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The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island.
G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.
G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.
394 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
G.B. Edwards
1 book24 followersGerald Basil Edwards was born in Vale Parish on the Channel Island of Guernsey and lived there until joining the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry in 1917. He attended Bristol University for several years, though he does not seem to have graduated. By the late 1920s Edwards was living in London, where he taught literature and drama at a number of institutions, including Toynbee Hall. He became acquainted with the writers J.S. Collis, Stephen Potter, and Middleton Murry, who recruited him to write for The Adelphi. All three considered Edwards a genius and expected him to become a new D.H. Lawrence. In 1928, Edwards was commissioned by Jonathan Cape to write a biography of Lawrence, with whom he briefly corresponded. Lawrence then died and the biography was never completed. Although he continued to write, Edwards published very little from that point on, eventually earning his living as a civil servant. He retired to Dorset, where in 1972 he met the art student Edward Chaney, who encouraged him to complete The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. Edwards bequeathed the typescript to his young friend, who eventually succeeded in having it published. It was hailed as a great novel in England and America and has since been published in French and Italian.
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July 25, 2020
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is charmingly old-fashioned and painstakingly humane and it exudes an aura of the best classical novels.
It is a tale of a man living on an island…
An island is a splinter of the world but like a splinter of a mirror, it reflects the entire world.
So The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a story of the world.
A man is a splinter of the humankind but like a splinter of a mirror, a man reflects the entire humanity.
So The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a story of the humankind.
Some people live their true life and some people live a lie.
It is a tale of a man living on an island…
The older I get and the more I learn, the more I know I don't know nothing, me. I am the oldest on the island, I think. Liza Quenpel from Pleinmont say she is older; but I reckon she is putting it on. When she was a young woman, she used to have a birthday once every two or three years; but for years now she have been having two or three a year. To tell you the truth, I don't know how old I am. My mother put it down on the front page of the big Bible; but she put down the day and the month, and forgot to put down the year.
An island is a splinter of the world but like a splinter of a mirror, it reflects the entire world.
So The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a story of the world.
A man is a splinter of the humankind but like a splinter of a mirror, a man reflects the entire humanity.
So The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a story of the humankind.
I don't like people who preach. They put themselves on a pedestal and make out what they say is according to the Will of God and what anybody else think different is of the Devil. I like a chap who say straight out what he think at the moment, and don't care a bugger if he is right or wrong.
Some people live their true life and some people live a lie.
October 10, 2017
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Meditation XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, by John Donne
Ebenezer is not just an islander; he is an island - wilfully so. And yet he is also, quietly, kindly, involved in mankind, despite cultivating the demeanour of a curmudgeonly loner. That is the essence of his book: his rambling reminiscences of a long life and the myriad islanders he has known, liked, loved, and feuded with.
The island is Guernsey, only about 17km (10 miles) from one corner to the other, much nearer France than England, and occupied by the Nazis for four years. Ebenezer lives his entire life there, leaving it just once, in his youth, to visit the neighbouring island of Jersey for an inter-island football competition.
Photos: Pleinmont Observation Tower amid bluebells 29 April 2017, Castle Cornet 30 April 2017, Jerbourg 29 April 2017
Ebenezer is a delight. Like his island, he is a web of contradictions (see notes below for examples). His disarming honesty about his own faults make his cantankerousness all the more charming, and his meandering memoirs, sprinkled with hints of what's to come (“Who would ever have thought Liza Queripel would end up the way she have, when she could have married a lord?”), captivate and reel the reader in, like a fish in a net.
Sex Isn’t the Answer
“I wasn’t hot for her, as I can be for a girl; but when I blow hot, I blow cold pretty soon. I wanted her; but not under the hedge.”
All the happiest, most trusting, and enduring relationships here are the non-sexual ones. Those include friendships between men and women (Ebenezer and ), as well as those where marriage wouldn’t have been an option: siblings (Ebenezer and Tabitha), cousins (Horace and Raymond), men (Ebenezer and Jim), and parental concern for youngsters who are not one’s children (). The funniest is between competitive and sometimes feuding sisters (his aunts Hetty and Prissy).
Even though his parents were not especially unhappy Ebenezer says “Marriage is a terrible thing” and can think of only two women who loved their husbands (his sister Tabitha and cousin Mary Ann).
Money Isn’t the Answer
“Lay not up treasure for yourselves upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.”
Ebenezer’s religious mother reminds him of this more than once. He pays no heed. Nor to the Parable of the Talents, or the Biblical significance of an apple tree. He has faith that "gold is gold". Making money is easy, he says (spending it, not so much).
But that leads to a dilemma in old age:
Forgiveness and Blessings Are the Answer
“Is all one generation can do to set the stage for the comic, sad story of the next?”
Sometimes the most powerful voices are those who don’t realise they have something to preach. Such is Ebenezer. His message seeps out, inadvertently, between the pages, and it’s only towards the end, the end I didn’t want to get to, that I realised what it was.
In the final chapters, there is a risk of sentimentality, exacerbated by a rather neat twist. The fact it’s uncharacteristic, coupled with the fact it doesn’t go too far, adds to the book’s charm and strength.
Ebenezer dies alive, more alive than he’s been for years. He has regrets. He has not lived a blameless life, but nor has he set himself up as an example. (For a more fantastical take on the living not being fully alive, see Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which I reviewed here.)
“That’s what I am. A Guernsey donkey. Sometimes I stick my heels in and sometimes I kick out and sometimes I lift my head to heaven and bray.”
But his closing thoughts are to write down all the good things, never to judge anyone again, and to wish blessings for all. The world needs more Ebenezers, kicking and braying and all.
Photo: Petit Bot, 29 April 2017
Notes: covering Ebenezer, Guernsey, Language, the Author, and Other Ebenezers in Literature
No plot spoilers, but more detail than you probably want unless you have a book report to write or want to jog your memory about some detail.
Quotes
• “My mother didn’t dance, but tried to look as if she didn’t think it was sinful.”
• “My mother’s lot… didn’t go round trying to convert everybody. They knew they was right and it was other people’s own lookout if they wasn’t.”
• “I would rather be a black man than a Jerseyman.” And “I didn’t like the French… I thought they was dirty.” A man of his times.
• “She gave him everything he wanted, or that she thought he wanted, or ought to want… Yet, if she had only known it, she kept him in a cage.”
• Nowadays, there is too much “improvement for the worse”.
• “The trouble with marrying a girl is you marry all the scandal in the family for three or four generations, half of it not true.”
• To a modern artist, “I’m glad you got the first prize… but I wish I knew why.” Another says he “paints in patois”.
• “It takes two to make a picture: the chap who paints it and the chap who looks at it.”
• “She would have looked all right in a circus, but I wouldn’t have liked to have her around me when I was eating.” A young woman wearing skin-tight black and white herring-bone trousers and sweater.
• “The answer for me is not in the religion they teach you from the books; but it was in the very stones of the church I was standing in.”
• “Land is worshipped first and money next and the Lord last, if at all.” Raymond, of Guernsey.
• “When you got nobody to love and nothing to live for, you can always make money.”
• “Patriotism… is too much! It is enough for us to love and hate our neighbours as ourselves.”
Meditation XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, by John Donne
Ebenezer is not just an islander; he is an island - wilfully so. And yet he is also, quietly, kindly, involved in mankind, despite cultivating the demeanour of a curmudgeonly loner. That is the essence of his book: his rambling reminiscences of a long life and the myriad islanders he has known, liked, loved, and feuded with.
The island is Guernsey, only about 17km (10 miles) from one corner to the other, much nearer France than England, and occupied by the Nazis for four years. Ebenezer lives his entire life there, leaving it just once, in his youth, to visit the neighbouring island of Jersey for an inter-island football competition.
Photos: Pleinmont Observation Tower amid bluebells 29 April 2017, Castle Cornet 30 April 2017, Jerbourg 29 April 2017
Ebenezer is a delight. Like his island, he is a web of contradictions (see notes below for examples). His disarming honesty about his own faults make his cantankerousness all the more charming, and his meandering memoirs, sprinkled with hints of what's to come (“Who would ever have thought Liza Queripel would end up the way she have, when she could have married a lord?”), captivate and reel the reader in, like a fish in a net.
Sex Isn’t the Answer
“I wasn’t hot for her, as I can be for a girl; but when I blow hot, I blow cold pretty soon. I wanted her; but not under the hedge.”
All the happiest, most trusting, and enduring relationships here are the non-sexual ones. Those include friendships between men and women (Ebenezer and ), as well as those where marriage wouldn’t have been an option: siblings (Ebenezer and Tabitha), cousins (Horace and Raymond), men (Ebenezer and Jim), and parental concern for youngsters who are not one’s children (). The funniest is between competitive and sometimes feuding sisters (his aunts Hetty and Prissy).
Even though his parents were not especially unhappy Ebenezer says “Marriage is a terrible thing” and can think of only two women who loved their husbands (his sister Tabitha and cousin Mary Ann).
Money Isn’t the Answer
“Lay not up treasure for yourselves upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.”
Ebenezer’s religious mother reminds him of this more than once. He pays no heed. Nor to the Parable of the Talents, or the Biblical significance of an apple tree. He has faith that "gold is gold". Making money is easy, he says (spending it, not so much).
But that leads to a dilemma in old age:
Forgiveness and Blessings Are the Answer
“Is all one generation can do to set the stage for the comic, sad story of the next?”
Sometimes the most powerful voices are those who don’t realise they have something to preach. Such is Ebenezer. His message seeps out, inadvertently, between the pages, and it’s only towards the end, the end I didn’t want to get to, that I realised what it was.
In the final chapters, there is a risk of sentimentality, exacerbated by a rather neat twist. The fact it’s uncharacteristic, coupled with the fact it doesn’t go too far, adds to the book’s charm and strength.
Ebenezer dies alive, more alive than he’s been for years. He has regrets. He has not lived a blameless life, but nor has he set himself up as an example. (For a more fantastical take on the living not being fully alive, see Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which I reviewed here.)
“That’s what I am. A Guernsey donkey. Sometimes I stick my heels in and sometimes I kick out and sometimes I lift my head to heaven and bray.”
But his closing thoughts are to write down all the good things, never to judge anyone again, and to wish blessings for all. The world needs more Ebenezers, kicking and braying and all.
Photo: Petit Bot, 29 April 2017
Notes: covering Ebenezer, Guernsey, Language, the Author, and Other Ebenezers in Literature
No plot spoilers, but more detail than you probably want unless you have a book report to write or want to jog your memory about some detail.
Quotes
• “My mother didn’t dance, but tried to look as if she didn’t think it was sinful.”
• “My mother’s lot… didn’t go round trying to convert everybody. They knew they was right and it was other people’s own lookout if they wasn’t.”
• “I would rather be a black man than a Jerseyman.” And “I didn’t like the French… I thought they was dirty.” A man of his times.
• “She gave him everything he wanted, or that she thought he wanted, or ought to want… Yet, if she had only known it, she kept him in a cage.”
• Nowadays, there is too much “improvement for the worse”.
• “The trouble with marrying a girl is you marry all the scandal in the family for three or four generations, half of it not true.”
• To a modern artist, “I’m glad you got the first prize… but I wish I knew why.” Another says he “paints in patois”.
• “It takes two to make a picture: the chap who paints it and the chap who looks at it.”
• “She would have looked all right in a circus, but I wouldn’t have liked to have her around me when I was eating.” A young woman wearing skin-tight black and white herring-bone trousers and sweater.
• “The answer for me is not in the religion they teach you from the books; but it was in the very stones of the church I was standing in.”
• “Land is worshipped first and money next and the Lord last, if at all.” Raymond, of Guernsey.
• “When you got nobody to love and nothing to live for, you can always make money.”
• “Patriotism… is too much! It is enough for us to love and hate our neighbours as ourselves.”
December 18, 2015
“The great rocks was not rocks, nor the sea sea, yet they was real as real; and the clouds was gates of glory, and every way I turned my eyes the view was waves of joy and golden light.”(480)
There is a place where waves of two seas meet,
to blend the water of their different shades,
the grey ones barging in from insulated shores,
embrace the foam of the silver redemptive sea.
Ebenezer Le Page sits in Les Moulins, his granite house where he has lived all his life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, and writes. The fact that he has left Guernsey only once in his life for a day trip to the neighboring island of Jersey or that his misanthropic, opinionated and grumpy character has made a loner out of himself or that his favorite novel is opportunely Robinson Crusoe, the quintessential story about all types of isolation, falls into oblivion when this living sculpture, emblem of another era, pours his soul on a blank page trying to summon a long gone past back to life.
Like the tides of Lihou Island, where Ebenezer and his beloved friend Jim got stranded for a night, memories come and go blending with a present that this almost extinct “Guernsey donkey” refuses to come to terms with, tourism and commerce his worst enemies.
“I think living in this world is hell on earth for most of us most of the time, it don’t matter when or where we are born; but the way we used to live over here, I mean in the country parts, was more or less as it had been for many hundreds of years; and it was real. The way people live over here now is not real: at least, it is not real to me. The people are not real.” (219)
With roots that run deep into the island, Ebenezer appears as the embodiment of custom, he equally distrusts lawyers, doctors, banks and women. He is wary of religion, either “Church”, having witnessed what it did to his literate cousin Raymond, or “Chapel”, seeing how it shaped his austere and reprobate mother. Family secrets and quarrels, everlasting friendships, bitter betrayals, love glimpsed and love lost, many sermons and little forgiveness.
The layers that compound the soul of this man are relentlessly bared in his detailed chronicle of an uneventful and in many aspects unappealing life while offering a subtle reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as his words invoke both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II.
There is a spark of blended hilarity and refreshing irony in the apparent flat tone of this almost spoken narration, or should I say confession. As Ebenezer ages and his wealth increases, his happiness and peace of mind decline and his alienation grows exponentially seeing the people of his own generation dissolve into the dusk of life, while his flood of words reveal a golden heart disguised in a cantankerous façade and a nature that is neither sullen nor unsociable but the product of obstinacy and circumstance.
As life ebbs from him, Ebenezer starts searching for someone who will provide a continuity of his outlook on life, which seems to be fading everywhere else in the island.
What does it mean to write a life?
Can one atone for the past writing it?
Can one purge obliqueness silently confessing to the blank, non judgmental page?
Writing as a catharsis.
Writing to exorcize one's demons.
Writing as a necessary task to acknowledge the shadow aspects of oneself to begin the process of forgiveness.
Let future and fate atone for the past blindness and misdeeds.
A blank page becomes a blank canvas in which one can paint a reconciliation in colorful brushstrokes getting an irredeemable glimpse of the world as God made it.
Close your eyes now and let your tears drop and feel the black sand and salty tongues of surf, far out to sea and further still, all the way to the horizon separating light blue from dark, sky from water.
A wave has broken free, changing everything, recreating a forgotten landscape, leaving nothing and everything as before.
******
Note: I have read this novel with Ema in an informal joint reading that has provided me with the equally wondrous and unknown joy of sharing a reading experience in real time, a total novelty and a treasure to me. So, thank you Ema very much for having been my companion in this literary journey.
There is a place where waves of two seas meet,
to blend the water of their different shades,
the grey ones barging in from insulated shores,
embrace the foam of the silver redemptive sea.
Ebenezer Le Page sits in Les Moulins, his granite house where he has lived all his life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, and writes. The fact that he has left Guernsey only once in his life for a day trip to the neighboring island of Jersey or that his misanthropic, opinionated and grumpy character has made a loner out of himself or that his favorite novel is opportunely Robinson Crusoe, the quintessential story about all types of isolation, falls into oblivion when this living sculpture, emblem of another era, pours his soul on a blank page trying to summon a long gone past back to life.
Like the tides of Lihou Island, where Ebenezer and his beloved friend Jim got stranded for a night, memories come and go blending with a present that this almost extinct “Guernsey donkey” refuses to come to terms with, tourism and commerce his worst enemies.
“I think living in this world is hell on earth for most of us most of the time, it don’t matter when or where we are born; but the way we used to live over here, I mean in the country parts, was more or less as it had been for many hundreds of years; and it was real. The way people live over here now is not real: at least, it is not real to me. The people are not real.” (219)
With roots that run deep into the island, Ebenezer appears as the embodiment of custom, he equally distrusts lawyers, doctors, banks and women. He is wary of religion, either “Church”, having witnessed what it did to his literate cousin Raymond, or “Chapel”, seeing how it shaped his austere and reprobate mother. Family secrets and quarrels, everlasting friendships, bitter betrayals, love glimpsed and love lost, many sermons and little forgiveness.
The layers that compound the soul of this man are relentlessly bared in his detailed chronicle of an uneventful and in many aspects unappealing life while offering a subtle reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as his words invoke both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II.
There is a spark of blended hilarity and refreshing irony in the apparent flat tone of this almost spoken narration, or should I say confession. As Ebenezer ages and his wealth increases, his happiness and peace of mind decline and his alienation grows exponentially seeing the people of his own generation dissolve into the dusk of life, while his flood of words reveal a golden heart disguised in a cantankerous façade and a nature that is neither sullen nor unsociable but the product of obstinacy and circumstance.
As life ebbs from him, Ebenezer starts searching for someone who will provide a continuity of his outlook on life, which seems to be fading everywhere else in the island.
What does it mean to write a life?
Can one atone for the past writing it?
Can one purge obliqueness silently confessing to the blank, non judgmental page?
Writing as a catharsis.
Writing to exorcize one's demons.
Writing as a necessary task to acknowledge the shadow aspects of oneself to begin the process of forgiveness.
Let future and fate atone for the past blindness and misdeeds.
A blank page becomes a blank canvas in which one can paint a reconciliation in colorful brushstrokes getting an irredeemable glimpse of the world as God made it.
Close your eyes now and let your tears drop and feel the black sand and salty tongues of surf, far out to sea and further still, all the way to the horizon separating light blue from dark, sky from water.
A wave has broken free, changing everything, recreating a forgotten landscape, leaving nothing and everything as before.
******
Note: I have read this novel with Ema in an informal joint reading that has provided me with the equally wondrous and unknown joy of sharing a reading experience in real time, a total novelty and a treasure to me. So, thank you Ema very much for having been my companion in this literary journey.
October 2, 2014
Crusty old man lit is more likely to show up on my shelf than my wife’s. But since she got me to read (and enjoy) Jane Austen, I figure I’m owed the chance to sell her on this unassuming little treasure – one that may well be the beau ideal of the whole curmudgeonly male canon. That’s my main goal with this review. For those of you who have already read the book (including 10 friends who gave it a total of 50 stars), please help me entice her. For those of you who have not, maybe we’ll convince you of its worthiness, too. Here are my top five reasons to give it a go. I considered doing ten reasons, but then remembered that (notwithstanding asides like this) brevity is the soul of wit (and, with luck, the torque of an arm twist).
