I am slow to read the novels that come out of Ireland now. Opening Night by Sara Baume is the first for many years. From the start I was uncomfortable. Too much stating of terms; explanation that allows for intimacy. Like slow passage through a sieve. Ian Breakwell said he didn't want to read anything that had no risk, no invention. Or, I would add, that isn't old or ancient.
Running like a basso continuo these weeks I have read Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. The pages are wrinkled from our sentimental journey, in the autumn of 1991, through France and Italy down to Sicily and back. I read it on Bonassola beach, alternating with Borges' Seven Nights. So many sentences I could read over and over, between swims. A true marriage of beach and book.
I didn't pause at any phrase, any sentence in Opening Night. Contemporaneity happens in a strange silence. A permanent solar eclipse. Some worried birdsong and then silence. We are travelling along the N71, swimming at Tow Head or Lisheen Bay, having coffee in Bantry. There are dogs and names of dogs. It is relatable. An irksome shorthand. I am not hungry for any of this. I want to be, as Kafka said, plunged into the icy sea by what I read.
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