'Polk, Harper and Who' is Cacoyannis' third novel: evolved and refined, his distinctive style and some thematic preoccupations will be warmly familiar to his readers. London, drawn with fondness and precision, is the setting for the author's explorations of identity; of secrets and lies to one's nearest and dearest - and to those near but not so dear; of family and all its good and bad works; of the kind of coincidence that is quietly suggestive of fate. The plot is beautifully structured; the dialogue - one of Cacoyannis' consistent strengths - utterly convincing; the main and secondary characters fascinating even when repulsive, and supported by a posy of brilliantly sketched incidental others.
But it is the unfamiliar that makes this such a compelling novel. A number of important new themes (race and class; infertility and adoption; that ancient type of friendship that transforms a friend into 'family') are held in the novel's peripheral vision. Immersed in the contemporary and socially relevant atmosphere these create, is the new main territory which the novel explores: the life of a loving, happy couple. 'Bowl of Fruit' had looked at this askance; in 'Polk' it is the novel's beating heart. So much so, that as we get to know Eva and Adam intimately, both as individuals and as a couple, their relationship emerges as a third, equally closely observed and finally perhaps the novel's most important 'character'.
To focus on a happy couple is a perilous undertaking, hence writers tend to give it a wide berth. Its sparse literary appearances are typically confined to a sub-plot and intended as little more than a foil to the main and decidedly un-happy couple: a Konstantin and Kitty, say, as opposed to virtually every other couple in 'Anna Karenina'. Perhaps this is so because the dysfunctional, tormented, ultimately destructive relationship offers endless dramatic possibilities, to be further expanded as the couple's internal dynamic inevitably spills into the public domain with disastrous consequences for all. In contrast, a happy couple's life is and remains private and intimate. It is thus by its very nature elusive to the casual outsider who can easily mistake the couple, and its apparently calm-and-steady life, as unremarkable and unexciting. Tolstoy's supposed axiom, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", typifies the dismissal of the happy couple as indistinct and frankly boring. It takes a brave (or foolhardy) novelist to brush all this aside - only to then face the further challenge of depicting a happy couple without killing it by idealisation.
'Polk' turns all this on its head. It puts the happy couple centre-stage, holds up the unhappy couple as the nightmare 'other', and brilliantly shows that happy relationships are neither dull nor "all alike". Each is as unique as the individuals that make it; and its solidity, stability and love come hand in hand with intensity, passion, depth and yes, plenty of drama that is subtle, quiet and private. The priceless value Adam and Eva ascribe to their relationship makes them sensitive, indeed perhaps hypersensitive to each other and to their environment; and when their relationship is threatened - whether by others, by the lovers' own shortcomings or by life itself - they have to struggle to keep it, literally, 'together'.
Cacoyannis weaves a story that is sweet but never saccharine; soft and gentle yet also full of thorns; intimate without being intrusive; sad and happy and at times very funny: his rare ability to combine the sad - the tragic, even - with the comic, finds in 'Polk' its most assured and subtle expression yet. What holds all these disparate elements together is the intellectual and psychological honesty that informs Cacoyannis' writing - and which leaves no space for idealisation or omniscience.
For instance, the novel refuses to offer answers as to why some important secondary characters are the way they are. Why is Lynn so dreadful? Why does Eva's father capitulate so pathetically to what then becomes his fate? How can Tom and Monika commit so effortlessly their cruel, corrupt deeds? The lack of answers suggests both that the main characters, who are at the receiving end of others' damaging actions, are past caring about the origins of these others' behaviour; and that these origins are in any case unfathomable: as Freud also noted, what forms a character is a mystery. Cacoyannis depicts human beings as they are, warts and all, without pretending that he knows what made them so.
He also avoids the pitfall of idealisation. His Adam and Eva are set firmly after the Fall. Flawed and fallible, they commit the kind of everyday sin that led to the expulsion of the homonymous Biblical First Couple; and as in that story so here too it is Eva more than Adam who is no stranger to doubt, lying, disobedience, evasion, secretiveness, inner conflict, hurtfulness. Yet the two of them manage to create their own small earthly Paradise, within the grounds delineated by that 'third character', their relationship. When its existence is threatened, they can only hope to save it by accessing whatever reserves of acceptance and forgiveness it holds. Its survival atones for their transgressions; and, in a novel so intensely aware that the Past is forever Present, it also signals their escape from the legacy of sins originally committed by their more immediate ancestors.
A beautiful, complex and important novel, 'Polk' is Romantic Realism at its brilliant best. Its story alone makes for a gripping read; but look - as it urges you to - beneath the plot's shimmering surface and you will find subtlety, complexity, depth - and the warm glow of a justified belief in the capacity of fallible, messy, imperfect humanity to redeem itself through the simple and mysterious thing we call 'love'.
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Top reviews from other countries
- MarciaReviewed in the United States on 29 September 2017
Nice story exploring the character's multiple layers and secrets
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Barbara MorantReviewed in Germany on 15 June 2017
Eine faszinierende, spannende Geschichte
- Shalini MBReviewed in India on 16 February 2018
The happiness of finding an author you can buy without thinking!