1. The setting has more than just potato peels to interest us. Ebenezer is a Guernseyman. As such, he has all the independence of thought and intransigence of spirit you might expect from a rustic island existence. Guernsey is influenced by both France (it’s situated off the coast of Normandy) and England (it’s technically owned by the British Crown), but is ruled by neither. Beyond autonomy of state, they have their own distinctive culture and way of speaking. The patois Ebenezer used in his very conversational narration was a fun and constant reminder of the local color. Of course we all know that islands make great metaphors, too, positioned conveniently on the insularity/connectedness spectrum. John Fowles, in the introduction, made a good point: “Provincialism is not merely lacking city taste in arts and manners; it is also an increasingly vital antidote to all would-be central tyrannies.” Ebenezer’s Guernsey was a good case in point – proud of the different beat it marched to. And smaller ponds can give the fish within them a feeling of greater importance. That may explain why young Ebenezer’s pride in being the one to climb the greasy pole at the local fair to snatch the flavorful prize seemed so satisfying. To him it was like Olympic gold. To us, it’s a reminder that accomplishments are relative. Not to sound condescending, but it’s all the more heartwarming at the Special Olympics, all smiles at the more intimate glories.
2. There’s an epic sweep to the story. Ebenezer was born in the late 1800’s and his book ended in the 1960’s. Many changes took place both to the narrator and to the island. The Great War, WWII (and the German occupation), the dawning age of the automobile, the advent of TV, the bloody tourists – they all had their influences. The book accommodated a myriad of characters across both time and type. The older generation played an important role when Ebenezer was young and the younger generation got its due when he was old. And it was fascinating to see the scope through Ebenezer’s wide-open eyes. Which, after burying the lead long enough, brings us to…
3. The narration – it’s more affecting than I can tell you. It’s not that plot spoilers prevent me from telling you, it’s that my powers of description aren’t up to the task. The elements of a great story are there – conflict, death, Nazis, love, lust, and more – but the tone is somewhat prosaic and the action may seem underwhelming. So what does this backward, cantankerous old fellow bring to the party? I think the key may be the fact that someone who on the face of it was such an unlikely figure to write a book felt compelled to write one anyway. He was not well-educated, articulate, or a student of island history, but there was a passion he had for telling his side of things. And while he may not have been book smart, I think most would agree he could read people. He was an iconoclast, but one with an integrity we can admire. There’s something appealing about an energized old-timer who wants his life to have meant something, wants his perspective to have registered, and wants some kind of legacy to mark his existence despite the long odds. He had such a distinctive voice for it, too, never boring. There’s a knack good storytellers have for when to jump ahead and when to backfill in an otherwise linear narrative. Edwards, by way of Ebenezer, had that and more.
4. Human temperaments are on full display. And we get quite a motley assemblage. The range of character traits is wide, spanning dimensions twixt petty and empathetic, magnanimous and mean, cowardly and brave, and combative and kind among others. Raymond, a younger cousin, was highbrow and philosophical, and gave Edwards (who in most ways led Ebenezer’s life) a vehicle to deliver his views on religion and the bigger world. Best friend Jim showed a bromantic closeness that Ebenezer lacked with women, even the special one in his life that he might have married. At least with his mother, sister, and aunts, Ebenezer realized that women could vary, even if he didn’t understand most of them. To his credit, humor was something he did get. One of his favorite accounts was when a bird dropped his calling card on a visiting Frenchman. Despite dirtying his new jacket, the man just laughed and said, “Dieu merci les vaches ne volent pas!” (Vache = cow in case you need help with the translation.)
5. It’s like a fine wine: improved with age, boasting a great finish. Ebenezer mellowed over time. I was pleased to see such a clear example of personal growth in later years. (There’s hope for me yet!) Redemption might not be the right word, but it’s not far off. In real life, G.B. Edwards befriended a young artist who inspired him to write this pseudo-quasi-memoir in old age. Ebenezer made friends with a similar young man, one who had a mischievous past (at one time breaking a greenhouse window where Ebenezer grew his tomatoes). Neville, the misunderstood artist, was a kindred spirit. He was just what the book needed to tie loose ends together. Neville’s girlfriend, another simpatico soul, once said he painted in patois. Ebenezer liked that. In a way, it characterized his own artful reflections on life. I liked it, too. The whole book was as distinctive and prismatic as any patois could be.
So have I convinced you yet Susan? You know it’s a compliment to your fine taste that I’m trying this hard.
1. The setting has more than just potato peels to interest us. Ebenezer is a Guernseyman. As such, he has all the independence of thought and intransigence of spirit you might expect from a rustic island existence. Guernsey is influenced by both France (it’s situated off the coast of Normandy) and England (it’s technically owned by the British Crown), but is ruled by neither. Beyond autonomy of state, they have their own distinctive culture and way of speaking. The patois Ebenezer used in his very conversational narration was a fun and constant reminder of the local color. Of course we all know that islands make great metaphors, too, positioned conveniently on the insularity/connectedness spectrum. John Fowles, in the introduction, made a good point: “Provincialism is not merely lacking city taste in arts and manners; it is also an increasingly vital antidote to all would-be central tyrannies.” Ebenezer’s Guernsey was a good case in point – proud of the different beat it marched to. And smaller ponds can give the fish within them a feeling of greater importance. That may explain why young Ebenezer’s pride in being the one to climb the greasy pole at the local fair to snatch the flavorful prize seemed so satisfying. To him it was like Olympic gold. To us, it’s a reminder that accomplishments are relative. Not to sound condescending, but it’s all the more heartwarming at the Special Olympics, all smiles at the more intimate glories.
2. There’s an epic sweep to the story. Ebenezer was born in the late 1800’s and his book ended in the 1960’s. Many changes took place both to the narrator and to the island. The Great War, WWII (and the German occupation), the dawning age of the automobile, the advent of TV, the bloody tourists – they all had their influences. The book accommodated a myriad of characters across both time and type. The older generation played an important role when Ebenezer was young and the younger generation got its due when he was old. And it was fascinating to see the scope through Ebenezer’s wide-open eyes. Which, after burying the lead long enough, brings us to…
3. The narration – it’s more affecting than I can tell you. It’s not that plot spoilers prevent me from telling you, it’s that my powers of description aren’t up to the task. The elements of a great story are there – conflict, death, Nazis, love, lust, and more – but the tone is somewhat prosaic and the action may seem underwhelming. So what does this backward, cantankerous old fellow bring to the party? I think the key may be the fact that someone who on the face of it was such an unlikely figure to write a book felt compelled to write one anyway. He was not well-educated, articulate, or a student of island history, but there was a passion he had for telling his side of things. And while he may not have been book smart, I think most would agree he could read people. He was an iconoclast, but one with an integrity we can admire. There’s something appealing about an energized old-timer who wants his life to have meant something, wants his perspective to have registered, and wants some kind of legacy to mark his existence despite the long odds. He had such a distinctive voice for it, too, never boring. There’s a knack good storytellers have for when to jump ahead and when to backfill in an otherwise linear narrative. Edwards, by way of Ebenezer, had that and more.
4. Human temperaments are on full display. And we get quite a motley assemblage. The range of character traits is wide, spanning dimensions twixt petty and empathetic, magnanimous and mean, cowardly and brave, and combative and kind among others. Raymond, a younger cousin, was highbrow and philosophical, and gave Edwards (who in most ways led Ebenezer’s life) a vehicle to deliver his views on religion and the bigger world. Best friend Jim showed a bromantic closeness that Ebenezer lacked with women, even the special one in his life that he might have married. At least with his mother, sister, and aunts, Ebenezer realized that women could vary, even if he didn’t understand most of them. To his credit, humor was something he did get. One of his favorite accounts was when a bird dropped his calling card on a visiting Frenchman. Despite dirtying his new jacket, the man just laughed and said, “Dieu merci les vaches ne volent pas!” (Vache = cow in case you need help with the translation.)
5. It’s like a fine wine: improved with age, boasting a great finish. Ebenezer mellowed over time. I was pleased to see such a clear example of personal growth in later years. (There’s hope for me yet!) Redemption might not be the right word, but it’s not far off. In real life, G.B. Edwards befriended a young artist who inspired him to write this pseudo-quasi-memoir in old age. Ebenezer made friends with a similar young man, one who had a mischievous past (at one time breaking a greenhouse window where Ebenezer grew his tomatoes). Neville, the misunderstood artist, was a kindred spirit. He was just what the book needed to tie loose ends together. Neville’s girlfriend, another simpatico soul, once said he painted in patois. Ebenezer liked that. In a way, it characterized his own artful reflections on life. I liked it, too. The whole book was as distinctive and prismatic as any patois could be.
So have I convinced you yet Susan? You know it’s a compliment to your fine taste that I’m trying this hard.
August 22, 2017
I am going to start off by rating this book five stars and declare it one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. One in a billion.
Sitting here trying to capture my thoughts and feelings is a daunting exercise. All I want to do right now is bawl my eyes out, really! And let me make a confession right now: I am deeply, utterly and hopelessly in love with Ebenezer Le Page!
There is so much I want to say about Ebenezer Le Page. So I will try to keep it short. For those who treasure the messages left in spoilers, I will add a few, since I prefer to let a book speak for itself in between. It was the prose, after all, that had me captured and kept riveted to the island and its people. Those who feel offended by spoilers, be strong and just skip it as usual.
Well now, let me spell out what got me reading this book day and night. Although I was busy, responsibilities have a nasty way of interfering, I could not stop thinking about the story. I never really came back from the story long enough to feel part of reality again. I could not escape. But most importantly, I did not want to!
MEMORIES.
When I opened the book, I dutifully start out reading the introduction, and just skipped it after a page or two. I wanted the book to talk to me, not being explained to me! But afterwards I did go back to get to know the author who apparently used autobiographical elements in the book to authenticate the story.
The very first few sentences told me where we were going with this book and I prepared myself. It was like an urgent knock onto my subconscious memory, demanding to be let in.It was like a light being switched on over a long ago part of my own story. An instant recognition of something.
He is a fictional, 80-year-old gentleman who decided to write down his memories of his life on Guernsay Island.
What seems to be a memoir is in fact a novel wherein several characters have their turns to be spotlighted and a consistent story line is subtly woven through his memories. It is indeed a fictional novel in memoir-form. Amazing, really. The author is not well-known either. It probably could have been a memoir in novel-form, for all one knows! What a good idea, after all ! The period between 1890 to 1970 is covered in the story. It is certainly the period when a world as it was known was totally revolutionized on many levels. Ebenezer Le Page took the time to share his own experiences of the old and new in his memoir.
Ebenezer Le Page was born on Guernsey Island. He grew up and old there. He never left it. Only once did he venture off to Jersey island for a football game between the two islands. But that was it. Vividly and detailed he wrote down his memories of the people and events. His subtle wit snaked though Chapel and Church services, conflict between family members, English and French influences, romantic canoodeling of friends and foes. He mourned the death of his friends in the two big wars of Europe. He dutifully, and lovingly, although not obviously, dotted down his words filling up three thick volumes. Oh how well he remembered the intrigue of everyday life on the island between France and England; how independent they demanded to be from both countries; how mixed up their cultures and histories. He remembered it all. He did not only share the human stories, he shared the local patois they used as a language as well.
He questioned everything and never stopped doing so, not even when he neared the final pages of his story.
He shared his secret loves and affections for various people in his life. But most of all, he wrote down his love story, although it took him a lifetime to finally admit the word to himself as well as to the greatest love of his life.
He is gracious. He is honest. He is in pain. He is cranky. He is sometimes happy. Happiness was not his primary forté in life. He simply did not believe it was possible to be happy. Women were trouble, except for his mother, his sister and another one he so dearly wanted to forget. There was little reason for him to grab onto optimism when two world wars, including the German Occupation dictated the outcome of the islanders' lives. And soon afterwards it was the promiscuous, decadent vulgarity of the Sixties and Seventies, according to him. He adjusted slowly or not at all. Women in trousers were not welcome in his house. Tourism was destroying his beloved island. Young people could not remember the hell and damnation of the wars and did not care to know. Nobody wanted to look back.
As an old man, he had an urgent need to draw up a will. But he never got married and had no immediate heirs. He started to look for possible candidates, visiting old- and new acquaintances, and discovered a secret that changed his life. It changed mine completely. I never saw it coming!
This book will forever fascinate me. The skilled way in which a mystery was built into the slow-moving narrative will never be forgotten. What initially looked like memories written down haphazardly was in fact a master storyteller at work. It is only in the last pages that the magic exposed itself and the magnitude thereof became evident. I was actually speechless when the plot finally concluded.
Of course I will reread it. Do yourself a favor and read this book. Make time for it. Don't try to rush it. Be patient. You will be thoroughly rewarded. I was blown away! But of course, I read it emotionally and allowed myself the time to fall in love word for word for word. I wish it never ended.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Sitting here trying to capture my thoughts and feelings is a daunting exercise. All I want to do right now is bawl my eyes out, really! And let me make a confession right now: I am deeply, utterly and hopelessly in love with Ebenezer Le Page!
There is so much I want to say about Ebenezer Le Page. So I will try to keep it short. For those who treasure the messages left in spoilers, I will add a few, since I prefer to let a book speak for itself in between. It was the prose, after all, that had me captured and kept riveted to the island and its people. Those who feel offended by spoilers, be strong and just skip it as usual.
Well now, let me spell out what got me reading this book day and night. Although I was busy, responsibilities have a nasty way of interfering, I could not stop thinking about the story. I never really came back from the story long enough to feel part of reality again. I could not escape. But most importantly, I did not want to!
MEMORIES.
When I opened the book, I dutifully start out reading the introduction, and just skipped it after a page or two. I wanted the book to talk to me, not being explained to me! But afterwards I did go back to get to know the author who apparently used autobiographical elements in the book to authenticate the story.
The very first few sentences told me where we were going with this book and I prepared myself. It was like an urgent knock onto my subconscious memory, demanding to be let in.It was like a light being switched on over a long ago part of my own story. An instant recognition of something.
He is a fictional, 80-year-old gentleman who decided to write down his memories of his life on Guernsay Island.
What seems to be a memoir is in fact a novel wherein several characters have their turns to be spotlighted and a consistent story line is subtly woven through his memories. It is indeed a fictional novel in memoir-form. Amazing, really. The author is not well-known either. It probably could have been a memoir in novel-form, for all one knows! What a good idea, after all ! The period between 1890 to 1970 is covered in the story. It is certainly the period when a world as it was known was totally revolutionized on many levels. Ebenezer Le Page took the time to share his own experiences of the old and new in his memoir.
Ebenezer Le Page was born on Guernsey Island. He grew up and old there. He never left it. Only once did he venture off to Jersey island for a football game between the two islands. But that was it. Vividly and detailed he wrote down his memories of the people and events. His subtle wit snaked though Chapel and Church services, conflict between family members, English and French influences, romantic canoodeling of friends and foes. He mourned the death of his friends in the two big wars of Europe. He dutifully, and lovingly, although not obviously, dotted down his words filling up three thick volumes. Oh how well he remembered the intrigue of everyday life on the island between France and England; how independent they demanded to be from both countries; how mixed up their cultures and histories. He remembered it all. He did not only share the human stories, he shared the local patois they used as a language as well.
He questioned everything and never stopped doing so, not even when he neared the final pages of his story.
He shared his secret loves and affections for various people in his life. But most of all, he wrote down his love story, although it took him a lifetime to finally admit the word to himself as well as to the greatest love of his life.
He is gracious. He is honest. He is in pain. He is cranky. He is sometimes happy. Happiness was not his primary forté in life. He simply did not believe it was possible to be happy. Women were trouble, except for his mother, his sister and another one he so dearly wanted to forget. There was little reason for him to grab onto optimism when two world wars, including the German Occupation dictated the outcome of the islanders' lives. And soon afterwards it was the promiscuous, decadent vulgarity of the Sixties and Seventies, according to him. He adjusted slowly or not at all. Women in trousers were not welcome in his house. Tourism was destroying his beloved island. Young people could not remember the hell and damnation of the wars and did not care to know. Nobody wanted to look back.
As an old man, he had an urgent need to draw up a will. But he never got married and had no immediate heirs. He started to look for possible candidates, visiting old- and new acquaintances, and discovered a secret that changed his life. It changed mine completely. I never saw it coming!
This book will forever fascinate me. The skilled way in which a mystery was built into the slow-moving narrative will never be forgotten. What initially looked like memories written down haphazardly was in fact a master storyteller at work. It is only in the last pages that the magic exposed itself and the magnitude thereof became evident. I was actually speechless when the plot finally concluded.
Of course I will reread it. Do yourself a favor and read this book. Make time for it. Don't try to rush it. Be patient. You will be thoroughly rewarded. I was blown away! But of course, I read it emotionally and allowed myself the time to fall in love word for word for word. I wish it never ended.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
June 10, 2013
Does anything sound like less of a good time than listening to some crotchety old man wax nostalgic for his younger days, humoring him (in a patronizing way, of course) while he complains that times have changed? Very little pleases this person; he’s finicky, he’s bad-tempered, and his attitude toward his fellow man is depressingly sour. At first glance, Ebenezer Le Page might resemble this curmudgeonly type, and admittedly he is a curmudgeon on many levels, but there just happens to be something about him that sets him apart from the typical irascibility of his curmudgeonly brethren, a “something” that inevitably makes getting to know him an investment worth undertaking.
Ebenezer, not surprisingly, is a constant in an area of the world that has seen rapid technological advances since World War II, before which it remained relatively protected from external influences. Naturally, Ebenezer covets the insularity his homeland enjoyed before the war, having been raised in this environment and having forged close ties with his surroundings, particularly to his home which has been in the possession of his family for generations. Ebenezer views these changes as a sort of “end” to Guernsey life as he has always known it, and unwittingly becomes a human parallel to its terminative quality when he finds himself inching imminently closer to his own mortality with no one left to extend his legacy, or at least no one he deems “Guernsey” enough. He thus spends a large chunk of his remaining days deciding to whom he should bequeath his property while simultaneously composing a memoir of his life, a memoir that becomes The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
This is one of the easiest five-star ratings I’ve ever applied to a book. It is a fictional memoir whose narrator has completely and totally endeared me to him. He writes with an almost Proustian capacity for observing human relationships, and his accounts of friendship—specifically with Jim, but also with Raymond and later with Neville (who, to him, represents the antithesis of the new generation of Guernsey)—are beautiful in their depictions. At the end of his life, Ebenezer is able to reflect honestly on the choices he has made, without judgment, and from a vantage point of understanding better the circumstances around which those choices were made. His words and actions are comical, yet poignant, and his fictional legacy will be—for me—largely unforgettable.
Speaking of crotchety curmudgeons, this book was a gift from one of my favorite Goodreaders. Thank you, David!
Ebenezer, not surprisingly, is a constant in an area of the world that has seen rapid technological advances since World War II, before which it remained relatively protected from external influences. Naturally, Ebenezer covets the insularity his homeland enjoyed before the war, having been raised in this environment and having forged close ties with his surroundings, particularly to his home which has been in the possession of his family for generations. Ebenezer views these changes as a sort of “end” to Guernsey life as he has always known it, and unwittingly becomes a human parallel to its terminative quality when he finds himself inching imminently closer to his own mortality with no one left to extend his legacy, or at least no one he deems “Guernsey” enough. He thus spends a large chunk of his remaining days deciding to whom he should bequeath his property while simultaneously composing a memoir of his life, a memoir that becomes The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
This is one of the easiest five-star ratings I’ve ever applied to a book. It is a fictional memoir whose narrator has completely and totally endeared me to him. He writes with an almost Proustian capacity for observing human relationships, and his accounts of friendship—specifically with Jim, but also with Raymond and later with Neville (who, to him, represents the antithesis of the new generation of Guernsey)—are beautiful in their depictions. At the end of his life, Ebenezer is able to reflect honestly on the choices he has made, without judgment, and from a vantage point of understanding better the circumstances around which those choices were made. His words and actions are comical, yet poignant, and his fictional legacy will be—for me—largely unforgettable.
