Turning for Home by Barney Norris published by Doubleday. Courtesy Penguin UK
Turning for Home by Barney Norris published by Doubleday. Courtesy Penguin UK
Turning for Home by Barney Norris published by Doubleday. Courtesy Penguin UK
Turning for Home by Barney Norris published by Doubleday. Courtesy Penguin UK

Book review: Turning for Home by Barney Norris filled with tender and plangent observation


  • English
  • Arabic

Barney Norris is swiftly establishing himself as a determined enlarger of sympathies. His bestselling debut novel, Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain (2016), tells the story of five lives – a flower-seller with a sideline in drugs, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower – brought together in the wake of a serious car accident in Salisbury.

Under the gaze of the spire of the city’s cathedral, each of these characters is facing a discrete moment of trauma, and over the course of the novel Norris shows – gently yet unflinchingly – how their hopes, fears, and particular forms of bereavement intertwine.

Norris imbues his protagonists’ narratives with a harmonious resonance that allows their assembled voices to ring with something broader and deeper than individual want, joy or suffering, yet never at the expense of denying the importance of their singular experience, of denying that “there exists in all of us a song waiting to be sung which is as heart-stopping and vertiginous as the peak of the cathedral”.

Turning for Home, Norris's latest work, is similarly concerned with the unheard melodies of our internal song, only here the music is in some ways more discordant. This is not to say that it is lacking in moments of euphony, but rather that the tone of the book, for all its concern with the significance of connectedness and continuity, often reverberates with notes of disruption and isolation.

The story takes place, for the most part, in Hampshire, at the large countryside home of Robert Shawcross, a former civil servant whom we encounter on the May morning of his 80th birthday, and who often longs to find meaning in things.

Robert, as is tradition, is to host the festivities, and soon his family will gather to toast the occasion of his ageing – a phenomenon to which Robert has never fully assented, but for which this year, newly widowed, he has especially little enthusiasm. How, he wonders, will he get through the day?

Already present at the house is Robert’s granddaughter, Kate, a troubled 25-year-old who, unlike her grandfather, seeks a pattern of existence that is free from meaning – one into which she is able to slot unnoticed. “It’s always the same simple dream for me these days”, she says. “I only want to be like other people.”

This yearning for normality can be traced to a recent climacteric in which Kate came alarmingly close to starving herself to death. She now feels preoccupied and characterised by the episode.

But this is not the only thing troubling her. Today she must face and speak to her mother, a driven, distant and short-tempered woman from whom she has been estranged for years. It is this relationship, Kate feels, that accounts for her sense of deficiency and absence: “I think it’s the flaw at the heart of me. I don’t love enough: somehow I never learned how to love when I was young and living at home… when I was growing up, I believed I was broken.”

Now, Kate inhabits a condition in which “all the plans I made have collapsed like old houses, like sandcastles at high tide”. Her mother was the wave (this book is full of water imagery) that washed them away.

Norris embarks on these stories, which he delivers by way of alternating first-person monologues, with the news that transcripts are about to be released of the Boston Tapes – a series of recordings in which loyalist and IRA fighters talk of their experience during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and in which Robert, who was professionally involved in the conflict, has a particular interest. He doesn’t want the bloodshed to have been meaningless.

Yet there are also more pressing matters at hand: on the morning of his party he receives a call from a former colleague, declaring it is imperative that they meet in a matter of hours.

The ensuing narrative, which is punctuated with excerpts from the tapes, goes on to examine how Kate and Robert will respond to their momentous days. The work that results, while occasionally laboured and stylistically inattentive, is so thematically rich that it feels crass to reduce its concerns to a few words, but at its heart lie two preoccupations. The first has to do with the unknown (and perhaps unknowable) lives of others, with the sadness that our love is not (perhaps cannot) be registered and articulated. The second has to do with our longing for a world made meaningful.

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Norris writes about each of these subjects with wisdom, grace and bravery. There are many moments of tender and plangent observation. Robert offers Kate a place to stay should ever she need one and later berates himself for embarrassing his granddaughter. We already know how much the offer has moved her.

Kate talks of our days being made of “small thoughts strung together so people who love each other too much to say so have something to share. Love among the rubble of an ordinary life.”

These small moments of heart-contracting beauty emerge from realms characterised by terrible pain.

