30 | BIGISSUE.COM FROM 24 AUGUST 2020CULTURE |
BOOKS
W
hat do you think of Brexit – in or out? Police
stop and search – racist or reasonable? Face
masks in shops – on or off?
Regardless of ‘which side you are on’, the
focus should not be about insisting you are right and others
are wrong. Nor should complex issues be reduced to
a shouting match.
In our new book Rapport: The Four Ways to Read
People, we reveal the key to developing compassion
and understanding for one another. One of the four key
skills we discuss is managing conflict. The book draws
on some of the research conducted over the last 20 years
in some very extreme environments, including police
interviews with suspects. In these interactions conflict is
often inevitable. But elite interrogators have mastered the
following ‘HEAR’ principles to successfully navigate it:
Honesty. They don’t try and pretend they are the suspect’s
friend nor their enemy. They are objective, transparent about
their purpose, but not judgemental.REVIEW
In these divisive days, it’s helpful to use four
guiding principles to reach an understanding,
say Emily and Laurence AlisonIt’s good to talk
AUTHOR FEATURE
I
rish writer Donal Ryan has a series of highly acclaimed books
behind him, including his Booker longlisted (and should
have been shortlisted) 2018 novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea.
His reputation as an insightful and elegiac writer stands out
even among his fellow native warrior-poets. His latest work, Strange
Flowers, has, from the beginning, an even more deeply-felt tone
than its predecessors, with profound bass notes I wondered if I was
over-reading, until I found out more about the background of its
inspiration. This story of familial loss and discovery, disconnection
and reconnection was written in “a haze of shock and extreme grief”
three years ago, just after the death of Ryan’s father.
Set in Seventies rural Ireland, Strange Flowers begins with Paddy
and Kit, a contented, strongly religious couple shattered by the
disappearance of their beloved 20-year old daughter Moll. The
evocation of sadness and horror is perhaps unsurprisingly convincing
in the hands of a newly bereaved son. But what’s especially impressive
is the point at which Ryan’s experience ends and his empathetic
guesswork begins. The raw agony of endless whys and hows, the cruel
trickery of imaginative flights, the crests and falls of hope and terror,
the surrender to dull passivity interrupted by flares of optimistic
‘thumping hearts’ – these are the beautifully wrought phases of
inexplicable loss which bring Kit and Paddy into sharp relief.
When the prodigal Moll does turn up again, five years later, she
brings a new set of challenges with her. She has been in London, and
returns with a son, Josh, and his father, Alexander. Ryan works hard
to relay the experience of the young black Alexander moving into an
old-fashioned 1970s Irish community – the combination of curiosity,
suspicion and sheer clumsiness. But the most effective aspect of
his story is the increasingly close relationship he shares with Paddy,
despite the initial chasm of culture and social experience.
A pattern of generational shift (and its accompanying, often
overwhelming religious influences) is established, as the novel turns
its attention to young Josh; gentle, dreamy, naive: “a boy so loved he
thinks the world is love without end”. It is down to Ryan’s ability to
create compassion for his characters that it becomes excruciating
to read of things going wrong and scenes of togetherness being
torn apart. But the writing is so exquisite, the dialogue so authentic,
the sympathy so deep, that though taking on the slings and arrows
sometimes feels like an act of wilful masochism, there is no option but
to carry on alongside Josh and hope for good things. And hope and
hope and hope, amen.
Sarah Moss is another writer who has, to use common Cowell
parlance, absolutely nailed her chosen area of fictional prowess. Her
portraits of families under unnerving internal and external pressure,
as developed in recent novels The Tidal Zone and Ghost Wall, have
shown her to be an expert in depicting complex relationships in
suffocatingly oppressive atmospheres. Her new novel Summerwater
continues the trend; a small group of holidaymakers thrown together
in an isolated Scottish cabin park begin to jar rather than gel during
a long, dreich, rainy day. The sense of threat is as unnerving as it is
thrilling, with moments of humour punctuating the darkening mood.
As the fragile temporary community begins to unravel, Summerwater
develops into a delicious kind of Hitchcockian Anne Tyler story, which
is a decent description of Moss’s oeuvre in general. Masterful.@JaneannieStrange Flowers by Donal Ryan
is out now (Transworld, £12.99)
Summerwater by Sarah Moss
is out now (Pan Macmillan, £14.99)Finding hope
A culture clash in 1970s Ireland becomes
a tale of compassion, says Jane Graham30 | BIGISSUE.COM FROM 24 AUGUST 2020
CULTURE |
BOOKS
W
hat do you think of Brexit – in or out? Police
stop and search – racist or reasonable? Face
masks in shops – on or off?