Speaking of crotchety curmudgeons, this book was a gift from one of my favorite Goodreaders. Thank you, David!
November 13, 2011
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is the kind of novel you don't really know in its truest sense until you've reached the very end. It's something like looking at vast panorama. If you consign your gaze to any particular detail, you inevitably miss the overwhelming sweep and grandeur of its totality. I don't mean to imply that there is some big, unexpected event at the end which changes how the reader understands the events which preceded it, but rather that it is the story of a life—and, yes, even life itself—and it resists all attempts at abbreviation. It requires fullness.
Ebenezer Le Page is an eighty-year-old man who has always lived on the island of Guernsey—a geological crumb located in the English Channel between Britain and France, about thirty square miles in all (smaller than the mid-sized city I live in) and, as of 2007, home to about 65,000 residents. A loner, a rascal, and a textbook example of a curmudgeon, Ebenezer gets the itch, in what he assumes are his final days, to write out the story of his life, the people he has known, and Guernsey itself. What results is the hodgepodge of humor, poignancy, and earthy philosophy known as The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. If I say it's a masterpiece—and I certainly do—you might very well say, 'Oh, fine. Sure. Another masterpiece. Guess I'll add it to my 'to-read' shelf. (Or not.)' But I doubt you'll ever think of it again because (let's face it) it sounds very... standard, very literary, very expected. A man in his twilight years recounting the story of life? Not exactly reinventing the wheel. But G.B. Edwards invests his novel with a strong, distinct narrator, a wealth of humanity, and a very personal understanding of Ebenezer's situation. (Edwards himself wrote the novel in his final years, and it was only published posthumously.) The ending of the novel is touching, undeniably transcendent, and painfully honest. It isn't that anything cataclysmic occurs, but rather that we have followed Ebenezer through the joys and sorrows of a life lived, in its entirety, without deficit or remainder, and we feel the weight of all his years ourselves. The novel is resoundingly alive. It's something like being able to live another life, to glean its insights, and to apply them to your own. This makes it sound 'inspirational,' in the degraded or trite sense of the word, but it's more than that. Every night when I read the book before going to sleep, I thought it reminded me of a bright light—and how, after you look at it and close your eyes, you still see the image of it. That's the way Ebenezer Le Page is. Once you meet him, you'll keep hearing his voice and remembering his life.
Ebenezer Le Page is an eighty-year-old man who has always lived on the island of Guernsey—a geological crumb located in the English Channel between Britain and France, about thirty square miles in all (smaller than the mid-sized city I live in) and, as of 2007, home to about 65,000 residents. A loner, a rascal, and a textbook example of a curmudgeon, Ebenezer gets the itch, in what he assumes are his final days, to write out the story of his life, the people he has known, and Guernsey itself. What results is the hodgepodge of humor, poignancy, and earthy philosophy known as The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. If I say it's a masterpiece—and I certainly do—you might very well say, 'Oh, fine. Sure. Another masterpiece. Guess I'll add it to my 'to-read' shelf. (Or not.)' But I doubt you'll ever think of it again because (let's face it) it sounds very... standard, very literary, very expected. A man in his twilight years recounting the story of life? Not exactly reinventing the wheel. But G.B. Edwards invests his novel with a strong, distinct narrator, a wealth of humanity, and a very personal understanding of Ebenezer's situation. (Edwards himself wrote the novel in his final years, and it was only published posthumously.) The ending of the novel is touching, undeniably transcendent, and painfully honest. It isn't that anything cataclysmic occurs, but rather that we have followed Ebenezer through the joys and sorrows of a life lived, in its entirety, without deficit or remainder, and we feel the weight of all his years ourselves. The novel is resoundingly alive. It's something like being able to live another life, to glean its insights, and to apply them to your own. This makes it sound 'inspirational,' in the degraded or trite sense of the word, but it's more than that. Every night when I read the book before going to sleep, I thought it reminded me of a bright light—and how, after you look at it and close your eyes, you still see the image of it. That's the way Ebenezer Le Page is. Once you meet him, you'll keep hearing his voice and remembering his life.
February 13, 2019
Cosmopolitan Provincialism
I have never been to the Isle of Guernsey. But I did live for some time on the Isle of Man, another of those territorial anomalies of British history which are subject to the English Crown but not to the English Parliament. It seems to me that The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is easily applicable more broadly to this sort of island culture.
The unusual national status of places like Guernsey and Man promotes an ambiguity in the relationship with England that alternates between fearful resentment and profound affection.* The ways in which these conflicting emotions are rationalised can be interesting. On Guernsey it involves historical interpretations expressed succinctly by Ebenezer: “I remember A.D. 1066, because that was the year we conquered England.” The Isle of Man prefers to point out that its Tynwald is older by several centuries than the Parliament of Westminster and has been considerably more stable. One is led inevitably to remember the wonderful Peter Sellers film, The Mouse That Roared.
By definition places like Guernsey and Man are insular. Even after decades of incomers in the form of either tourists or tax-dodgers, they remain eccentric and suspicious of the mores of the outside world. Both places have a feel (I infer the Guernsey culture from Edwards) of a culture a half century behind the rest of Britain (Many former colonials settle on Man for just this reason - its more or less the Britain they left in their youth). They can appear backward, not just resistant to change - as in the Isle of Man’s resistance to gay rights and preference for capital punishment. As John Fowles points out in his introduction, “This inability to forget the old, this querulousness over the new, is what makes Ebenezer Le Page such a convincing portrayal of a much more universal mentality than the matter of the book might at first sight suggest”
Yet in the manner of Melville’s Nantucket in Moby Dick, these islands, because they are islands and therefore dependent on sea-faring, contain a remarkably well-travelled and cosmopolitan (male) population (the occasional importation of females resulting from male excursions kept the gene pool reasonably healthy one presumes). The combination of insularity and world-weariness produces, I think, a sort of benign cynicism which is the unique identifier of the native culture. They’ve seen it all before, even if it hasn’t ever been seen on the island. This can present itself as ignorant arrogance. But while it may be a sort of defensive arrogance, it is not entirely ignorant. There is a real and justifiable feeling of safety and of being truly home which may be unique to these micro-societies.
There are clear differences between the two islands. Guernsey exports its cows; Man its cats. Guernsey was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War; Man was the site of a large prisoner of war camp for German soldiers. Guernsey produced seamen; Man largely supplied Caribbean pirates.** But these differences in fact only serve to publicise them globally in larger type than their size would otherwise warrant with the effect of confirming their great significance to a population which might otherwise become rather bored with itself. There is a self-sustaining mythology which is as compelling as it is un-factual.
The Isle of Man is considerably larger than Guernsey; and the latter much more densely settled. But the local distinctions are equally intense in both places. The 60,000 or so inhabitants of Guernsey speak a patois of English and French which is studiously recorded by Edwards. Yet even in such a small area, there are two officially recognised regional variants that are kept alive and prized by the natives. Such behaviour suggests that the human instinct to tribal organization really does end in those one knows, at least by sight.
On Man there is an invisible boundary which runs across the island from Peel in the West to Douglas in the East, and dividing the 80,000 inhabitants roughly in two. South of this line the predominant native family names are of Scandinavian origin (the ancient designation of the island is Sodor, the Vikings’ Southern Islands). In the North the names are more the distinctive Manx Q-names (a linguistic transformation of the Celtic ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ prefixes). The ancient tribes persist.***
The psychological effects of these local peculiarities are significant. For example I lived in the North of Man in the village of Bride. Once a week I would drive the 20 miles or so to the airport at Ronaldsway in the South. In line with the cosmopolitan attitudes of most of my neighbours this commute to London was not considered unusual. But upon due consideration of my routine, one expressed the shared sentiment of them all when he said, “You mean you commute every week, all the way to the airport?”
Not having been born on Man, I had no traumatic reaction to leaving. It remains a pleasant personal memory of beautiful countryside and marvellous seascapes (on a good day from the summit of Snaefell it is possible to see the Scottish Mull 0f Galloway, the English Pennines, Welsh Snowdonia, and the Irish Mountains of Mourne - the omphalos one might say of the British Isles). Edwards on the other hand was born on Guernsey (distant from England and peripheral to France; perhaps, therefore, like a cut British fingernail on the carpet of Europe). He left it in young adulthood and never returned. He must have been obsessed with the place his entire life to have spent his last years doing little but writing about it.
Any romantic sentimentality about the Isle of Man I might be subject to is immediately dissipated when I recall the question my wife raised early one Sunday morning: Well, Michael, should drive around the island clockwise or counterclockwise today?”“
*The problem of Manx piracy in the 18th century provoked Britain to threaten forcible annexation, a threat that would have been carried out but for the distracting matter of the American Revolution. But there is always the Queen, God bless and keep her! Ultimately both Guernsey and Man are representative legacies of a Norse culture of rape and pillage. The Conqueror may have settled down somewhat but the Viking blood still coursed in his veins. And the current monarch is his heir and his legacy to these islands.
** My house was called Nassau, a neighbour’s was Antigua; Dominica and Aruba were a mile or two down the road. Each name, by local legend, indicating the source of the funding for the original homesteads. And the business involved wasn’t in sugar or exotic vegetables, but rather booty. At least that’s the legend.
*** This business of tribal differences in small island places is evident in other parts of the British Isles as well. One thinks of the Outer Hebrides. Barra is Catholic and has been so even through the Reformation. Its near neighbour of South Uist is also Catholic. But the tiny strip of land called Benbecula (little more than an airstrip) on the causeway between South Uist and North Uist is effectively a hard border between Scottish Calvinists and Roman Catholics. Barrier islands as well as good fences apparently make good neighbours.
I have never been to the Isle of Guernsey. But I did live for some time on the Isle of Man, another of those territorial anomalies of British history which are subject to the English Crown but not to the English Parliament. It seems to me that The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is easily applicable more broadly to this sort of island culture.
The unusual national status of places like Guernsey and Man promotes an ambiguity in the relationship with England that alternates between fearful resentment and profound affection.* The ways in which these conflicting emotions are rationalised can be interesting. On Guernsey it involves historical interpretations expressed succinctly by Ebenezer: “I remember A.D. 1066, because that was the year we conquered England.” The Isle of Man prefers to point out that its Tynwald is older by several centuries than the Parliament of Westminster and has been considerably more stable. One is led inevitably to remember the wonderful Peter Sellers film, The Mouse That Roared.
By definition places like Guernsey and Man are insular. Even after decades of incomers in the form of either tourists or tax-dodgers, they remain eccentric and suspicious of the mores of the outside world. Both places have a feel (I infer the Guernsey culture from Edwards) of a culture a half century behind the rest of Britain (Many former colonials settle on Man for just this reason - its more or less the Britain they left in their youth). They can appear backward, not just resistant to change - as in the Isle of Man’s resistance to gay rights and preference for capital punishment. As John Fowles points out in his introduction, “This inability to forget the old, this querulousness over the new, is what makes Ebenezer Le Page such a convincing portrayal of a much more universal mentality than the matter of the book might at first sight suggest”
Yet in the manner of Melville’s Nantucket in Moby Dick, these islands, because they are islands and therefore dependent on sea-faring, contain a remarkably well-travelled and cosmopolitan (male) population (the occasional importation of females resulting from male excursions kept the gene pool reasonably healthy one presumes). The combination of insularity and world-weariness produces, I think, a sort of benign cynicism which is the unique identifier of the native culture. They’ve seen it all before, even if it hasn’t ever been seen on the island. This can present itself as ignorant arrogance. But while it may be a sort of defensive arrogance, it is not entirely ignorant. There is a real and justifiable feeling of safety and of being truly home which may be unique to these micro-societies.
There are clear differences between the two islands. Guernsey exports its cows; Man its cats. Guernsey was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War; Man was the site of a large prisoner of war camp for German soldiers. Guernsey produced seamen; Man largely supplied Caribbean pirates.** But these differences in fact only serve to publicise them globally in larger type than their size would otherwise warrant with the effect of confirming their great significance to a population which might otherwise become rather bored with itself. There is a self-sustaining mythology which is as compelling as it is un-factual.
The Isle of Man is considerably larger than Guernsey; and the latter much more densely settled. But the local distinctions are equally intense in both places. The 60,000 or so inhabitants of Guernsey speak a patois of English and French which is studiously recorded by Edwards. Yet even in such a small area, there are two officially recognised regional variants that are kept alive and prized by the natives. Such behaviour suggests that the human instinct to tribal organization really does end in those one knows, at least by sight.
On Man there is an invisible boundary which runs across the island from Peel in the West to Douglas in the East, and dividing the 80,000 inhabitants roughly in two. South of this line the predominant native family names are of Scandinavian origin (the ancient designation of the island is Sodor, the Vikings’ Southern Islands). In the North the names are more the distinctive Manx Q-names (a linguistic transformation of the Celtic ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ prefixes). The ancient tribes persist.***
The psychological effects of these local peculiarities are significant. For example I lived in the North of Man in the village of Bride. Once a week I would drive the 20 miles or so to the airport at Ronaldsway in the South. In line with the cosmopolitan attitudes of most of my neighbours this commute to London was not considered unusual. But upon due consideration of my routine, one expressed the shared sentiment of them all when he said, “You mean you commute every week, all the way to the airport?”
Not having been born on Man, I had no traumatic reaction to leaving. It remains a pleasant personal memory of beautiful countryside and marvellous seascapes (on a good day from the summit of Snaefell it is possible to see the Scottish Mull 0f Galloway, the English Pennines, Welsh Snowdonia, and the Irish Mountains of Mourne - the omphalos one might say of the British Isles). Edwards on the other hand was born on Guernsey (distant from England and peripheral to France; perhaps, therefore, like a cut British fingernail on the carpet of Europe). He left it in young adulthood and never returned. He must have been obsessed with the place his entire life to have spent his last years doing little but writing about it.
Any romantic sentimentality about the Isle of Man I might be subject to is immediately dissipated when I recall the question my wife raised early one Sunday morning: Well, Michael, should drive around the island clockwise or counterclockwise today?”“
*The problem of Manx piracy in the 18th century provoked Britain to threaten forcible annexation, a threat that would have been carried out but for the distracting matter of the American Revolution. But there is always the Queen, God bless and keep her! Ultimately both Guernsey and Man are representative legacies of a Norse culture of rape and pillage. The Conqueror may have settled down somewhat but the Viking blood still coursed in his veins. And the current monarch is his heir and his legacy to these islands.
** My house was called Nassau, a neighbour’s was Antigua; Dominica and Aruba were a mile or two down the road. Each name, by local legend, indicating the source of the funding for the original homesteads. And the business involved wasn’t in sugar or exotic vegetables, but rather booty. At least that’s the legend.
*** This business of tribal differences in small island places is evident in other parts of the British Isles as well. One thinks of the Outer Hebrides. Barra is Catholic and has been so even through the Reformation. Its near neighbour of South Uist is also Catholic. But the tiny strip of land called Benbecula (little more than an airstrip) on the causeway between South Uist and North Uist is effectively a hard border between Scottish Calvinists and Roman Catholics. Barrier islands as well as good fences apparently make good neighbours.
December 10, 2021
Scene One : Summertime, 2020. A winding pathway through a Derbyshire wood. Two gentlemen of middling years are ruminating on weighty matters as they stride through the greensward. In the distance, sheep.
Sid : I read a great novel. It’s very odd. It’s called The Book of Ebenezer le Page.
Me : What’s it about?
Sid: Well there’s this retired tomato grower who has lived all his life in Guernsey.
Me: Does he do a murder?
Sid: No, it’s about his life.
Me : The life of a tomato grower on Guernsey?
Sid: Well, he does other things too.
Me: Hmm.
Scene Two : Back Home.
Me : Well this Ebenezer le Page is one of the 1001 Books You Have to Read by next September. Hmm, well, let’s see what Goodreads says. Sometimes those 1001 Books you Have to Read choices are frankly crazy. Oh look – nothing but 4 and 5 star reviews! Gee whiz, everybody and their grandma is telling me to read this.
Scene Three : Winter 2021. A winding pathway through a Derbyshire wood. Two gentlemen of middling years are ruminating on weighty matters as they stride through the bleak winter landscape. In the distance, the same sheep.
Me : I read 100 pages of The Book of Ebenezer le Page. It was absolutely dull. This old bore boring on about his childhood and his thousand relatives and who they all married or didn’t and how great Guernsey is. Who gives a stuff about that tripe?
Sid : Yes, exactly what I thought.
Me: What? You said it was great.
Sid: Well, I gave it up after 100 pages. Then after many months there came a dreadful day when there was nothing in the house I hadn’t read except the remaining 350 pages of Ebenezer le Page. So out of sheer desperation I read it. And I really liked the last 350 pages. I can't quite.... explain....why....
Me : Hmph. I will do the same then. I will wait until I have absolutely nothing left to read, then I will finish this old fart tomato grower’s fantastically boring anecdotes about ordinary Guernsey folk and all their whimsical ways. Then, mysteriously, I too will give it five stars. Until then it will have to do without four of them.
Sid : I read a great novel. It’s very odd. It’s called The Book of Ebenezer le Page.
Me : What’s it about?
Sid: Well there’s this retired tomato grower who has lived all his life in Guernsey.
Me: Does he do a murder?
Sid: No, it’s about his life.
Me : The life of a tomato grower on Guernsey?
Sid: Well, he does other things too.
Me: Hmm.
Scene Two : Back Home.
Me : Well this Ebenezer le Page is one of the 1001 Books You Have to Read by next September. Hmm, well, let’s see what Goodreads says. Sometimes those 1001 Books you Have to Read choices are frankly crazy. Oh look – nothing but 4 and 5 star reviews! Gee whiz, everybody and their grandma is telling me to read this.
Scene Three : Winter 2021. A winding pathway through a Derbyshire wood. Two gentlemen of middling years are ruminating on weighty matters as they stride through the bleak winter landscape. In the distance, the same sheep.
Me : I read 100 pages of The Book of Ebenezer le Page. It was absolutely dull. This old bore boring on about his childhood and his thousand relatives and who they all married or didn’t and how great Guernsey is. Who gives a stuff about that tripe?
Sid : Yes, exactly what I thought.
Me: What? You said it was great.
Sid: Well, I gave it up after 100 pages. Then after many months there came a dreadful day when there was nothing in the house I hadn’t read except the remaining 350 pages of Ebenezer le Page. So out of sheer desperation I read it. And I really liked the last 350 pages. I can't quite.... explain....why....
Me : Hmph. I will do the same then. I will wait until I have absolutely nothing left to read, then I will finish this old fart tomato grower’s fantastically boring anecdotes about ordinary Guernsey folk and all their whimsical ways. Then, mysteriously, I too will give it five stars. Until then it will have to do without four of them.
October 25, 2022
My rereading of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page came about in a somewhat unusual fashion. A month and a half ago, I read Henning Mankell’s After the Fire. At the beginning of that novel a retired doctor loses literally all of his possessions when his house burns down. Being the type of person I am, I immediately began to imagine what I would do if all of my possessions were destroyed. (I did imagine that the people I love and care about would still be with me.) Would I change my way of life? Would I feel freer, or perhaps be devastated and close down? Would I wear different clothes than I wear now? And so on.