Kate’s recollection of her anorexia, Robert’s reflections on grief, ageing and mortality – these episodes are so acutely registered and unblinkingly confronted as to make you want to turn from the page.

But the truth of Norris’s perceptions holds you there, turning to others, turning in on yourself, and meeting a fugitive vision of home.

Lexus LX700h specs

Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor

Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm

Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm

Transmission: 10-speed auto

Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km

On sale: Now

Price: From Dh590,000

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FINAL RECKONING

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg

Rating: 4/5

Champions parade (UAE timings)

7pm Gates open

8pm Deansgate stage showing starts

9pm Parade starts at Manchester Cathedral

9.45pm Parade ends at Peter Street

10pm City players on stage

11pm event ends

The%20Kitchen
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Director: Laxman Utekar

Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna

Rating: 1/5

Spider-Man%202
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Scores

Oman 109-3 in 18.4 overs (Aqib Ilyas 45 not out, Aamir Kaleem 27) beat UAE 108-9 in 20 overs (Usman 27, Mustafa 24, Fayyaz 3-16, Bilal 3-23)

Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
What can victims do?

Always use only regulated platforms

Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion

Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)

Report to local authorities

Warn others to prevent further harm

Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence

GOLF’S RAHMBO

- 5 wins in 22 months as pro
- Three wins in past 10 starts
- 45 pro starts worldwide: 5 wins, 17 top 5s
- Ranked 551th in world on debut, now No 4 (was No 2 earlier this year)
- 5th player in last 30 years to win 3 European Tour and 2 PGA Tour titles before age 24 (Woods, Garcia, McIlroy, Spieth)

How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE

When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.

Russia's Muslim Heartlands

Dominic Rubin, Oxford

MATCH INFO

Tottenham Hotspur 0 Everton 1 (Calvert-Lewin 55')

Man of the Match Allan (Everton)

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
TOURNAMENT INFO

Women’s World Twenty20 Qualifier

Jul 3- 14, in the Netherlands
The top two teams will qualify to play at the World T20 in the West Indies in November

UAE squad
Humaira Tasneem (captain), Chamani Seneviratne, Subha Srinivasan, Neha Sharma, Kavisha Kumari, Judit Cleetus, Chaya Mughal, Roopa Nagraj, Heena Hotchandani, Namita D’Souza, Ishani Senevirathne, Esha Oza, Nisha Ali, Udeni Kuruppuarachchi

The%20specs
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UK-EU trade at a glance

EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years

Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products

Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries

Smoother border management with use of e-gates

Cutting red tape on import and export of food

While you're here
The Perfect Couple

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor

Creator: Jenna Lamia

Rating: 3/5

The specs: 2018 BMW X2 and X3

Price, as tested: Dh255,150 (X2); Dh383,250 (X3)

Engine: 2.0-litre turbocharged inline four-cylinder (X2); 3.0-litre twin-turbo inline six-cylinder (X3)

Power 192hp @ 5,000rpm (X2); 355hp @ 5,500rpm (X3)

Torque: 280Nm @ 1,350rpm (X2); 500Nm @ 1,520rpm (X3)

Transmission: Seven-speed automatic (X2); Eight-speed automatic (X3)

Fuel consumption, combined: 5.7L / 100km (X2); 8.3L / 100km (X3)

UAE SQUAD FOR ASIAN JIU-JITSU CHAMPIONSHIP

Men’s squad: Faisal Al Ketbi, Omar Al Fadhli, Zayed Al Kathiri, Thiab Al Nuaimi, Khaled Al Shehhi, Mohamed Ali Al Suwaidi, Farraj Khaled Al Awlaqi, Muhammad Al Ameri, Mahdi Al Awlaqi, Saeed Al Qubaisi, Abdullah Al Qubaisi and Hazaa Farhan

Women's squad: Hamda Al Shekheili, Shouq Al Dhanhani, Balqis Abdullah, Sharifa Al Namani, Asma Al Hosani, Maitha Sultan, Bashayer Al Matrooshi, Maha Al Hanaei, Shamma Al Kalbani, Haya Al Jahuri, Mahra Mahfouz, Marwa Al Hosani, Tasneem Al Jahoori and Maryam Al Amri

Inside%20Out%202
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