Regardlessof‘whichsideyouareon’,the
focusshouldnotbeaboutinsistingyouarerightandothers
arewrong.Norshouldcomplexissuesbereducedto
a shouting match.
In our new book Rapport: The Four Ways to Read
People, we reveal the key to developing compassion
and understanding for one another. One of the four key
skills we discuss is managing conflict. The book draws
on some of the research conducted over the last 20 years
in some very extreme environments, including police
interviews with suspects. In these interactions conflict is
often inevitable. But elite interrogators have mastered the
following ‘HEAR’ principles to successfully navigate it:
Honesty. They don’t try and pretend they are the suspect’s
friend nor their enemy. They are objective, transparent about
their purpose, but not judgemental.REVIEW
Inthesedivisivedays,it’shelpfultousefour
guidingprinciplestoreachanunderstanding,
sayEmily and Laurence AlisonIt’s good to talk
AUTHOR FEATURE
I
rish writer Donal Ryan has a series of highly acclaimed books
behind him, including his Booker longlisted (and should
have been shortlisted) 2018 novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea.
His reputation as an insightful and elegiac writer stands out
even among his fellow native warrior-poets. His latest work, Strange
Flowers, has, from the beginning, an even more deeply-felt tone
than its predecessors, with profound bass notes I wondered if I was
over-reading, until I found out more about the background of its
inspiration. This story of familial loss and discovery, disconnection
and reconnection was written in “a haze of shock and extreme grief”
three years ago, just after the death of Ryan’s father.
Set in Seventies rural Ireland, Strange Flowers begins with Paddy
and Kit, a contented, strongly religious couple shattered by the
disappearance of their beloved 20-year old daughter Moll. The
evocation of sadness and horror is perhaps unsurprisingly convincing
in the hands of a newly bereaved son. But what’s especially impressive
is the point at which Ryan’s experience ends and his empathetic
guesswork begins. The raw agony of endless whys and hows, the cruel
trickery of imaginative flights, the crests and falls of hope and terror,
the surrender to dull passivity interrupted by flares of optimistic
‘thumping hearts’ – these are the beautifully wrought phases of
inexplicable loss which bring Kit and Paddy into sharp relief.
When the prodigal Moll does turn up again, five years later, she
brings a new set of challenges with her. She has been in London, and
returns with a son, Josh, and his father, Alexander. Ryan works hard
to relay the experience of the young black Alexander moving into an
old-fashioned 1970s Irish community – the combination of curiosity,
suspicion and sheer clumsiness. But the most effective aspect of
his story is the increasingly close relationship he shares with Paddy,
despite the initial chasm of culture and social experience.
A pattern of generational shift (and its accompanying, often
overwhelming religious influences) is established, as the novel turns
its attention to young Josh; gentle, dreamy, naive: “a boy so loved he
thinks the world is love without end”. It is down to Ryan’s ability to
create compassion for his characters that it becomes excruciating
to read of things going wrong and scenes of togetherness being
torn apart. But the writing is so exquisite, the dialogue so authentic,
the sympathy so deep, that though taking on the slings and arrows
sometimes feels like an act of wilful masochism, there is no option but
to carry on alongside Josh and hope for good things. And hope and
hope and hope, amen.
Sarah Moss is another writer who has, to use common Cowell
parlance, absolutely nailed her chosen area of fictional prowess. Her
portraits of families under unnerving internal and external pressure,
as developed in recent novels The Tidal Zone and Ghost Wall, have
shown her to be an expert in depicting complex relationships in
suffocatingly oppressive atmospheres. Her new novel Summerwater
continues the trend; a small group of holidaymakers thrown together
in an isolated Scottish cabin park begin to jar rather than gel during
a long, dreich, rainy day. The sense of threat is as unnerving as it is
thrilling, with moments of humour punctuating the darkening mood.
As the fragile temporary community begins to unravel, Summerwater
develops into a delicious kind of Hitchcockian Anne Tyler story, which
is a decent description of Moss’s oeuvre in general. Masterful.@JaneannieStrange Flowers by Donal Ryan
is out now (Transworld, £12.99)
Summerwater by Sarah Moss
is out now (Pan Macmillan, £14.99)Finding hope
A culture clash in 1970s Ireland becomes
a tale of compassion, says Jane Graham