Eventually, I came to my book and record collections. I have way too many LPs and CDs – I won’t say how many, but more than any sane person needs. I have many fewer books - I’ve rid myself of much of my collection over the past ten years – but still have more than I probably need.
I began thinking about which recordings and which books I’d replace if all were destroyed; and if I wouldn’t replace them, why do I have them now?
(It should be obvious that I spend way too much time daydreaming and speculating.)
I shared my thoughts with a good friend who’s also a record collector and he set my mind at ease by saying, “I enjoy listening to my records. and life is to be enjoyed” That settled my mind about my record collection. I enjoy listening even more than I enjoy reading.
My books were another story. I have shelves of books that I’ve read and enjoyed, but I’ve never been one for rereading books, except in rare cases. Thankfully, I remembered Betsy Robinson’s review of 2019 on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... in which she writes about the pleasures of rereading books. I decided then that I would begin rereading some of my favorite books.
All of this is a long winded introduction of my rereading of G.B. Edwards’ novel (and only novel), which I thought of as my favorite novel, based on my memory of reading it 39 years ago. I bought the book in 1981, the year of its first U.S. publication at Mike McCabe’s book shop (a great place) in Salisbury, Ct., probably at his recommendation. After I read (and loved) the book, it sat on my shelf, unread, for 39 years. When I decided that I would begin rereading the books that I had kept, this was an obvious choice, although I had some fears that my opinion of it might have changed, simply because I've changed over the past 39 years.
If you’ve read the basic description of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, you’ll know that it’s an old man’s telling of his life on the Island of Guernsey. It’s the tale of a long life lived – sometimes well, sometimes not as well as might be hoped, but always lived honestly. And Ebenezer’s telling is always honest.
I imagine that everyone has encountered the conundrum of, is it the singer or the song? Here, it’s is it the telling or the tale? In this case, it is definitely the telling, and G.B. Edwards has guided his narrator, Ebenezer Le Page (French Le and English Page, incidentally) masterfully.
There are passages throughout the novel which made me laugh, brought tears to my eyes (both tears of sadness and joy). And made me stop and think.
“Guernsey, Guernesey, Garnsai, Sarnia: so they say. Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. The older I get and the more I learn, the more I know I don’t know nothing, me. I am the oldest on the island, I think. Liza Queripel from Pleinmont say she is older; but I reckon she is putting it on. When she was a young woman, she used to have a birthday once every two or three years; but for years now she have been having two or three a year.”
The aftermath of an argument (a physical fight, actually) among three sisters over who would inherit their dead mother's wedding dress for their future daughters and, incidentally, her widow's veil. His mother made the decision that she would take the wedding dress and the veil:
"It turned out for the best, in a way. My sister was married in the wedding-dress and looked lovely.
La Prissy had a second, but it was a boy again when she wanted a girl; and, after Raymond, La Hetty couldn't have any more. The dress would have been wasted; and it wasn't so many years before my mother had to wear the widow's veil. Ah well, in the midst of life we are in death, as it say in the Bible."
After another death:
"There was a share-out of the few things left; but there was no trouble.
... My Aunt Prissy said I could choose anything I liked, because I had grown to be such a fine strong boy. I chose the two china dogs on the mantelpiece. They are on my own mantelpiece at this moment. I like my two china dogs. When I write down anything wicked, one of them look very serious; but the other one, he wink."
"By rights, it was Jack Bourgaize who ought to have been Raymond's father; but then Raymond wouldn't have been Raymond. He was one of those who ought never to have been born; but, at any rate, I wonder how many of us ought to have been born?"
"I don't want to say anything against my Cousin Mary Ann, because in her old age she was one of my very best friends, and you didn't notice her looks as an old woman; but when she was young, she was downright ugly."
" I wish I could remember the sermon my great-aunt preached that night; but I laughed so much, it went clean out of my head. I remember the text, 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth to destruction; but wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth unto salvation.' I knew there was something like that in the Bible, but I thought at the time she'd got it the wrong way round. Or perhaps it was me who got it the wrong way round."
"One of the girls said, 'Aren't you lonely in the winter living here all by yourself?' 'I'm used to being on my own,' I said. One of the chaps said. 'Why don't you have a dog to keep you company?' 'It would die,' I said. 'Or a cat,' said one of the girls. 'I don't like cats,' I said. 'They are bad.'
I told them about Mirouse, the cat my mother used to have. He was a beautiful big black cat with a white shirt-front; but he was a robber. In the end, in spite of my mother, my father said he would have to go. He would drown him. So one night he tied a brick around his neck and threw him in the Vale Pond. 'Now there will be some food left in the cupboard when I come home from work tomorrow,' said my father; but he was wrong. The next morning when he looked out of the bedroom window. there was Minouse! He had drunk all the water and was sitting on the brick."
"That is how I come to be writing this book. I got to say what I think to somebody if only to myself. I don't expect anybody will ever read what I have written; but at the back of my mind I always have the hope perhaps some day somebody will.
Tonight...I'm looking forward to beginning a new chapter. I like to start on a clean page and forget all the mistakes I have made before."
When I opened the book to begin my rereading, I found a newspaper review by Guy Davenport which I had cut out and placed inside it 39 years before and had forgotten about. In the review, Mr. Davenport writes, "Gerald Basil Edwards (1899-1976) finished this book in 1974, only to have it turned down - incredibly- by publisher after publisher. Yet The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is one of the best novels of our time."
And at the end of the review: "This is the first novel of a projected trilogy, which will now never exist, but which might have been completed if even one publisher had been perceptive enough to recognize what a masterpiece he was rejecting."
When you open this novel, after John Fowles' introduction (at least Fowles' intro is there in my edition), you will find a page which is blank except for the following in large lettering:
The Property of Neville Falla
It's a strange citation to find at the beginning of a novel. If you read The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, you'll discover what it means. It's worth the search.
And, yes - the Book of Ebenezer Le Page is still my favorite novel.
edit - I don't know if after all of these words I need to add a few more, but I forgot that in addition to the copy I already have, I plan to get a copy of the NYRB paperback simply because of the cover illustration by R.B. Kitaj, an artist whose work I always enjoy seeing.
edit - 10/22. I did pick up a copy of the paperback with R.B. Kitaj's cover illustration, and the next time I reread Ebenezer, I'll read that one..
Eventually, I came to my book and record collections. I have way too many LPs and CDs – I won’t say how many, but more than any sane person needs. I have many fewer books - I’ve rid myself of much of my collection over the past ten years – but still have more than I probably need.
I began thinking about which recordings and which books I’d replace if all were destroyed; and if I wouldn’t replace them, why do I have them now?
(It should be obvious that I spend way too much time daydreaming and speculating.)
I shared my thoughts with a good friend who’s also a record collector and he set my mind at ease by saying, “I enjoy listening to my records. and life is to be enjoyed” That settled my mind about my record collection. I enjoy listening even more than I enjoy reading.
My books were another story. I have shelves of books that I’ve read and enjoyed, but I’ve never been one for rereading books, except in rare cases. Thankfully, I remembered Betsy Robinson’s review of 2019 on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... in which she writes about the pleasures of rereading books. I decided then that I would begin rereading some of my favorite books.
All of this is a long winded introduction of my rereading of G.B. Edwards’ novel (and only novel), which I thought of as my favorite novel, based on my memory of reading it 39 years ago. I bought the book in 1981, the year of its first U.S. publication at Mike McCabe’s book shop (a great place) in Salisbury, Ct., probably at his recommendation. After I read (and loved) the book, it sat on my shelf, unread, for 39 years. When I decided that I would begin rereading the books that I had kept, this was an obvious choice, although I had some fears that my opinion of it might have changed, simply because I've changed over the past 39 years.
If you’ve read the basic description of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, you’ll know that it’s an old man’s telling of his life on the Island of Guernsey. It’s the tale of a long life lived – sometimes well, sometimes not as well as might be hoped, but always lived honestly. And Ebenezer’s telling is always honest.
I imagine that everyone has encountered the conundrum of, is it the singer or the song? Here, it’s is it the telling or the tale? In this case, it is definitely the telling, and G.B. Edwards has guided his narrator, Ebenezer Le Page (French Le and English Page, incidentally) masterfully.
There are passages throughout the novel which made me laugh, brought tears to my eyes (both tears of sadness and joy). And made me stop and think.
“Guernsey, Guernesey, Garnsai, Sarnia: so they say. Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. The older I get and the more I learn, the more I know I don’t know nothing, me. I am the oldest on the island, I think. Liza Queripel from Pleinmont say she is older; but I reckon she is putting it on. When she was a young woman, she used to have a birthday once every two or three years; but for years now she have been having two or three a year.”
The aftermath of an argument (a physical fight, actually) among three sisters over who would inherit their dead mother's wedding dress for their future daughters and, incidentally, her widow's veil. His mother made the decision that she would take the wedding dress and the veil:
"It turned out for the best, in a way. My sister was married in the wedding-dress and looked lovely.
La Prissy had a second, but it was a boy again when she wanted a girl; and, after Raymond, La Hetty couldn't have any more. The dress would have been wasted; and it wasn't so many years before my mother had to wear the widow's veil. Ah well, in the midst of life we are in death, as it say in the Bible."
After another death:
"There was a share-out of the few things left; but there was no trouble.
... My Aunt Prissy said I could choose anything I liked, because I had grown to be such a fine strong boy. I chose the two china dogs on the mantelpiece. They are on my own mantelpiece at this moment. I like my two china dogs. When I write down anything wicked, one of them look very serious; but the other one, he wink."
"By rights, it was Jack Bourgaize who ought to have been Raymond's father; but then Raymond wouldn't have been Raymond. He was one of those who ought never to have been born; but, at any rate, I wonder how many of us ought to have been born?"
"I don't want to say anything against my Cousin Mary Ann, because in her old age she was one of my very best friends, and you didn't notice her looks as an old woman; but when she was young, she was downright ugly."
" I wish I could remember the sermon my great-aunt preached that night; but I laughed so much, it went clean out of my head. I remember the text, 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth to destruction; but wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth unto salvation.' I knew there was something like that in the Bible, but I thought at the time she'd got it the wrong way round. Or perhaps it was me who got it the wrong way round."
"One of the girls said, 'Aren't you lonely in the winter living here all by yourself?' 'I'm used to being on my own,' I said. One of the chaps said. 'Why don't you have a dog to keep you company?' 'It would die,' I said. 'Or a cat,' said one of the girls. 'I don't like cats,' I said. 'They are bad.'
I told them about Mirouse, the cat my mother used to have. He was a beautiful big black cat with a white shirt-front; but he was a robber. In the end, in spite of my mother, my father said he would have to go. He would drown him. So one night he tied a brick around his neck and threw him in the Vale Pond. 'Now there will be some food left in the cupboard when I come home from work tomorrow,' said my father; but he was wrong. The next morning when he looked out of the bedroom window. there was Minouse! He had drunk all the water and was sitting on the brick."
"That is how I come to be writing this book. I got to say what I think to somebody if only to myself. I don't expect anybody will ever read what I have written; but at the back of my mind I always have the hope perhaps some day somebody will.
Tonight...I'm looking forward to beginning a new chapter. I like to start on a clean page and forget all the mistakes I have made before."
When I opened the book to begin my rereading, I found a newspaper review by Guy Davenport which I had cut out and placed inside it 39 years before and had forgotten about. In the review, Mr. Davenport writes, "Gerald Basil Edwards (1899-1976) finished this book in 1974, only to have it turned down - incredibly- by publisher after publisher. Yet The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is one of the best novels of our time."
And at the end of the review: "This is the first novel of a projected trilogy, which will now never exist, but which might have been completed if even one publisher had been perceptive enough to recognize what a masterpiece he was rejecting."
When you open this novel, after John Fowles' introduction (at least Fowles' intro is there in my edition), you will find a page which is blank except for the following in large lettering:
The Property of Neville Falla
It's a strange citation to find at the beginning of a novel. If you read The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, you'll discover what it means. It's worth the search.
And, yes - the Book of Ebenezer Le Page is still my favorite novel.
edit - I don't know if after all of these words I need to add a few more, but I forgot that in addition to the copy I already have, I plan to get a copy of the NYRB paperback simply because of the cover illustration by R.B. Kitaj, an artist whose work I always enjoy seeing.
edit - 10/22. I did pick up a copy of the paperback with R.B. Kitaj's cover illustration, and the next time I reread Ebenezer, I'll read that one..
February 17, 2015
I was not immediately drawn in to this book . At first it felt like it was an old man just rambling about his family , about everyone he ever met and everything he encountered , none of which seemed very exciting. Ebenezer even gives a detailed account of what he ate as a boy . I had to look up ormer. Quite frankly I was bored and I wasn't sure if I could continue reading these mundane things , but then I knew I had to continue to try and see why there were so many 5 star reviews.
But at some point and I know this might sound odd , Ebenezer started to remind me of my mother who is 89 and I was hooked . No she wasn't born on the small island of Guernsey where Ebenezer Le Page lives but in a small city in a neighborhood about which she always has many stories to tell , some of which sound unbelievably similar to the things that Ebenezer writes about in his books - courtships , and marriages and children , a father's love. . She tells stories of when her brothers went to war . Oh of course, there are the things specific to those two places but the similarities lie in the humanity reflected in those memories. For me this place and Ebenezer's little world became representative of the larger world - of life really. That is all the more amazing since he tells us early on that he never really left Guernsey except once .
No it is not the daily details in his life , the family and friends - these stories by themselves are not extraordinary but taken together representing the totality of his life , they make this such an extraordinary book . I found it to be funny - I loved the story of the arguing aunts . I found it to be sad that he and Liza didn't marry.
"I thought then I was right and I still think I was right . Liza could have been happy married to me, if only she'd have the sense to see it . I don't say it would have been perfect, but we would have hit on better than most. In some way we was the same underneath."
"When I look back, the years between the two big wars seem to have passed in no time . There was nothing much happened to me. I did well, I suppose, for a small grower and fisherman, as Liza said I was . When you got nobody to love and nothing to live for , you can always make money. "
The book was profound in its simplicity as was the writing . As Ebenezer says of the painting that Neville Fella gives to him , 'It's lovely, ' I said , 'it really is! It is my house ; and yet it is not my house. It is something more,' The same thing could be said about this book - it is Ebenezer's story , yet it is not Ebenezer's story . It is something more .
Not quite 5 stars for me but I must admit the ending was perfect.
May 5, 2023
Many writers are keen observers of human nature, and many writers create narrators who are also writers and observers of human nature. Sometimes such protagonists are didactic tools, mere mouthpieces for the author. But sometimes they are so vividly drawn that they seem to pop off the page, and you look up, almost expecting to see them sitting across from you spinning a yarn or telling you their life story. Ebenezer Le Page is such a narrator.
The pace of his story is unhurried and seems to meander at times. (In this sense, the book resembles the Claudius books of Robert Graves, where the author reproduces the verbose and pompous writing style of the time, warts and all.) In Edwards' novel, we hear the authentic Guernsey dialect--or something as close to it as makes no difference (see John Fowles' remarks on Guernsey English)--and the reader must make a sort of cultural adjustment. But rather than being a chore, this is one of the delights of the book.
It is difficult to review a book like this, and others have done a better job than I could do. So I will just underline some of the things that impressed me.
The narrator is realistically portrayed and fully fleshed out. He is neither totally good nor totally bad, and he is not omniscient. Even though he rebels to a great extent against the tradition in which he was raised, its marks are indelibly on him and he ultimately defends it in the face of modernization and "progress." Like many elderly, he is full of homey wisdom and wry observations on the doings of family, friends and strangers. Yet he does not become the clichéd old man who expresses his bitterness at being old by spewing judgmental comments at the young. He still enjoys life and learns how to reach out to those around him.
The pace of his story is unhurried and seems to meander at times. (In this sense, the book resembles the Claudius books of Robert Graves, where the author reproduces the verbose and pompous writing style of the time, warts and all.) In Edwards' novel, we hear the authentic Guernsey dialect--or something as close to it as makes no difference (see John Fowles' remarks on Guernsey English)--and the reader must make a sort of cultural adjustment. But rather than being a chore, this is one of the delights of the book.
It is difficult to review a book like this, and others have done a better job than I could do. So I will just underline some of the things that impressed me.
The narrator is realistically portrayed and fully fleshed out. He is neither totally good nor totally bad, and he is not omniscient. Even though he rebels to a great extent against the tradition in which he was raised, its marks are indelibly on him and he ultimately defends it in the face of modernization and "progress." Like many elderly, he is full of homey wisdom and wry observations on the doings of family, friends and strangers. Yet he does not become the clichéd old man who expresses his bitterness at being old by spewing judgmental comments at the young. He still enjoys life and learns how to reach out to those around him.
August 10, 2017
At times, I find some books are overrated and perhaps I thought the same of this one. I am a bit skeptical when it comes to books that have an average rating in the 4's. I often think 'So, are these people appreciating it for what it is or are they REALLY enjoying it this much?'.
How can a book about a somewhat normal existence, (which in all is rather boring) strike me so hard? How can it make me tear up as it ends?
It speaks to me as Stoner did: both were about the beginning of a life, it's middle and its inevitable conclusion. At the end, some of us find ourselves alone; we are the last ones left and have no one to leave our items to, those pieces of us to not be forgotten.
As it is humorous and sad, I didn't truly appreciate it until the last 60 pages. I appreciate it for its simplicity, it's message and I enjoy it for what it is. G.B. Edwards never got to see how this book affected its readers, but I'm sure he would've enjoyed it if he had.
In summation, Ebenezer's life on Guernsey is a typical one for all of us. Our histories can be written on paper and our hearts can be shared with some, but no one can truly know who we are, although we all share this one thing - mortality - and that's what makes us human.
How can a book about a somewhat normal existence, (which in all is rather boring) strike me so hard? How can it make me tear up as it ends?
It speaks to me as Stoner did: both were about the beginning of a life, it's middle and its inevitable conclusion. At the end, some of us find ourselves alone; we are the last ones left and have no one to leave our items to, those pieces of us to not be forgotten.
As it is humorous and sad, I didn't truly appreciate it until the last 60 pages. I appreciate it for its simplicity, it's message and I enjoy it for what it is. G.B. Edwards never got to see how this book affected its readers, but I'm sure he would've enjoyed it if he had.
In summation, Ebenezer's life on Guernsey is a typical one for all of us. Our histories can be written on paper and our hearts can be shared with some, but no one can truly know who we are, although we all share this one thing - mortality - and that's what makes us human.
May 23, 2018
This book pierced my heart and left an aching void. It covers the scale of human nature from wondrous to pure meanness, the depth and range of our emotions, and recalls the importance to a life of the few true connections one really makes in a lifetime.
I hope to soon write a more complete review. I should say here though that I didn't see the narrator as the "cantankerous" old man the publisher describes, a description that held me back from reading this for a couple of years.
I hope to soon write a more complete review. I should say here though that I didn't see the narrator as the "cantankerous" old man the publisher describes, a description that held me back from reading this for a couple of years.
October 3, 2016
3.5 stars Gosh, this is a hard one to review. On the one hand it wouldn’t be difficult to overlook what I saw as its faults and sing its praises, especially because Edwards is an underdog and we all love an underdog. However, because this is what most reviewers seem to have done (average rating 4.26) I’m going to focus more on what for me were its negatives.
