The world as we know it is flooded, drowned, and very very
soggy. In Kirsty Logan’s debut novel, she gives us a future (presumably) where
dry land is in short supply and those who live on it (landlockers) have the
upper hand in social status.
That’s unless you’re a dampling, with the sea in your veins,
fish stew on your breath, and webbed toes. The Gracekeepers partly follows the
Circus Excalibur, a small crew of performers who float nomadically across the
ocean, exchanging performances for food. They’re all face paint, hair dye and
glitter, a gender-bending troupe constantly reinventing itself in each
performance.
We learn about a number of characters in this fanciful world.
There’s North, the young woman who dances with a bear in a dangerous
pirouette of death and rebirth for the punters. Red Gold (Jarrow), the Circus
Ringmaster and owner who is blind to some harsh truths. Avalon, his bitchy wife
who wants to rise through the social ranks. And Callanish, a mysterious
gracekeeper who spends her time administering rites for the dead by starving small birds in cages over the sea.
Logan’s prose is tightly controlled, dreamy and magical. To
call this a dystopia doesn’t seem right somehow, instead The Gracekeepers
brings to mind the magic realism of Angela Carter. But there’s not really much more
beyond the descriptive language. The characters seem underwritten, with a multitude of gaps left unexplored (I’m still not really sure what happened between Callanish
and her mother). Perhaps this is deliberate and I’m not saying we have to know
everything, but the effect kept me oddly distanced and unengaged with the
story. Threads are woven loosely and then abandoned. This effect is exacerbated
by the structure; early on alternating third person chapters from North and
Callanish’s perspective are established, before suddenly a hotchpotch of other
views butt in, often for only one chapter. It’s disorientating.
There are some arresting passages of prose however. A scene
where North dives deep into the ocean and finds a drowned city, for example, or
her relationship with the bear. Logan seems indebted to Shakespearean themes,
motifs and theatre too—her clowns are surely incarnations of the Shakespearean
fool, inciting rebellion against the upper classes while simultaneously acting
as scapegoat for society’s ills. The acrobats are male/female, brother/sister,
husband/wife, and they seem to swap between all these roles, bringing to mind
the gender play of Twelfth Night. The term ‘damplings’ perhaps suggests the
‘groundings’ of early modern theatre audiences. And of course, you can’t help
but think Exit, pursued by a bear…
But these motifs all seem a little bit forced and a little bit too self-aware,
while the clowns’ potential is never fully realised. They just kind of slope
around in the background, leaving glitter and eyeliner over the bedsheets. The ending, when it comes, feels rushed and certainly not as
apocalyptic as it promised to be, although Logan does a good job of creating
pathos (you’ll guess what happens).
The Gracekeepers is an odd little fairytale which is
definitely worth reading, but just don’t expect a huge amount of depth. Like
any good circus performance, it’s all smoke and mirrors.
