When Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life came out in 2013, it affected me deeply. It starts with a baby girl who dies straight after birth, but is repeatedly reborn. Each time she experiences a different life, depending on a whole series of chance factors, such as exactly where she’s standing when a German bomb is dropped on London.
My son Patrick had died in an accidental fall in 1987, when he was 18. I found the concept of an infinite number of alternative lives enormously comforting; it meant that in slightly different circumstances, he could have gone on living.
The Names uses this concept in an even more powerful way. It begins in 1987, with Cora needing to register a name for her son. But why is she finding this so hard to do?
Her husband expects her to call the boy Gordon, after himself and his male forebears. But Cora has never liked that name, and fears what it may mean for her son’s future: “‘Do you not see the risk?’ she’d wanted to say. ‘Do you not see that calling our son Gordon might mean he ends up like you?’”
It’s impossible to explain this to her husband or anyone else. To the outside world, Gordon is a revered GP; to Cora, he’s profoundly physically and psychologically abusive.
There has been no shortage of potent fiction, including from immensely talented New Zealand writers such as Patricia Grace and Catherine Chidgey, about such men. Yet for me, The Names stands out as the most precise, heart-breakingly convincing portrayal I’ve ever read of exactly how they can exert such effective control over their partners, and how difficult it is to escape.
But at this moment, Cora is standing in the registry office with her daughter Maia, and can choose for herself. We see her deciding three times on her son’s name: Bear, suggested by Maia; Julian (sky father); and finally Gordon.
Each name becomes the basis for three corresponding accounts. Appearing at seven-year intervals, they set out what comes to pass as each version of this family makes their divergent ways through their lives.
One significant theme is the shifting ways in which Maia and each boy are affected by their embedded, inescapable knowledge of their father’s behaviour. In every case, it has significant implications for forming their own new relationships, as well as for how they try (and sometimes fail) to help their mother.
All three stories come to their end in 2022. But it is the third story, centring on the son named Gordon, which brings the most surprising and moving close. It is followed by a brief, infinitely sad epilogue centred on the father.
The complex structure does require sustained concentration. But the superbly restrained, compelling, sure nature of Knapp’s writing, seemingly without one surplus word, leads you through every unfolding scene. It reminded me of the work of Irish writer Claire Keegan.
Knapp’s novel, too, is set partly in Ireland. While she has written short stories, some of them prize-winning, this is her first novel. The auctions for UK and US publishing rights were fiercely contested, and it is being translated into 20 languages.
It’s easy to see why it has attracted so much attention. I hope it will be as widely read and deeply responded to as it deserves to be.
The Names, by Florence Knapp (Hachette, $37.99) is out now.