On the whole I enjoyed it and am glad I read it but it didn’t have me calling up my friends and urging them to read it. Basically my take was that Edwards has created a truly memorable character (Ebenezer Le Page) and a fascinating milieu (the closeted island of Guernsey) but ultimately simply isn’t a very good novelist when it comes to organisational artistry. There are early signs of this being a problem when the novel is littered with randomly organised sideshows and an absurdly and confusingly large cast of characters. There are too many characters on the stage at the same time. This makes the first 100 pages a chore to read and quite frankly a bit boring at times. All the novel’s best moments centre on Ebenezer’s intimate relationship with a handful of characters. It’s therefore a mystery why he continually allows the novel to lose focus by drifting further and further afield from the novel’s central thrust.
A fairy story motif provides the scaffolding for this fictional memoir – Ebenezer buries a crock of gold under the apple tree in his garden. Unmarried and childless his quest becomes to find someone worthy of his crock of gold. This scaffolding though is as if forgotten for large portions of the book and begins to seem arbitrary and something of an easy convenience for tidying it all up at the end.
The novel is successful when Edwards has you believing it truly is the memoir of a largely uneducated inspired amateur. The voice of Ebenezer is the novel’s greatest triumph. The Nazi occupation of Guernsey is depicted as a kind of battle between strict unreasonable adults (the Germans) and mischievous children (the Islanders). This is really well done, a truly original take on Nazi occupation, until Edwards drops in another example of his crudeness as a novelist. Ebenezer out walking at night catches sight of a Nazi buggering a young slave worker and bludgeons the Nazi to death. It’s always when you realise this isn’t a real memoir, when Edwards allows you to see the artifice involved that this novel loses its magic. And this comes to a head at the end when the brilliantly loveable Scrooge-like Ebenezer has a magic wand cast over him and becomes like a cartoon Father Christmas. The pretence it has of being a genuine memoir – which is the heart of its charm - suddenly buckles and he returns the book to picaresque fairy story status.
I loved the truthfulness of Ebenezer and his lucid x-ray vision when it comes to the reading of people. I felt I was getting a much truer rendition of what men really think and feel than what, in our PC world, they nowadays express at dinner tables, especially regarding women. However, when it comes to racism and sexism, it’s better people voice aloud the correct attitude even if they don’t share it because eventually, perhaps a generation down the line, it will probably take root. Evidence of how dangerous the opposite stance is came with Brexit when people suddenly felt empowered to voice aloud contraband feeling. Ebenezer, on the whole, prefers the company of men and is as deeply suspicious of women as he is of anything that is foreign to his narrow routine of habit. Also his backward and inward looking belligerent defence of his cherished ideal of Guernsey was eerily reminiscent, albeit in an often humorous whimsical form, of modern day anti-immigrant feeling, as if national identity is a scared chalice to be preserved at all costs. There were elements of Farage and Trump in his hostility towards the foreign. However I’m not sure Edwards saw the irony of this sentimental and dangerous stance – he ultimately rewards Ebenezer and so creates an ideal of him - and again this drew attention to his shortcomings as a novelist. Edwards himself, unlike his fictional hero, didn’t live his entire life in Guernsey. In fact he was unable to return when he wanted to because house prices on the tax haven and tourist island were too high. You get the sense his resentment at this development was in part the inspiration behind the book and blinded him to its central flaw – the clumsy meshing together of fairy story, realist memoir and polemic, three conflicting elements which for me he didn’t succeed in fusing into a homogeneous whole.
On the whole I enjoyed it and am glad I read it but it didn’t have me calling up my friends and urging them to read it. Basically my take was that Edwards has created a truly memorable character (Ebenezer Le Page) and a fascinating milieu (the closeted island of Guernsey) but ultimately simply isn’t a very good novelist when it comes to organisational artistry. There are early signs of this being a problem when the novel is littered with randomly organised sideshows and an absurdly and confusingly large cast of characters. There are too many characters on the stage at the same time. This makes the first 100 pages a chore to read and quite frankly a bit boring at times. All the novel’s best moments centre on Ebenezer’s intimate relationship with a handful of characters. It’s therefore a mystery why he continually allows the novel to lose focus by drifting further and further afield from the novel’s central thrust.
A fairy story motif provides the scaffolding for this fictional memoir – Ebenezer buries a crock of gold under the apple tree in his garden. Unmarried and childless his quest becomes to find someone worthy of his crock of gold. This scaffolding though is as if forgotten for large portions of the book and begins to seem arbitrary and something of an easy convenience for tidying it all up at the end.
The novel is successful when Edwards has you believing it truly is the memoir of a largely uneducated inspired amateur. The voice of Ebenezer is the novel’s greatest triumph. The Nazi occupation of Guernsey is depicted as a kind of battle between strict unreasonable adults (the Germans) and mischievous children (the Islanders). This is really well done, a truly original take on Nazi occupation, until Edwards drops in another example of his crudeness as a novelist. Ebenezer out walking at night catches sight of a Nazi buggering a young slave worker and bludgeons the Nazi to death. It’s always when you realise this isn’t a real memoir, when Edwards allows you to see the artifice involved that this novel loses its magic. And this comes to a head at the end when the brilliantly loveable Scrooge-like Ebenezer has a magic wand cast over him and becomes like a cartoon Father Christmas. The pretence it has of being a genuine memoir – which is the heart of its charm - suddenly buckles and he returns the book to picaresque fairy story status.
I loved the truthfulness of Ebenezer and his lucid x-ray vision when it comes to the reading of people. I felt I was getting a much truer rendition of what men really think and feel than what, in our PC world, they nowadays express at dinner tables, especially regarding women. However, when it comes to racism and sexism, it’s better people voice aloud the correct attitude even if they don’t share it because eventually, perhaps a generation down the line, it will probably take root. Evidence of how dangerous the opposite stance is came with Brexit when people suddenly felt empowered to voice aloud contraband feeling. Ebenezer, on the whole, prefers the company of men and is as deeply suspicious of women as he is of anything that is foreign to his narrow routine of habit. Also his backward and inward looking belligerent defence of his cherished ideal of Guernsey was eerily reminiscent, albeit in an often humorous whimsical form, of modern day anti-immigrant feeling, as if national identity is a scared chalice to be preserved at all costs. There were elements of Farage and Trump in his hostility towards the foreign. However I’m not sure Edwards saw the irony of this sentimental and dangerous stance – he ultimately rewards Ebenezer and so creates an ideal of him - and again this drew attention to his shortcomings as a novelist. Edwards himself, unlike his fictional hero, didn’t live his entire life in Guernsey. In fact he was unable to return when he wanted to because house prices on the tax haven and tourist island were too high. You get the sense his resentment at this development was in part the inspiration behind the book and blinded him to its central flaw – the clumsy meshing together of fairy story, realist memoir and polemic, three conflicting elements which for me he didn’t succeed in fusing into a homogeneous whole.
October 19, 2020
5★
“‘There is no typical Guernseyman,’ Horace said to me. ‘They are each a one-man band, and all as cussed as they can be. The Yanks come of every race and nation; but are all alike at rock bottom. They have two gods they worship: dollars and dames; and the dollars are for the dames. The Statue of Liberty is a woman.’”
This is a rambling, fascinating, frustrating, infuriating fictional autobiography of an old man from the island of Guernsey, who writes about ‘his’ life from 1890 to 1970. The real author, G.G. Edwards, lived a similar lifetime from 1899-1976. Much of the storyline may have been drawn from his own life, but whatever the reality, it reads like the real thing. Well, as much as I would know about how a Guernseyman might talk and think, that is.
Here’s a small example of its rambling nature, which is like visiting someone and looking through their photograph album and they stop to tell you the history of each of the people. It can be tedious and boring, and only politeness stops you from saying so. But, if the stories are insightful and intriguing, it’s easy to get sucked in and want to know more.
“I got more out of Archie Mauger, who I used to have a chat with sometimes. He was the son of the Tom Mauger who Harold built a house for and who was the son of old Tom Mauger my father worked for.”
We don’t need to want to know more about the Maugers, but we do know Harold and Ebenezer’s father. Ebenezer is writing this in his last years, relying on his memory and what he’s been told.
“I wouldn't know even now what really happened, if it wasn't for my Cousin Mary Ann. . . I discovered she knew more of what had happened between the four walls of every house in the Parish of the Vale and the Parish of St Sampson's and the Parish of the Catel than anybody else on the island.”
She was widowed young and went around to people’s houses to help, so they always found something to give her.
“My Cousin Mary Ann was a very wise woman. She said very few words and listened to every word that was said. 'Mais wai, mais non-nein' was all anybody could get out of her; but not a word that she heard did she ever forget. Her relations hardly noticed she was there and would say anything in front of her. After all, she was only ‘La pauvre Mary Ann’”
So she's just nodding and saying Yes and No and not calling attention to herself. “The poor Mary Ann” for whom everyone felt sorry, but who was absorbing all the secrets and gossip while she was helping with the cooking or washing. She comes across as benign and kindly in the beginning, but later we (and Ebenezer) realise she was cunning and resourceful.
His very best mate from childhood was Jim. They got up to mischief, but mostly of a good-natured sort. Ebenezer gives us a lot of gossip about who is Church, who is Chapel, who is Wesleyan as well as who’s speaking to whom and why. Entertainment is where you find it.
“One Sunday evening when we couldn't think where to go, I said to Jim, ‘How about going to hear my great-aunt preach, eh?’
He said, ‘Goodness, I didn't know you have a great-aunt who preaches!’
I said,’'Well, she is not my great-aunt, really. She live with my great-uncle.’
He said, ‘Then she is your great-aunt by marriage.'’
'They're not married,’ I said.
‘Then she's your great-aunt in sin!'’he said. ‘Golly, let's go and hear her!’”
Two of the other boys, later men, in his life were his cousins Horace and Raymond, sometimes referred to as Le Horace and Le Raymond. They were the sons of his aunts Prissy and Hetty, known as La Prissy and La Hetty, his mother’s sisters. Now, I’m doing it. Leafing through the family album, but these four people are major forces in Ebenezer’s life. Note the French influence in the references to their names, too.
Horace was a rough and ready kid, always in trouble “a born American” as Ebenezer calls him “always showing off”. Raymond, on the other hand, was a quiet boy who seems drawn to the church, more as a place of sanctuary than a true calling.
Ebenezer speaks of them often and muses about how they think, what they think, what they believe. Raymond even lived with him for a while. And in amongst it all are the girls. Ebenezer is partial to the young ladies, and I get the impression he didn’t have much trouble attracting one.
“Sunday nights for a few weeks I went out with Ivy Lake from Lowlands . . . She was very loving and all that; but I soon found out that was as far as she would go, unless she had been to Church first. That didn't suit me. So I changed over to her friend, Mildred Three-in-a-bed. I can't remember what her other name was, but that was the name she was known by. Her mother kept a lodging-house for seamen on the South Side. It may have been true what the boys said about Mildred, for she was a good-natured girl. The last I heard of her she was married to a Gordon Highlander and gone to Bonnie Dundee.”
Mildred Three-in-a-bed! The reminiscences and humour are great fun, and of course, he had to tell us where she ended up. He hates the English, but saves his special disdain for those from Jersey, their rival Channel Island.
There are those who say this is what islanders tend to be like. Parochial, narrow-minded. It’s where we get the word “insular”. But I have to say, it’s an attitude I’ve seen in towns and communities everywhere. You’re not really accepted until your family has been there for some generations (and even then…), and your worst rivals are your neighbouring townships, island or no.
The humour and philosphising and judgmental pronouncements by Ebenezer of what he deems correct are entertaining to read, but there is a strong undercurrent of suffering from WW1 and then the depression. Guernsey is a bread basket and food bowl where everyone, at least everyone who is anyone in Ebenezer’s eyes, has a garden and chickens and a pig or two, so they manage until The Occupation during WW2.
The Nazis change everything. The Germans are already starving, so when they move in and take over Guernsey, the gardens are raided and Ebenezer and everyone around is close to starving. Some people collaborat or at least help the Germans a bit, to save themselves. He hates the Nazis but has some sympathy for those who try to be kind.
But Ebenezer knows himself better than he lets on as he writes. He shows off, lets us know how special he is, how he looks after things and does for himself. It’s easy to read between the lines at what he’s missing in life, largely because of the high bars he sets for people and his rather controlling nature.
“All the people I have liked most in my life have been the very opposite to me. Jim, Liza, Raymond, Tabitha, my Uncle Nat: none of them was mean; but, if the truth was known, I have always been a mean little sod myself. I have always held something back, and seen to it I kept on the safe side. It is good to be shown up in your old age for what you are.
It is a terrific read, impossible not believe it is a real autobiography. So much of the author’s own story and family are similar to this, including the ending, that perhaps it’s a life he might have led had he stayed on Guernsey. It’s not idyllic, but the simplicity has a certain raw charm.
It's not really historical fiction, because the author wrote it about his own lifetime, but readers of historical fiction will certainly enjoy it.
If you’d like to see a good review with a few photos and many short quotes, see Cecily’s here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
“‘There is no typical Guernseyman,’ Horace said to me. ‘They are each a one-man band, and all as cussed as they can be. The Yanks come of every race and nation; but are all alike at rock bottom. They have two gods they worship: dollars and dames; and the dollars are for the dames. The Statue of Liberty is a woman.’”
This is a rambling, fascinating, frustrating, infuriating fictional autobiography of an old man from the island of Guernsey, who writes about ‘his’ life from 1890 to 1970. The real author, G.G. Edwards, lived a similar lifetime from 1899-1976. Much of the storyline may have been drawn from his own life, but whatever the reality, it reads like the real thing. Well, as much as I would know about how a Guernseyman might talk and think, that is.
Here’s a small example of its rambling nature, which is like visiting someone and looking through their photograph album and they stop to tell you the history of each of the people. It can be tedious and boring, and only politeness stops you from saying so. But, if the stories are insightful and intriguing, it’s easy to get sucked in and want to know more.
“I got more out of Archie Mauger, who I used to have a chat with sometimes. He was the son of the Tom Mauger who Harold built a house for and who was the son of old Tom Mauger my father worked for.”
We don’t need to want to know more about the Maugers, but we do know Harold and Ebenezer’s father. Ebenezer is writing this in his last years, relying on his memory and what he’s been told.
“I wouldn't know even now what really happened, if it wasn't for my Cousin Mary Ann. . . I discovered she knew more of what had happened between the four walls of every house in the Parish of the Vale and the Parish of St Sampson's and the Parish of the Catel than anybody else on the island.”
She was widowed young and went around to people’s houses to help, so they always found something to give her.
“My Cousin Mary Ann was a very wise woman. She said very few words and listened to every word that was said. 'Mais wai, mais non-nein' was all anybody could get out of her; but not a word that she heard did she ever forget. Her relations hardly noticed she was there and would say anything in front of her. After all, she was only ‘La pauvre Mary Ann’”
So she's just nodding and saying Yes and No and not calling attention to herself. “The poor Mary Ann” for whom everyone felt sorry, but who was absorbing all the secrets and gossip while she was helping with the cooking or washing. She comes across as benign and kindly in the beginning, but later we (and Ebenezer) realise she was cunning and resourceful.
His very best mate from childhood was Jim. They got up to mischief, but mostly of a good-natured sort. Ebenezer gives us a lot of gossip about who is Church, who is Chapel, who is Wesleyan as well as who’s speaking to whom and why. Entertainment is where you find it.
“One Sunday evening when we couldn't think where to go, I said to Jim, ‘How about going to hear my great-aunt preach, eh?’
He said, ‘Goodness, I didn't know you have a great-aunt who preaches!’
I said,’'Well, she is not my great-aunt, really. She live with my great-uncle.’
He said, ‘Then she is your great-aunt by marriage.'’
'They're not married,’ I said.
‘Then she's your great-aunt in sin!'’he said. ‘Golly, let's go and hear her!’”
Two of the other boys, later men, in his life were his cousins Horace and Raymond, sometimes referred to as Le Horace and Le Raymond. They were the sons of his aunts Prissy and Hetty, known as La Prissy and La Hetty, his mother’s sisters. Now, I’m doing it. Leafing through the family album, but these four people are major forces in Ebenezer’s life. Note the French influence in the references to their names, too.
Horace was a rough and ready kid, always in trouble “a born American” as Ebenezer calls him “always showing off”. Raymond, on the other hand, was a quiet boy who seems drawn to the church, more as a place of sanctuary than a true calling.
Ebenezer speaks of them often and muses about how they think, what they think, what they believe. Raymond even lived with him for a while. And in amongst it all are the girls. Ebenezer is partial to the young ladies, and I get the impression he didn’t have much trouble attracting one.
“Sunday nights for a few weeks I went out with Ivy Lake from Lowlands . . . She was very loving and all that; but I soon found out that was as far as she would go, unless she had been to Church first. That didn't suit me. So I changed over to her friend, Mildred Three-in-a-bed. I can't remember what her other name was, but that was the name she was known by. Her mother kept a lodging-house for seamen on the South Side. It may have been true what the boys said about Mildred, for she was a good-natured girl. The last I heard of her she was married to a Gordon Highlander and gone to Bonnie Dundee.”
Mildred Three-in-a-bed! The reminiscences and humour are great fun, and of course, he had to tell us where she ended up. He hates the English, but saves his special disdain for those from Jersey, their rival Channel Island.
There are those who say this is what islanders tend to be like. Parochial, narrow-minded. It’s where we get the word “insular”. But I have to say, it’s an attitude I’ve seen in towns and communities everywhere. You’re not really accepted until your family has been there for some generations (and even then…), and your worst rivals are your neighbouring townships, island or no.
The humour and philosphising and judgmental pronouncements by Ebenezer of what he deems correct are entertaining to read, but there is a strong undercurrent of suffering from WW1 and then the depression. Guernsey is a bread basket and food bowl where everyone, at least everyone who is anyone in Ebenezer’s eyes, has a garden and chickens and a pig or two, so they manage until The Occupation during WW2.
The Nazis change everything. The Germans are already starving, so when they move in and take over Guernsey, the gardens are raided and Ebenezer and everyone around is close to starving. Some people collaborat or at least help the Germans a bit, to save themselves. He hates the Nazis but has some sympathy for those who try to be kind.
But Ebenezer knows himself better than he lets on as he writes. He shows off, lets us know how special he is, how he looks after things and does for himself. It’s easy to read between the lines at what he’s missing in life, largely because of the high bars he sets for people and his rather controlling nature.
“All the people I have liked most in my life have been the very opposite to me. Jim, Liza, Raymond, Tabitha, my Uncle Nat: none of them was mean; but, if the truth was known, I have always been a mean little sod myself. I have always held something back, and seen to it I kept on the safe side. It is good to be shown up in your old age for what you are.
It is a terrific read, impossible not believe it is a real autobiography. So much of the author’s own story and family are similar to this, including the ending, that perhaps it’s a life he might have led had he stayed on Guernsey. It’s not idyllic, but the simplicity has a certain raw charm.
It's not really historical fiction, because the author wrote it about his own lifetime, but readers of historical fiction will certainly enjoy it.
If you’d like to see a good review with a few photos and many short quotes, see Cecily’s here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
February 1, 2013
I feel inadequate to the task of reviewing this book. It's like asking me to review a person, which is impossible. But that's what this book is. More than any other character I've encountered in a book, Ebenezer comes fully fleshed. I loved him deeply, despite his flaws (or because of them), and because he doesn't bullshit. He has lived eighty odd years and he has no time for bullshit, his or anyone else's, and no reason to either. His language is rich, colloquial. Some will say quaint with a negative connotation, but quaint can also be a positive quality in a world where we are pulled apart by technology, tourism, and material goods, so much so that we can't truly see each other for who we are underneath all that.
