beginning to live. The mother and the grandmother add to Jamie's understanding of love, forgiveness and loss.

Scotland fuels a confusion of feelings in Jamie. He loves its beauty, but the memories of the past hurt him. Meeting his father Robert after years of separation, he at last accepts him as a man who is worthy of attention and respect. Accepting Scotland as it is follows his acceptance of his family; the two sources of his self seem inseparable.

Accepting himself seems possible as Jamie ends his story. Like his father, he can now begin his life without the ghosts of the past to inhibit his true desires: "I always had a habit of denying myself things I secretly wanted. People would ask me if I wanted another drink; I'd say no, and then stop at a bar on the way home.... I was always suppressing appetites, wishes, dreams. ...And in some dark vale I was scared of addiction."

A biology teacher took an interest in Jamie when he was a young student in love with chemistry and physics. She cautioned him then, "But don't forget life, Jamie Bawn....For living is all that matters in the end." His grandmother tells him, not for the first time, to live as he is leaving her after Hugh Bawn's funeral. She says, '"Believe in things, son. Away you go, and believe in things. And live."

This book about Jamie certainly lives, full of poetry that describes the land O'Hagan captures and feeling for the people he creates with tenderness and truth, however harsh that truth might be.