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Seeking the truth through 'Lies'
By Andrea Wulf |
September 16, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
CLARE Clark's fiction manages to maintain historical accuracy even as it indulges in great storytelling and lush prose. In her first novel, "The Great Stink," a thriller that takes place in the sewers of Victorian London, Clark wrote with such rich detail that you could almost smell the fetid air as you turned the pages. In "Savage Lands," she transported readers to the young colony of Louisiana in the early 1700s, setting a complex love story against a fecund yet relentlessly cruel landscape that became as important to the plot as the characters themselves.
In her new novel, "Beautiful Lies," Clark leaves behind the swamps of the New World and returns to Victorian Britain - and she does so with panache. Her central character, Maribel Campbell Lowe, is the beautiful, chain-smoking wife of a radical Scottish M.P., Edward Campbell Lowe. Born Maria Isabel Constanza de la Flamandiere, or so she says, Maribel claims to be a Chilean heiress. But the reader gradually learns that her life is built on lies. When a newspaper editor named Alfred Webster begins to circle Maribel like a vulture, this carefully constructed web is in danger of collapsing. One pull on a thread might unravel the whole.
The novel's scenes of 1887 London are strangely redolent of the present day: There is an economic crisis as well as lurid journalism; riots shake London, and Trafalgar Square is occupied, with the police fighting against protesters. Instead of the Olympics, the crowd puller is Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which 2.5 million visitors enjoyed in a mere six months.
As in her previous novels, Clark takes real events as her inspiration but allows herself the freedom to invent and embellish. Her historical research is immaculate without being overbearing. Edward Campbell Lowe is based on Robert Cunninghame Graham, an eccentric radical Scottish aristocrat who became a founder of the Scottish Labor Party, which laid the foundation for the modern-day Labor Party in the United Kingdom. Maribel's character was inspired by his wife, Gabriela.
At its heart, "Beautiful Lies" is about the kaleidoscopic nature of reality. What is truth - and what is Maribel's truth? Can a lie become a fact if we start believing in our own illusions? Maribel is an aspiring photographer, and her art becomes a tool in her fight both against Webster and against her own demons; but photography also provides a clever narrative device, a useful vehicle to explore the play of truth and lies.
Clark plays dexterously with this notion, placing photographs into Maribel's hands that apparently depict "ghosts" and superimposed images that merge different scenes into one photograph. "So the camera lies," the owner of Maribel's darkroom says. But does it?
In Clark's ever evocative language there is a visceral feel to Maribel's emotions (as when a flustered Maribel is "inhaling the charcoal-scented air, exhaling Mr Webster"). A friend Maribel views through her camera is "pinned beneath the glass like a butterfly," and when she's alone Maribel feels Edward's absence "like a bruise in her chest."
As always, Clark doesn't rush through her plot. She develops the story gently, with revelations about Maribel's past folded carefully into scenes from the present, yielding a complex tapestry of tales. A captivating fable of truth and memory, "Beautiful Lies" speaks to us quietly yet with strength.
In her new novel, "Beautiful Lies," Clark leaves behind the swamps of the New World and returns to Victorian Britain - and she does so with panache. Her central character, Maribel Campbell Lowe, is the beautiful, chain-smoking wife of a radical Scottish M.P., Edward Campbell Lowe. Born Maria Isabel Constanza de la Flamandiere, or so she says, Maribel claims to be a Chilean heiress. But the reader gradually learns that her life is built on lies. When a newspaper editor named Alfred Webster begins to circle Maribel like a vulture, this carefully constructed web is in danger of collapsing. One pull on a thread might unravel the whole.
The novel's scenes of 1887 London are strangely redolent of the present day: There is an economic crisis as well as lurid journalism; riots shake London, and Trafalgar Square is occupied, with the police fighting against protesters. Instead of the Olympics, the crowd puller is Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which 2.5 million visitors enjoyed in a mere six months.
As in her previous novels, Clark takes real events as her inspiration but allows herself the freedom to invent and embellish. Her historical research is immaculate without being overbearing. Edward Campbell Lowe is based on Robert Cunninghame Graham, an eccentric radical Scottish aristocrat who became a founder of the Scottish Labor Party, which laid the foundation for the modern-day Labor Party in the United Kingdom. Maribel's character was inspired by his wife, Gabriela.
At its heart, "Beautiful Lies" is about the kaleidoscopic nature of reality. What is truth - and what is Maribel's truth? Can a lie become a fact if we start believing in our own illusions? Maribel is an aspiring photographer, and her art becomes a tool in her fight both against Webster and against her own demons; but photography also provides a clever narrative device, a useful vehicle to explore the play of truth and lies.
Clark plays dexterously with this notion, placing photographs into Maribel's hands that apparently depict "ghosts" and superimposed images that merge different scenes into one photograph. "So the camera lies," the owner of Maribel's darkroom says. But does it?
In Clark's ever evocative language there is a visceral feel to Maribel's emotions (as when a flustered Maribel is "inhaling the charcoal-scented air, exhaling Mr Webster"). A friend Maribel views through her camera is "pinned beneath the glass like a butterfly," and when she's alone Maribel feels Edward's absence "like a bruise in her chest."
As always, Clark doesn't rush through her plot. She develops the story gently, with revelations about Maribel's past folded carefully into scenes from the present, yielding a complex tapestry of tales. A captivating fable of truth and memory, "Beautiful Lies" speaks to us quietly yet with strength.
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