The book is divided into three parts, and each with 20 chapters, and each chapter is almost OCD-like in their exact length. I imagined Ebenezer scrawling in his notebook, night after night and story after story, and just stopping when he got to the end of the page. Obviously Edwards (the author of this incredible book) was not Ebenezer, but he created a character through which the book is so real that it feels more a product of this character's handwriting and temperament than the author's own. Which is no easy task because Ebenezer is a complete outsider. He is not someone who's read Literature with a capital L. He's lived his entire life on a small island, and that's a refreshingly wonderful perspective in the world of smart, witty, worldly narrators.
The voice here is meandering and charming. It reminded me of listening to my own grandfather recount stories of his youth. They are almost inconsequential in that the stories don't seem to build into a grander narrative. But precisely because of this inconsequentiality they are rich with characterization and unhurried in their depiction of place, speech, customs, and people. But in part two, we see more of a bigger story building. And by part three, most of the important things in his life have already happened, and we are left with the feeling of being out of time--we are stranded on an island with Ebenezer, looking for a bit of humanity when everyone we love has gone. Stranded on an island with strangers, living in the past.
I related on so many levels with Ebenezer. Like me, he's super critical of others, but when he finds someone he really likes, he goes soft and will walk to the ends of the earth for them. The idea of innocents, Horace in Raymond's eyes, and Jim in Ebenezer's eyes--I am not sure if Ebenezer is not himself one of the innocents, in my eyes.
My review truly does not do this book justice. This is one of the most alive books I've read, and I couldn't help laughing and sobbing (sometimes simultaneously!) through parts of it. It really is that good. Or rather, it is beyond good or bad, it breathes. Now is probably a good time to stop reading this stupid fucking inarticulate review, and go get a copy of this book. NOW!
The book is divided into three parts, and each with 20 chapters, and each chapter is almost OCD-like in their exact length. I imagined Ebenezer scrawling in his notebook, night after night and story after story, and just stopping when he got to the end of the page. Obviously Edwards (the author of this incredible book) was not Ebenezer, but he created a character through which the book is so real that it feels more a product of this character's handwriting and temperament than the author's own. Which is no easy task because Ebenezer is a complete outsider. He is not someone who's read Literature with a capital L. He's lived his entire life on a small island, and that's a refreshingly wonderful perspective in the world of smart, witty, worldly narrators.
The voice here is meandering and charming. It reminded me of listening to my own grandfather recount stories of his youth. They are almost inconsequential in that the stories don't seem to build into a grander narrative. But precisely because of this inconsequentiality they are rich with characterization and unhurried in their depiction of place, speech, customs, and people. But in part two, we see more of a bigger story building. And by part three, most of the important things in his life have already happened, and we are left with the feeling of being out of time--we are stranded on an island with Ebenezer, looking for a bit of humanity when everyone we love has gone. Stranded on an island with strangers, living in the past.
I related on so many levels with Ebenezer. Like me, he's super critical of others, but when he finds someone he really likes, he goes soft and will walk to the ends of the earth for them. The idea of innocents, Horace in Raymond's eyes, and Jim in Ebenezer's eyes--I am not sure if Ebenezer is not himself one of the innocents, in my eyes.
My review truly does not do this book justice. This is one of the most alive books I've read, and I couldn't help laughing and sobbing (sometimes simultaneously!) through parts of it. It really is that good. Or rather, it is beyond good or bad, it breathes. Now is probably a good time to stop reading this stupid fucking inarticulate review, and go get a copy of this book. NOW!
October 21, 2020
4.5 Stars.
“It’s funny how when you remember you can’t choose what it is you remember.
Nowadays I forget things from one day to the next. Of things that have happened of late years, I forget ever the people’s names; yet I remember some things have happened fifty or sixty years ago, as if it was yesterday. I don’t mean to say I don’t get mixed up sometimes.”
As the title implies, this is the life story of Ebenezer Le Page as recounted to us by Ebenezer himself. Ebenezer is old now ( never quite knew how old, as he himself is not sure) and he reflects back on his life and his friends and relations as well as the island of Guernsey. He has lived there all is life and loves it there.
Ebenezer is such a wonderful character- opinionated and curmudgeonly with a marshmallow interior. Imagine living on a small island and pretty well knowing everybody. With his reflections, we learn some of the history of Guernsey which includes its occupation during WWII.
“It’s hard to know what to do for the best in this world; for whatever you do have a way of turning out different from how you thought.”
It was a wonderful journey through Ebenezer’s life and memories. A life filled with love, loyalty, humour and kindness.
A slow moving book that was beautifully written by G.B. Edwards- I have a feeling there is an awful lot of him in Ebenezer Le Page.
Highly recommended. My thanks to Margitte, my GR friend, whose review led me to this book.
“It’s funny how when you remember you can’t choose what it is you remember.
Nowadays I forget things from one day to the next. Of things that have happened of late years, I forget ever the people’s names; yet I remember some things have happened fifty or sixty years ago, as if it was yesterday. I don’t mean to say I don’t get mixed up sometimes.”
As the title implies, this is the life story of Ebenezer Le Page as recounted to us by Ebenezer himself. Ebenezer is old now ( never quite knew how old, as he himself is not sure) and he reflects back on his life and his friends and relations as well as the island of Guernsey. He has lived there all is life and loves it there.
Ebenezer is such a wonderful character- opinionated and curmudgeonly with a marshmallow interior. Imagine living on a small island and pretty well knowing everybody. With his reflections, we learn some of the history of Guernsey which includes its occupation during WWII.
“It’s hard to know what to do for the best in this world; for whatever you do have a way of turning out different from how you thought.”
It was a wonderful journey through Ebenezer’s life and memories. A life filled with love, loyalty, humour and kindness.
A slow moving book that was beautifully written by G.B. Edwards- I have a feeling there is an awful lot of him in Ebenezer Le Page.
Highly recommended. My thanks to Margitte, my GR friend, whose review led me to this book.
April 4, 2010
i have learned many things over the course of my life. now that i am older, knowledge comes in fits and spurts; and lately i have been seized, shaken like a fist, with new thoughts, and ideas about myself, and the order of things. and i seem to see the reflection of these views everywhere. i see them here, in the book of ebenezer le page, presented as the reminisces of a very old man, who is from the channel island of guernsey, and has watched the world change from his little stone house, as it moves through some of the most chaotic moments in history. the characters relay not only their everyday concerns, but their fears for what the world is constantly becoming, at what progress will do to their little island, and so all the world, in its inexorable march. it is a deeply sad, and nostalgic work, and while there are many moments that are committed to concern about technology, and people, it is at its core, also a fundamentally pragmatic book, echoing the values of the world before. as ebenezer says:
Mind you, I am not one of those who say living on Guernsey in the good old days was a bed of roses. I think living in this world is hell on earth for most of us most of the time, it don't matter when or where we are born; but the way we used to live over here, I mean in the country parts, was more or less as it had been for many hundreds of years; and it was real....When I think what have happened to our island, I could sit down on the ground and cry.
but as tabitha puts it most directly, "Ah well, there is only one way of living in this world, and that is to go on from day to day, and see what the next day bring." it is the only choice left to anybody who wants to live, even if they fear the changes that inevitably come, that are out of our control.
this is also a book that made me cry like a broken-hearted child, and yet it partly hates me, because i am a woman, and so it cannot understand me, or expect me to understand. even when the women in this book claim that men have understood them, they are deceived. liza is as complex as character as i've stumbled across but she is never understood, even by raymond, the radiant and tortured soul at the heart of this book who distrusts women, and rails against them. ebenezer himself, a self-described skirt chaser defends them to raymond, but then spews forth his own rage. i should say this alienation is really only evinced in dialogue. in characterization the women aren't shells, or interchangeable, or one dimensional: they are strong, and brave, and weak, and silly, and wise, and many other things besides. but the author's antipathy to women is never fully submerged even as he presents them with complicated, differentiated characters. in contrast the love relationships between men in this book were a revelation to me. one might at first, see the depth of love between the boon comrades recounted in these pages as homosexual, and there is no doubt in my mind that some of these characters do feel that kind of love. but it also reminds us that there was a time when men felt they could never find an equality in love with women, who were so different than they, and that they shared their lives with other men, who understood them as women could not, who shared experiences with them that women could not. one could perhaps see this as a triumph of the progress feared in the novel, that the women in pants that ebenezer reviles, the women of today, might have been the kind that he could have loved as equally, as companionably, as he did jim.
the depth of all these characters, women and men, is a spectacular feat: these characters truly breathe. they are rational, and irrational, and step through these pages as a vivid pageant of complex people that you come to know, as ebenezer did. i went to live with ebenezer when i read this book. i stayed with him at les moulins, and i shared his pain, and his loneliness, and revelled with him at the top of a greasy pole, and whether he wanted me or not, i loved the rascal, and his book too.
Mind you, I am not one of those who say living on Guernsey in the good old days was a bed of roses. I think living in this world is hell on earth for most of us most of the time, it don't matter when or where we are born; but the way we used to live over here, I mean in the country parts, was more or less as it had been for many hundreds of years; and it was real....When I think what have happened to our island, I could sit down on the ground and cry.
but as tabitha puts it most directly, "Ah well, there is only one way of living in this world, and that is to go on from day to day, and see what the next day bring." it is the only choice left to anybody who wants to live, even if they fear the changes that inevitably come, that are out of our control.
this is also a book that made me cry like a broken-hearted child, and yet it partly hates me, because i am a woman, and so it cannot understand me, or expect me to understand. even when the women in this book claim that men have understood them, they are deceived. liza is as complex as character as i've stumbled across but she is never understood, even by raymond, the radiant and tortured soul at the heart of this book who distrusts women, and rails against them. ebenezer himself, a self-described skirt chaser defends them to raymond, but then spews forth his own rage. i should say this alienation is really only evinced in dialogue. in characterization the women aren't shells, or interchangeable, or one dimensional: they are strong, and brave, and weak, and silly, and wise, and many other things besides. but the author's antipathy to women is never fully submerged even as he presents them with complicated, differentiated characters. in contrast the love relationships between men in this book were a revelation to me. one might at first, see the depth of love between the boon comrades recounted in these pages as homosexual, and there is no doubt in my mind that some of these characters do feel that kind of love. but it also reminds us that there was a time when men felt they could never find an equality in love with women, who were so different than they, and that they shared their lives with other men, who understood them as women could not, who shared experiences with them that women could not. one could perhaps see this as a triumph of the progress feared in the novel, that the women in pants that ebenezer reviles, the women of today, might have been the kind that he could have loved as equally, as companionably, as he did jim.
the depth of all these characters, women and men, is a spectacular feat: these characters truly breathe. they are rational, and irrational, and step through these pages as a vivid pageant of complex people that you come to know, as ebenezer did. i went to live with ebenezer when i read this book. i stayed with him at les moulins, and i shared his pain, and his loneliness, and revelled with him at the top of a greasy pole, and whether he wanted me or not, i loved the rascal, and his book too.
August 23, 2019
If it had not been for my book club I would never have come across this book. Well I’m glad I did and I, like my other seven club members, thought the same, that of a magnificent book. I actually don’t think I have read such a splendid book for a long time”.
When I first started reading this book, I immediately thought, oh no, another pedestrian book. I have had a string of these recently. Well suddenly in paragraph 2 the book enticed me and I couldn’t wait to turn each page to see what was going to happen next.
Ebenezer Le Page (not pronounced as in French but the English “page”) had decided to write a book of his life on Guernsey. He was a grumpy curmudgeon, dry, extremely witty, with a dry sense of humour but also fair. I also found Guernsey English to be quite quaint. My only complaint, and it is minor, is that the glossary should have been at the front of the book. I had no idea it was at the back as every now and then he threw the French patois into the text and people only speaking English were at a loss to understand these conversations.
The people involved in the book, his family and friends, acquaintances, individuals met occasionally or hardly at all, were so exquisitely described and what with family feuds thrown in as for example, his Aunties Prissy and Hetty, who incidentally lived in houses called Timbuctoo and Wallabaloo, respectively, were constantly at odds with one another; with their respective husbands Percy and Harold looking quite bemused by these goings-on. Also the descriptions are excellent.
The Great War and the Second World War are covered and his views on the German occupation are rather interesting.
I cannot describe at all the way I feel and so all I can say is read this book and give yourself a super treat!
When I first started reading this book, I immediately thought, oh no, another pedestrian book. I have had a string of these recently. Well suddenly in paragraph 2 the book enticed me and I couldn’t wait to turn each page to see what was going to happen next.
Ebenezer Le Page (not pronounced as in French but the English “page”) had decided to write a book of his life on Guernsey. He was a grumpy curmudgeon, dry, extremely witty, with a dry sense of humour but also fair. I also found Guernsey English to be quite quaint. My only complaint, and it is minor, is that the glossary should have been at the front of the book. I had no idea it was at the back as every now and then he threw the French patois into the text and people only speaking English were at a loss to understand these conversations.
The people involved in the book, his family and friends, acquaintances, individuals met occasionally or hardly at all, were so exquisitely described and what with family feuds thrown in as for example, his Aunties Prissy and Hetty, who incidentally lived in houses called Timbuctoo and Wallabaloo, respectively, were constantly at odds with one another; with their respective husbands Percy and Harold looking quite bemused by these goings-on. Also the descriptions are excellent.
The Great War and the Second World War are covered and his views on the German occupation are rather interesting.
I cannot describe at all the way I feel and so all I can say is read this book and give yourself a super treat!
June 1, 2015
Once in a while I get wildly excited by a book that I know from the opening pages will be an epic read.
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is the best known work of Gerald Basil Edwards (1899-1976), a British author. It was finished in 1974 and published posthumously in 1981. Apparently, Edwards himself was a bit of a recluse. I would not be too far off the mark to conjecture that Edwards left traces of himself in the narrator and breathed his own observations of life into this remarkable novel.
This is a fictional memoir of an 80-year-old Guernsey man, Ebenezer Le Page, who lived through two world wars. Reading this book in Guernsey patois is like listening to an old grandpa tell you the story of his life and Guernsey itself. I read it every chance I had in between work and sleep. Each time I picked up the novel again, I was eager to get caught up on the latest happenings of old "acquaintances".
Culturally and historically, this was an interesting novel that offered a close-up view of Guernsey life that spanned the 19th through the mid 20th century. I enjoyed reading about school life in the Channel Island of Guernsey and their local food (e.g., salted pig, spider crab, ormers). I had to look up ormers because Ebenezer thought it was food for the gods. There were all kinds of sea food in Guernsey and according to Ebenezer, "You can't trust a lobster. He's often half empty." Funny. I will remember this next time I eat one.
The insularity of island living meant that family feuds and secrets were common knowledge and almost shared history. Ebenezer's brutally honest descriptions of his relatives, especially his bickering aunts, were wickedly hilarious and most entertaining.
The story was built on the strength of Ebenezer's relationship principally with Jim Mahy, his best friend; Liza Queripel, the love of his life; Raymond Martel, his erudite cousin; and Tabitha Le Page, his sister. Each was fleshed out convincingly. I shared Ebenezer's joys, sorrows, heartaches, and loneliness. There were other colourful individuals like the swearing but musical Sergeant Strudwick, the stone-throwing rascal, Neville Falla, and several of Ebenezer's eccentric tourist-boarders.
The memoir documented the hardscrabble life of the Guernsey inhabitants during the years of the Occupation. I have heard reports of World War II in Southeast Asia of families surviving on tapioca and limited rations; in Guernsey were equally sad accounts of the islanders growing weak and desperate from lack of food. Yet there were touching anecdotes of neighbours sharing unexpected treats like a slaughtered pig or a rare catch of conger. The radio was banned, and in listening to it even in the dead of night, many risked imprisonment and death. The tribulations of the world wars were colossal.
The memoir also captured the transformation of Guernsey as it yielded grudgingly to modernisation. Ebenezer was distressed by the growing waves of tourists who converged on the once tomato-growing, cow-grazing piece of paradise. It was understandable he should be upset that the fort built on the blood of many young Guernsey lives should be reduced to a money-making spectacle.
Ebenezer himself was larger than life. He was not blind to his own shortcomings and prejudices. He was no passion's slave. He loved deeply but refused to be tormented by a vain and shallow woman who had strung him along. He was spontaneous, funny, and dangerously inappropriate when drunk. He was proudly monolithic. He wanted so much to leave his house in Les Moulins to a kindred spirit. For all his querulous and irascible persona, he was a good and kind man.
Ebenezer Le Page has to be my all-time favourite cantankerous old man. How is it that an ordinary life can become so inspirational? How does a book about life on a small island leave such a deep impression? Few books convey a wealth of wisdom in the portrayal of a life simply and narrowly lived. I had marvelled at the unusually large number of five-star ratings of this novel on Goodreads. I marvel no more. I am contributing another set of five twinkling stars.
PS. I want to visit Guernsey one day. Hopefully, there will be potato peel pies and pickled ormers.
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is the best known work of Gerald Basil Edwards (1899-1976), a British author. It was finished in 1974 and published posthumously in 1981. Apparently, Edwards himself was a bit of a recluse. I would not be too far off the mark to conjecture that Edwards left traces of himself in the narrator and breathed his own observations of life into this remarkable novel.
This is a fictional memoir of an 80-year-old Guernsey man, Ebenezer Le Page, who lived through two world wars. Reading this book in Guernsey patois is like listening to an old grandpa tell you the story of his life and Guernsey itself. I read it every chance I had in between work and sleep. Each time I picked up the novel again, I was eager to get caught up on the latest happenings of old "acquaintances".
Culturally and historically, this was an interesting novel that offered a close-up view of Guernsey life that spanned the 19th through the mid 20th century. I enjoyed reading about school life in the Channel Island of Guernsey and their local food (e.g., salted pig, spider crab, ormers). I had to look up ormers because Ebenezer thought it was food for the gods. There were all kinds of sea food in Guernsey and according to Ebenezer, "You can't trust a lobster. He's often half empty." Funny. I will remember this next time I eat one.
The insularity of island living meant that family feuds and secrets were common knowledge and almost shared history. Ebenezer's brutally honest descriptions of his relatives, especially his bickering aunts, were wickedly hilarious and most entertaining.
The story was built on the strength of Ebenezer's relationship principally with Jim Mahy, his best friend; Liza Queripel, the love of his life; Raymond Martel, his erudite cousin; and Tabitha Le Page, his sister. Each was fleshed out convincingly. I shared Ebenezer's joys, sorrows, heartaches, and loneliness. There were other colourful individuals like the swearing but musical Sergeant Strudwick, the stone-throwing rascal, Neville Falla, and several of Ebenezer's eccentric tourist-boarders.
The memoir documented the hardscrabble life of the Guernsey inhabitants during the years of the Occupation. I have heard reports of World War II in Southeast Asia of families surviving on tapioca and limited rations; in Guernsey were equally sad accounts of the islanders growing weak and desperate from lack of food. Yet there were touching anecdotes of neighbours sharing unexpected treats like a slaughtered pig or a rare catch of conger. The radio was banned, and in listening to it even in the dead of night, many risked imprisonment and death. The tribulations of the world wars were colossal.
The memoir also captured the transformation of Guernsey as it yielded grudgingly to modernisation. Ebenezer was distressed by the growing waves of tourists who converged on the once tomato-growing, cow-grazing piece of paradise. It was understandable he should be upset that the fort built on the blood of many young Guernsey lives should be reduced to a money-making spectacle.
Ebenezer himself was larger than life. He was not blind to his own shortcomings and prejudices. He was no passion's slave. He loved deeply but refused to be tormented by a vain and shallow woman who had strung him along. He was spontaneous, funny, and dangerously inappropriate when drunk. He was proudly monolithic. He wanted so much to leave his house in Les Moulins to a kindred spirit. For all his querulous and irascible persona, he was a good and kind man.
Ebenezer Le Page has to be my all-time favourite cantankerous old man. How is it that an ordinary life can become so inspirational? How does a book about life on a small island leave such a deep impression? Few books convey a wealth of wisdom in the portrayal of a life simply and narrowly lived. I had marvelled at the unusually large number of five-star ratings of this novel on Goodreads. I marvel no more. I am contributing another set of five twinkling stars.
PS. I want to visit Guernsey one day. Hopefully, there will be potato peel pies and pickled ormers.
Shelved as 'abandoned'
May 22, 2018I need to put this away for now for Ebenezer LePage is not working his charm on me as he has done on so many others. Neither laconic nor lugubrious, there is nonetheless something sad and a little too mundane for me at this time: while I recognized the humour and the value of a "good plain tale", it is rather too ... relentless ... It's like sitting at the kitchen table, well past 2 a.m., with grand-père offering his reminiscences on a life well-lived. And as with all of grand-père's tales, they were vibrant and interesting until about 1:30 a.m. Then they became a little tedious, not the least of which because you'd heard them all before, several times.
It is also very much a mood book. It's a book you can curl into when you have all the time in the world, and there is a raging northern storm blowing in; or you have an eternity to spend in a seaside resort, listening to the waves. In either of those circumstances, this might turn out to be the magnum opus that everyone proclaims it is. It is a matter of being able to offer your undivided attention, with a simple heart, open to the possibilities and vagaries of an ordinary life.
I found a rather interesting thread which appealed to me very much, and intrigued me enough to want to come back, for curiously it has the echoes of life here in Canada. A long time ago, barely half way out of my teens, a friend and I spent a few seasons travelling up the Gaspésie, touching in at little riverside villages from Québec (city) to Gaspé. To my surprise, this book had all the echoes of all those villages we visited, all the people we met. I had to shake my head now and again to believe that this was written about Guernsey, and not about ... Trois-Pistoles, or Saint-Fabien-sur-mer or ... : landscape, language, life, lifestyle, all here on the shores of a Canadian waterway!
For that reason alone, I will return to this, when I have more time to explore my feelings; more time to dream about those connections. I don't mind sitting up with pépé, if tomorrow I don't have to get up and go to school.
It is also very much a mood book. It's a book you can curl into when you have all the time in the world, and there is a raging northern storm blowing in; or you have an eternity to spend in a seaside resort, listening to the waves. In either of those circumstances, this might turn out to be the magnum opus that everyone proclaims it is. It is a matter of being able to offer your undivided attention, with a simple heart, open to the possibilities and vagaries of an ordinary life.
I found a rather interesting thread which appealed to me very much, and intrigued me enough to want to come back, for curiously it has the echoes of life here in Canada. A long time ago, barely half way out of my teens, a friend and I spent a few seasons travelling up the Gaspésie, touching in at little riverside villages from Québec (city) to Gaspé. To my surprise, this book had all the echoes of all those villages we visited, all the people we met. I had to shake my head now and again to believe that this was written about Guernsey, and not about ... Trois-Pistoles, or Saint-Fabien-sur-mer or ... : landscape, language, life, lifestyle, all here on the shores of a Canadian waterway!
For that reason alone, I will return to this, when I have more time to explore my feelings; more time to dream about those connections. I don't mind sitting up with pépé, if tomorrow I don't have to get up and go to school.
November 6, 2013
'I live from day to day at the edge of living.'
The poet said said most men live lives of quiet desperation and go to their graves with their song unsung. This is he swan song of G B Edwards, his one hit wonder, the one and only book he wrote that he didn't even live long enough to see published, and it may well be the best of its kind. A love song to his native island of Guernsey, from which he lived in exile for most of his adult life, a monumental fresco of its windblown vistas, its secretive and proud inhabitants, its cultural heritage rapidly disappearing under the pressure of modern technology and commercial interests, the novel is like a drop of amber preserving for posterity the 'slice of life' as seen through the cantankerous, wickedly funny, heartbreakingly lonely eyes of Ebenezer Le Page, the oldest inhabitant of the island, looking back to his long life and how it was affected by the radical changes of the 20th Century.
It is only the very old now who can fully understand this: what it means to have known, in the one lifespan, both a time when city streets were full of horses, the car not yet invented, and a time when man stood on the moon; or even more incomprehensibly, both a time when even the most terrible weapons could kill a few hundred at most, and a time when their power risks entire cities -
and their aftermath, whole countries.
The novel is presented in the form of a memoir, and it is difficult to separate the author from his creation. Both Ebenezer and Edwards are reclusive, self-reliant and strongly opinionated people, but it would probably be wrong to look at the book as a thinly veiled autobiography. The author destroyed most of his private papers, making it very difficult to check up his biographical details and probably also trying to stimy the efforts of researchers who might be tempted to identify characters from the book with real people living on the island. Ebenezer is probably a composite from more than one source, and Edwards put himself more into secondary characters (like cousin Raymond), but for all that the novel has the flavor of authenticity for me, of a writer who not only knows his subject intimately, but is burning with passion and holds nothing back in laying his heart open and telling the truth about his life experiences. Edwards may have fiddled with this truth and arranged it in a more pleasing and literary form, as all good raconteurs do, but the foundation is rock solid, like the blue granite of the island and like Les Moulins - Ebenezer's house - built to last forever.
They're just busting to get away from the island; and, when they do get away, they're breaking their hearts to come back. That's why I have never left Guernsey, me. I knew I would only end up where I begun.
So says Ebenezer le Page, who lived his whole place near the place where he was born, who only left the island once on a day trip to neighboring Jersey for a football match, a fisherman who never learned to swim and who has no use of all those foreign lands. Everything he needs, everything he loves is right there, on his beloved Sarnia. This insular mentality, this cultural isolation that has preserved the local way of life unchanged from the middle ages until the late 19 Century when the narrator is born, tempts me to put Edwards in the same bracket as Marques and Faulkner, who both gave their native lands a mythical, timeless and universal dimension. The main difference between Guernsey and Macondo / Yoknapatawpha is again in the solidity of the Edwards vision. There is no need for the whimsical, for the magical realism or even for flowery, baroque prose. Ebenezer is barely schooled, an apparently unsophisticated farmer, whose outlook on life comes from oral traditions, Bible studies and the one book he reads over and over again:
I said the book he ought to read is Robinson Crusoe. It is a good book. It show how if you go gallivanting all over the world instead of stopping at home where you belong, you only land yourself with a load of trouble. Raymond couldn't stop laughing when I said that. I don't know for why.
One thing Ebenezer can't be accused of is slowness of mind. He may not be much of a talker, keeping it all inside himself (unless he has a few drinks in the bars and starts laying down the law of the land and throwing punches around) Only in his old age he begins to put his history down on paper, lest it be lost for ever, his heritage and his homage to friends and relatives who toiled the rocky soil, married, had kids, quarelled, made up, laughed, cried, suffered and ultimately were laid down to rest in the same small churchyard as their ancestors. He is a proud man, uncompromising and vehement in his attacks on modern mentality, but always tempered by a flash of humour, more often than not directed at his own folly, and always ready to give a helping hand to someone in need. I know I would have loved to meet him and sit with him on a Guernsey beach, watching the sun set and reminiscing about the good old times:
I didn't go to bed for hours. I sat by the fire thinking. I reckon I thought of everything had happened to me and to all the people I knew until then. I thought well, if that is what being alive in this world is, it don't amount to much. A happy day and dreams of something coming; and then you wake up. A few pleasures you forget the minute they are over; and, for the rest, just go on and on and on like a donkey. That is what I am. A Guernsey donkey. Sometimes I stick my heels in and sometimes I kick out and sometimes I lift up my head to heaven and bray.
Coming back to the storyline, the structure is loose, with numerous sidetrips down memory lane, jumps forward and backward in time, hundreds of people to keep track of (truly Guernsey was the 'place where everybody knows your name'), everybody is somebody's cousin and family trees are traced back to the Norman conquest. I'm not exagerrating, at one point Ebenezer mentions there are
about 30 Le Pages in his school class, and he knew each of them personally. It makes for a leisurely pace and it is ocassionaly demanding to keep track of minor characters, but over time the details accumulate and several personages gain prominence as they play a greater role in the life of the narrator: it starts of course with his immediate family, grandparents, parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, first cousins and slowly expands to cover more distant relations. The book is split in three parts, drawing parallels between the personal growth of Ebenezer and the major changes in the island's lifestyle:
- the turn of the century: the Belle Epoque, the old world still set in its traditional ways, isolated from the larger issues of the world, sparsely populated and underdeveloped, a time of youthful exuberance tempered by hard work and a rigid moral code. Ebenezer makes lifelong friends (Jim Mahi, cousins Raymond and Horace), starts chasing girls on Sundays, roams the island from one shore to another. Too soon he must leave school and starts to work in a greenhouse, supporting his mother and sister. As a sad and endearing illustration of the kind of ordinary life Ebenezer has led, the highpoint of his whole existence, his moment of tryumph, of greatest popularity and happyness is his victory in a summer festival greasy pole competition. 70 years later, he still smiles fondly at the memory.
- the two world wars : a world gone crazy, devouring itself with reckless abandon, taking away the best sons of the island to die in the trenches or to return crippled to their former homes. A mature Ebenezer learns to cope with the loss of his best friends and to accept disappointment in his love life. The family around him is torn apart in petty disputes, inheritance woes, spiritual emptiness, material shortcomings that culminate in years of starvation under German ocuppation.
- the modern times : the transformation of the island into a tourist destination, the loss of its identity and the degradation of the moral fiber of its inhabitants. Ebenezer is at his most caustic, cynical, bitter mode of expression, yet underlying his anger is an overwhelming emptiness, long decades of loneliness without a single soul to share his burden. Most of this section describes the quest of the old man to find a person worthy of inheriting his fortune. A fortune that at first glance is the pot of gold sovereigns buried in his garden and the sock full of pound notes tucked behind the chimney ( I don't believe in banks. I am quite capable of looking after my own money, thank you. Come to that, I can't see what banks are for, except to make money out of other people's money: and then, when they go bust, they don't pay it back. ), but by the end of the story it is revealed as the heritage of the Guernsey culture, as laid down in these notebooks.
I have pages and pages of quotations saved, and I can't make myself cut them down to fit a prim and proper little review. The source material is too rich and heartbreaking, too close to some of my own experiences and thoughts on the human condition. So please bear with me as I indulge in an excess of popular wisdom and wacky humour from the mouth of the Great Ebenezer le Page. They are not chronological, but they illustrate the main themes and concerns of the author : religion, love, morality and 'ou sont les neiges d'antan' lamentations about the perils of modernity:
The young people of nowadays can have no idea how much religion there was on the island, say sixty or seventy years ago. There was nothing else to go to. People didn't go on the beach much and picnics was only for Thursday afternoons early closing. There was no Pictures, or they was only just beginning; and the Radio and the T.V. hadn't yet been thought of, thank God!
-
'I don't know what a pagan is,' I said, 'so I don't know if I am one or not; but I don't know what a Christian is either. There are thousands of Christians of all shapes and sizes on this island. They may not all of them go after the flesh-pots, though some of them do on the sly; but they go to war and kill other people, and in peace-time make as much money as they can out of each other, and don't love their neighbours any more than I do.
I like this one in particular, as it points out how much ahead of his time Ebenezer is in his message of pan-religious tolerance and plea for a search of universal truths that go beyond organized cults, of which there were plenty on the island. The next quote is even stronger, a simple prayer that can bring even a hardened atheist to reconsider the positive aspects of faith:
'I ask you to pray with me in silence,' he said, 'for us to be honest in our minds ... and tender in our hearts ... and true in our secret places... so the love of Christ may dwell in us... and unite us one with the other.'
-
I have lived too long. I have lived through two world wars and been no hero in neither. Two is one too many for any man. Now I sit and wait for the third. I wonder if I will live to see it. I don't believe, I don't believe, I don't believe in what the Great Powers do. Nurse Cavell said, 'Patriotism is not enough'. She was wrong. It is too much! It is enough for us to love and hate our neighbours as ourselves.
-
When you are young you are full of trust, but are taught all manner of things which are not true; and then, when you grow up, you have to undo it all, and think different: but you have lost your ability to trust anything taught.
-
'Ah well, there is only one way of living in this world, and that is to go on from day to day, and see what the next day bring.'
-
It was business as usual: only more so. The dog went back to its vomit and the sow to its wallowing in the mire. There was something else could have been done. I don't know quite what. I haven't the right to criticize. I remember too well how I thought at times when it comes down to rock bottom, I didn't care tuppence about anything, or anybody, except myself; and that everybody else was the same. If that is true, it is something a man should not know. It may be it was the one lesson we learnt from the Occupation; but it was the wrong lesson.
The next section of citations deals with the generally contrarian atitude of Ebenezer towards women, a subject worthy of an independent review of its own. I can't help but wonder what excruciating experiences had soured Edwards towards the gentler sex, enough to make him paint most of them as harridans and ruthless, egotistical monsters, but it must be said there are exceptions to the rules of war between sexes. Beside the angelic portraits of Ebenezer's mother and sister, I thought the tale of the great love of his life - Liza Queripel - as written here, is one of the most moving and honest romantic moments in literature.
I wonder if I would know her now, if I was to meet her in Town. I can see her yet as she was that Sunday evening with her small square chin and straight nose and her hair done up for show. She had lovely hair. It wasn't red and it wasn't gold, but in between; and she didn't have a flaw in her skin. It was smooth and rather pale, but it could flush really like a rose; and she had the mouth of an angel when she was pleased, and the mouth of a she-devil when she was vexed. She was taller than the others and they wasn't so much walking along as dancing, and their little feet was coming out like mice from under their skirts and they was singing...
-
'It don't do to know the one you're going to marry for too long,' she said, 'or nobody would get married at all. That's why I'm all for boys and girls marrying young; before they find out their mistake.'
-
He was a fool there. A man got to be careful what he say to a woman; or she will turn it upside-down and inside-out and use it as evidence against him.
-
'Is marriage only war at close quarters?'
-
I don't know what it is about women: but, for some reason, they just cannot bear to see any man, it don't matter how old he is, or of what shape, or of what size, getting along on his own.
-
All the people I have liked most in my life have been the very opposite to me. Jim, Liza, Raymond, Tabitha, my Uncle Nat: none of them was mean; but, if the truth was known, I have always been a mean little sod myself. I have always held something back, and seen to it I kept on the safe side. It is good to be shown up in your old age for what you are.
-
I have held my own against strangers and against enemies from another country; and against the double-faced behaviour of some of my own people. I have seen the funny side of things, and made a lot of people laugh; and I suppose they have thought I am the happy-go-lucky sort: but since that night I have lived without hope. I have often wondered what it is I can have done wrong to have to live for so many years without hope. It is no wonder I think a lot and am a bit funny in the head.
Last batch of quotes deal with 'it's all going down the drain' / 'get off my lawn' rants. I laughed a lot at the cranky, recalcitrant, unrepentant Ebenezer refusing to accept the transition to the new age, to miniskirts, motorcycles, cars, radio, television, banks, golf courses, lawyers, politicians, Jerseymen (crapauds), Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, and the ultimate scourge of the quiet, peace loving and hard working Guernseymen: TOURISTS!. G B Edwards was spared the even more recent scourge of billionaires hiding from the taxman on his beloved isle, or I'm sure he would have had a couple of choice patois curses to deliver especially for them. I am actually torn between my desire to set foot on the Guernsey island and walk in the footsteps of the narrator, and my respect for his desire to avoid polluting the pristine landscape with my overweight, camera toting, landmark seeking, typical tourist persona.
Guernsey is a factory for the manufacture of tourists now. [...] When I think what have happened to our island, I could sit down on the ground and cry.
-
'If you want to know human nature at its lowest and its worst,' he said to me, 'get to know it when it is on holiday.'
-
'It is time Guernsey was put on the map,' he said, butting in. 'Good God, isn't it on the map already?' I said, 'It wasn't a bad little place to live in when people didn't know where it was.'
-
She said to me, 'I am surprised you don't have the T.V. It would be company for you in the long winter evenings.' I said, 'Goodness, I don't want those sort of people in my house!' [...] If you talk to people nowadays, nothing exists unless it has been seen on T.V. It gives people the idea they have seen and know everything, when really they have seen and know nothing. It is the deadliest drug on the market. They go sky-high if the boys smoke pot. It is perpetual pot for the millions of goggle-eyed addicts who watch it nightly.
-
I thought it is him who is the old one, and me the young; for the young are born old nowadays, and it is for the old to show them how to be young again.
-
final thoughts : The Book of Ebenezer le Page is for me the perfect example of the kind of book to take on a desert island: all the wisdom of the world captured within its pages, all the wide gamut of human emotions, from hilarity to despair, from wild parties and slapstick comedy, from intense loneliness and introspecive meditations. It practically begs to be re-read time after time, to be explored in depth and to be cherished like the closest friend a man could have. It can be started anywhere: at the first page, in the middle, from the end backwards, a chapter at a time, from start to finish in a rush, any way the fancy takes you. It gives and asks little in return: to be remembered - the island and the people - as they once stood between the end of the Victorian age and the start of the new Millenium. I believe every country, every piece of land that has been blessed with the blood, the sweat and the tears of countless generations deserves its Bard, it's national poet, to capture its spirituality and its unique identity before it is lost in the lowest common denominator of the global monoculture. I'm glad I discovered G B Edwards. I hope my homecounty will one day be honored in a similar way (actually, there is a Romanian author that embarked on an equally ambitious and in my opinion succesful project, but you probably never heard of him: Radu Tudoran with his 'Sfirsit de Mileniu' saga). I will close this overlong review with a quote from Shakespeare that Ebenezer uses towards the end of his journey, a final lesson to be learned from a long life and to be passed on to the new generations, not a bad epitaph for his memorable life:
The quality of mercy is not strained: it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.
The poet said said most men live lives of quiet desperation and go to their graves with their song unsung. This is he swan song of G B Edwards, his one hit wonder, the one and only book he wrote that he didn't even live long enough to see published, and it may well be the best of its kind. A love song to his native island of Guernsey, from which he lived in exile for most of his adult life, a monumental fresco of its windblown vistas, its secretive and proud inhabitants, its cultural heritage rapidly disappearing under the pressure of modern technology and commercial interests, the novel is like a drop of amber preserving for posterity the 'slice of life' as seen through the cantankerous, wickedly funny, heartbreakingly lonely eyes of Ebenezer Le Page, the oldest inhabitant of the island, looking back to his long life and how it was affected by the radical changes of the 20th Century.
It is only the very old now who can fully understand this: what it means to have known, in the one lifespan, both a time when city streets were full of horses, the car not yet invented, and a time when man stood on the moon; or even more incomprehensibly, both a time when even the most terrible weapons could kill a few hundred at most, and a time when their power risks entire cities -
and their aftermath, whole countries.
The novel is presented in the form of a memoir, and it is difficult to separate the author from his creation. Both Ebenezer and Edwards are reclusive, self-reliant and strongly opinionated people, but it would probably be wrong to look at the book as a thinly veiled autobiography. The author destroyed most of his private papers, making it very difficult to check up his biographical details and probably also trying to stimy the efforts of researchers who might be tempted to identify characters from the book with real people living on the island. Ebenezer is probably a composite from more than one source, and Edwards put himself more into secondary characters (like cousin Raymond), but for all that the novel has the flavor of authenticity for me, of a writer who not only knows his subject intimately, but is burning with passion and holds nothing back in laying his heart open and telling the truth about his life experiences. Edwards may have fiddled with this truth and arranged it in a more pleasing and literary form, as all good raconteurs do, but the foundation is rock solid, like the blue granite of the island and like Les Moulins - Ebenezer's house - built to last forever.
They're just busting to get away from the island; and, when they do get away, they're breaking their hearts to come back. That's why I have never left Guernsey, me. I knew I would only end up where I begun.
So says Ebenezer le Page, who lived his whole place near the place where he was born, who only left the island once on a day trip to neighboring Jersey for a football match, a fisherman who never learned to swim and who has no use of all those foreign lands. Everything he needs, everything he loves is right there, on his beloved Sarnia. This insular mentality, this cultural isolation that has preserved the local way of life unchanged from the middle ages until the late 19 Century when the narrator is born, tempts me to put Edwards in the same bracket as Marques and Faulkner, who both gave their native lands a mythical, timeless and universal dimension. The main difference between Guernsey and Macondo / Yoknapatawpha is again in the solidity of the Edwards vision. There is no need for the whimsical, for the magical realism or even for flowery, baroque prose. Ebenezer is barely schooled, an apparently unsophisticated farmer, whose outlook on life comes from oral traditions, Bible studies and the one book he reads over and over again:
I said the book he ought to read is Robinson Crusoe. It is a good book. It show how if you go gallivanting all over the world instead of stopping at home where you belong, you only land yourself with a load of trouble. Raymond couldn't stop laughing when I said that. I don't know for why.
One thing Ebenezer can't be accused of is slowness of mind. He may not be much of a talker, keeping it all inside himself (unless he has a few drinks in the bars and starts laying down the law of the land and throwing punches around) Only in his old age he begins to put his history down on paper, lest it be lost for ever, his heritage and his homage to friends and relatives who toiled the rocky soil, married, had kids, quarelled, made up, laughed, cried, suffered and ultimately were laid down to rest in the same small churchyard as their ancestors. He is a proud man, uncompromising and vehement in his attacks on modern mentality, but always tempered by a flash of humour, more often than not directed at his own folly, and always ready to give a helping hand to someone in need. I know I would have loved to meet him and sit with him on a Guernsey beach, watching the sun set and reminiscing about the good old times:
I didn't go to bed for hours. I sat by the fire thinking. I reckon I thought of everything had happened to me and to all the people I knew until then. I thought well, if that is what being alive in this world is, it don't amount to much. A happy day and dreams of something coming; and then you wake up. A few pleasures you forget the minute they are over; and, for the rest, just go on and on and on like a donkey. That is what I am. A Guernsey donkey. Sometimes I stick my heels in and sometimes I kick out and sometimes I lift up my head to heaven and bray.
Coming back to the storyline, the structure is loose, with numerous sidetrips down memory lane, jumps forward and backward in time, hundreds of people to keep track of (truly Guernsey was the 'place where everybody knows your name'), everybody is somebody's cousin and family trees are traced back to the Norman conquest. I'm not exagerrating, at one point Ebenezer mentions there are
about 30 Le Pages in his school class, and he knew each of them personally. It makes for a leisurely pace and it is ocassionaly demanding to keep track of minor characters, but over time the details accumulate and several personages gain prominence as they play a greater role in the life of the narrator: it starts of course with his immediate family, grandparents, parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, first cousins and slowly expands to cover more distant relations. The book is split in three parts, drawing parallels between the personal growth of Ebenezer and the major changes in the island's lifestyle:
- the turn of the century: the Belle Epoque, the old world still set in its traditional ways, isolated from the larger issues of the world, sparsely populated and underdeveloped, a time of youthful exuberance tempered by hard work and a rigid moral code. Ebenezer makes lifelong friends (Jim Mahi, cousins Raymond and Horace), starts chasing girls on Sundays, roams the island from one shore to another. Too soon he must leave school and starts to work in a greenhouse, supporting his mother and sister. As a sad and endearing illustration of the kind of ordinary life Ebenezer has led, the highpoint of his whole existence, his moment of tryumph, of greatest popularity and happyness is his victory in a summer festival greasy pole competition. 70 years later, he still smiles fondly at the memory.
- the two world wars : a world gone crazy, devouring itself with reckless abandon, taking away the best sons of the island to die in the trenches or to return crippled to their former homes. A mature Ebenezer learns to cope with the loss of his best friends and to accept disappointment in his love life. The family around him is torn apart in petty disputes, inheritance woes, spiritual emptiness, material shortcomings that culminate in years of starvation under German ocuppation.
- the modern times : the transformation of the island into a tourist destination, the loss of its identity and the degradation of the moral fiber of its inhabitants. Ebenezer is at his most caustic, cynical, bitter mode of expression, yet underlying his anger is an overwhelming emptiness, long decades of loneliness without a single soul to share his burden. Most of this section describes the quest of the old man to find a person worthy of inheriting his fortune. A fortune that at first glance is the pot of gold sovereigns buried in his garden and the sock full of pound notes tucked behind the chimney ( I don't believe in banks. I am quite capable of looking after my own money, thank you. Come to that, I can't see what banks are for, except to make money out of other people's money: and then, when they go bust, they don't pay it back. ), but by the end of the story it is revealed as the heritage of the Guernsey culture, as laid down in these notebooks.
I have pages and pages of quotations saved, and I can't make myself cut them down to fit a prim and proper little review. The source material is too rich and heartbreaking, too close to some of my own experiences and thoughts on the human condition. So please bear with me as I indulge in an excess of popular wisdom and wacky humour from the mouth of the Great Ebenezer le Page. They are not chronological, but they illustrate the main themes and concerns of the author : religion, love, morality and 'ou sont les neiges d'antan' lamentations about the perils of modernity:
The young people of nowadays can have no idea how much religion there was on the island, say sixty or seventy years ago. There was nothing else to go to. People didn't go on the beach much and picnics was only for Thursday afternoons early closing. There was no Pictures, or they was only just beginning; and the Radio and the T.V. hadn't yet been thought of, thank God!
-
'I don't know what a pagan is,' I said, 'so I don't know if I am one or not; but I don't know what a Christian is either. There are thousands of Christians of all shapes and sizes on this island. They may not all of them go after the flesh-pots, though some of them do on the sly; but they go to war and kill other people, and in peace-time make as much money as they can out of each other, and don't love their neighbours any more than I do.
I like this one in particular, as it points out how much ahead of his time Ebenezer is in his message of pan-religious tolerance and plea for a search of universal truths that go beyond organized cults, of which there were plenty on the island. The next quote is even stronger, a simple prayer that can bring even a hardened atheist to reconsider the positive aspects of faith:
'I ask you to pray with me in silence,' he said, 'for us to be honest in our minds ... and tender in our hearts ... and true in our secret places... so the love of Christ may dwell in us... and unite us one with the other.'
-
I have lived too long. I have lived through two world wars and been no hero in neither. Two is one too many for any man. Now I sit and wait for the third. I wonder if I will live to see it. I don't believe, I don't believe, I don't believe in what the Great Powers do. Nurse Cavell said, 'Patriotism is not enough'. She was wrong. It is too much! It is enough for us to love and hate our neighbours as ourselves.
-
When you are young you are full of trust, but are taught all manner of things which are not true; and then, when you grow up, you have to undo it all, and think different: but you have lost your ability to trust anything taught.
-
'Ah well, there is only one way of living in this world, and that is to go on from day to day, and see what the next day bring.'
-
It was business as usual: only more so. The dog went back to its vomit and the sow to its wallowing in the mire. There was something else could have been done. I don't know quite what. I haven't the right to criticize. I remember too well how I thought at times when it comes down to rock bottom, I didn't care tuppence about anything, or anybody, except myself; and that everybody else was the same. If that is true, it is something a man should not know. It may be it was the one lesson we learnt from the Occupation; but it was the wrong lesson.
The next section of citations deals with the generally contrarian atitude of Ebenezer towards women, a subject worthy of an independent review of its own. I can't help but wonder what excruciating experiences had soured Edwards towards the gentler sex, enough to make him paint most of them as harridans and ruthless, egotistical monsters, but it must be said there are exceptions to the rules of war between sexes. Beside the angelic portraits of Ebenezer's mother and sister, I thought the tale of the great love of his life - Liza Queripel - as written here, is one of the most moving and honest romantic moments in literature.
I wonder if I would know her now, if I was to meet her in Town. I can see her yet as she was that Sunday evening with her small square chin and straight nose and her hair done up for show. She had lovely hair. It wasn't red and it wasn't gold, but in between; and she didn't have a flaw in her skin. It was smooth and rather pale, but it could flush really like a rose; and she had the mouth of an angel when she was pleased, and the mouth of a she-devil when she was vexed. She was taller than the others and they wasn't so much walking along as dancing, and their little feet was coming out like mice from under their skirts and they was singing...
-
'It don't do to know the one you're going to marry for too long,' she said, 'or nobody would get married at all. That's why I'm all for boys and girls marrying young; before they find out their mistake.'
-
He was a fool there. A man got to be careful what he say to a woman; or she will turn it upside-down and inside-out and use it as evidence against him.
-
'Is marriage only war at close quarters?'
-
I don't know what it is about women: but, for some reason, they just cannot bear to see any man, it don't matter how old he is, or of what shape, or of what size, getting along on his own.
-
All the people I have liked most in my life have been the very opposite to me. Jim, Liza, Raymond, Tabitha, my Uncle Nat: none of them was mean; but, if the truth was known, I have always been a mean little sod myself. I have always held something back, and seen to it I kept on the safe side. It is good to be shown up in your old age for what you are.
-
I have held my own against strangers and against enemies from another country; and against the double-faced behaviour of some of my own people. I have seen the funny side of things, and made a lot of people laugh; and I suppose they have thought I am the happy-go-lucky sort: but since that night I have lived without hope. I have often wondered what it is I can have done wrong to have to live for so many years without hope. It is no wonder I think a lot and am a bit funny in the head.
Last batch of quotes deal with 'it's all going down the drain' / 'get off my lawn' rants. I laughed a lot at the cranky, recalcitrant, unrepentant Ebenezer refusing to accept the transition to the new age, to miniskirts, motorcycles, cars, radio, television, banks, golf courses, lawyers, politicians, Jerseymen (crapauds), Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, and the ultimate scourge of the quiet, peace loving and hard working Guernseymen: TOURISTS!. G B Edwards was spared the even more recent scourge of billionaires hiding from the taxman on his beloved isle, or I'm sure he would have had a couple of choice patois curses to deliver especially for them. I am actually torn between my desire to set foot on the Guernsey island and walk in the footsteps of the narrator, and my respect for his desire to avoid polluting the pristine landscape with my overweight, camera toting, landmark seeking, typical tourist persona.
Guernsey is a factory for the manufacture of tourists now. [...] When I think what have happened to our island, I could sit down on the ground and cry.
-
'If you want to know human nature at its lowest and its worst,' he said to me, 'get to know it when it is on holiday.'
-
'It is time Guernsey was put on the map,' he said, butting in. 'Good God, isn't it on the map already?' I said, 'It wasn't a bad little place to live in when people didn't know where it was.'
-
She said to me, 'I am surprised you don't have the T.V. It would be company for you in the long winter evenings.' I said, 'Goodness, I don't want those sort of people in my house!' [...] If you talk to people nowadays, nothing exists unless it has been seen on T.V. It gives people the idea they have seen and know everything, when really they have seen and know nothing. It is the deadliest drug on the market. They go sky-high if the boys smoke pot. It is perpetual pot for the millions of goggle-eyed addicts who watch it nightly.
-
I thought it is him who is the old one, and me the young; for the young are born old nowadays, and it is for the old to show them how to be young again.
-
final thoughts : The Book of Ebenezer le Page is for me the perfect example of the kind of book to take on a desert island: all the wisdom of the world captured within its pages, all the wide gamut of human emotions, from hilarity to despair, from wild parties and slapstick comedy, from intense loneliness and introspecive meditations. It practically begs to be re-read time after time, to be explored in depth and to be cherished like the closest friend a man could have. It can be started anywhere: at the first page, in the middle, from the end backwards, a chapter at a time, from start to finish in a rush, any way the fancy takes you. It gives and asks little in return: to be remembered - the island and the people - as they once stood between the end of the Victorian age and the start of the new Millenium. I believe every country, every piece of land that has been blessed with the blood, the sweat and the tears of countless generations deserves its Bard, it's national poet, to capture its spirituality and its unique identity before it is lost in the lowest common denominator of the global monoculture. I'm glad I discovered G B Edwards. I hope my homecounty will one day be honored in a similar way (actually, there is a Romanian author that embarked on an equally ambitious and in my opinion succesful project, but you probably never heard of him: Radu Tudoran with his 'Sfirsit de Mileniu' saga). I will close this overlong review with a quote from Shakespeare that Ebenezer uses towards the end of his journey, a final lesson to be learned from a long life and to be passed on to the new generations, not a bad epitaph for his memorable life:
The quality of mercy is not strained: it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.
November 7, 2015
For the past month or so I have been rather MIA from goodreads (a fact many of my GR friends have pointed out. Sorry GR friends. I wasn't ignoring you; promise.). Though the reasons for this absence have been a bit varied in scope and importance, there is one undeniable fact that has overwhelmed my GR-starved brain: nerding out with awesome people on the internet about books is a mechanism that makes my life richer and more enjoyable. The complete appreciation of this fact has also made one other thing clear: my review of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page has also been woefully MIA. Not because I have some grand insight into the book that the world is missing or because the other gentlefolk inhabiting GR need or want my opinions about anything (I'm at least intelligent enough to know better), but because this book has had a ripple-like effect upon my worldview and writing a review of this book might help me synthesize this book into something I can file away in my brain with all the rest of the books I've read in my life.
I was driving home the other day. When I drive home, I typically take the same route every time unless forced to detour from construction, accidents, etc:. This is not too unusual, as most humans are creatures of habit and usually only deviate from that habit willingly when they make a conscious effort to do so. This drive home was no different than any other average drive home. Driving on the Eisenhower legacy, I'm surrounded by concrete and asphalt. It's noisy; I have to turn my radio up just to hear it over the pulse of my tires over the grooves, the wind clawing for a handhold on my car, and the shouting matches of the scores of engines from commuters racing along the same stretch of highway. I usually consider it an unpleasant experience. The false environment I'm in, the acrobatics of other drivers, and the sheer distance to travel all contributes to my commuter-induced emotional deflation. But above all, the most disheartening thing of the whole experience is the sheer man made-ness of it all. Cement, asphalt. Steel, graffiti. It's all so... unnatural. Where are the trees, the foliage swaying in the breeze, or the birds singing a tune known only to them? I regularly and acutely feel like, as Anthropologist Melvin Konner describes, a "Stone Ager in the fast lane."
But an unusual thing happened the other day. I was driving along this familiar stretch of highway, when I noticed how the angle of the sun caused the gleam on the center divide to light up in a completely vivid way. I felt like the color would be more at home in a surrealist painting than on a stretch of boring highway. Yet, it wasn't alone in its surprise. The sparkle off of the commercial buildings was almost like an active light display. I noticed for the first time, the curve of the overpass above and how it seemed to blend seamlessly into the onramp joining it. The grooves cut into the road seemed not to clash with my radio, but instead seemed to beat with a cadence in time with the music, as though that was the original intention of the construction team who created them. The cars of my fellow commuters seemed not to be acting out the bickering of a dysfunctional family, but instead seemed to be frolicking through the stream of highway in imitation of dolphins or ducks.
This was the same stretch of highway, at around the same time, on an average day. Yet, there seemed to be beauty here. Where before I saw only the hard lifelessness of the human footprint, I now saw life and beauty. It was weird! Of course, you may be thinking to yourself that I must have been on some sort of drug, or I am simply going crazy. I can assure you I was on no drug. I believe I simply, in a Proust way, saw the world with new eyes. It's not that the beauty of that stretch of highway was never there, I was simply never able to notice it.
It might seem a bit self-evident, but most of us lead very average lives. Most of us do not face the prospect of starving to death, nor can most of us hope to be associated with some great scientific stride as Darwin is to natural selection. We have some family, own some things, and work regularly to make some money in order to try and support the former two. Yet, we also live extraordinary lives. Even when we are overwhelmed by our powerlessness in a global society, we still all feel special, and rightly so. None of our families are the same, the things we own are often storied and some of them have very real intrinsic value, and the obstacles we face in our daily working lives are almost worthy of a theater play (whether comedy or tragedy). Our average, normal lives are wonder-filled insightful things which allow us, as human beings, to penetrate to the deepest questions and issues of our existence. It's not simply about new things happening in our lives, but experiencing the regular things in our lives in new ways. No matter how boring we may think we are, we are alive and by definition, experiencing and analyzing the life around us in ways we never did yesterday or the day before.
The idea behind a still life, is that it allows us to capture a freeze frame of life. Nothing, no matter what or where, will ever be the same again and a still-life reminds us of this fact while simultaneously allowing us to enjoy and experience something that no longer exists. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a still life.
Ebenezer Le Page was a normal, average guy (in his own way). He lived a normal, average life for a Guernsey inhabitant, and was content to do so. He never left the island or the community he knew. Yet through this normalcy, this mundanity, this consistency of existence, the reader sees and experiences (through Ebenezer's eyes) the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human. Simply put, Ebenezer is a point, in space and time. He is an anchor, and through him we see the world in all its terrifying and disgusting splendor. Every aspect of human existence plays out in the world of Ebenezer Le Page. Yet, there is nothing particularly special about him. The richness of insight, emotion, and life experience assaults the life of a normal, relatively boring man. Ebenezer could be anybody, but that's the point. He is everybody, and we are all him.
**This book was sent to me by the absolutely awesome Jason Morais. It is being lent to someone right now, but if anybody would like to read this book, please let me know and I will send it to you once it is available again. **
I was driving home the other day. When I drive home, I typically take the same route every time unless forced to detour from construction, accidents, etc:. This is not too unusual, as most humans are creatures of habit and usually only deviate from that habit willingly when they make a conscious effort to do so. This drive home was no different than any other average drive home. Driving on the Eisenhower legacy, I'm surrounded by concrete and asphalt. It's noisy; I have to turn my radio up just to hear it over the pulse of my tires over the grooves, the wind clawing for a handhold on my car, and the shouting matches of the scores of engines from commuters racing along the same stretch of highway. I usually consider it an unpleasant experience. The false environment I'm in, the acrobatics of other drivers, and the sheer distance to travel all contributes to my commuter-induced emotional deflation. But above all, the most disheartening thing of the whole experience is the sheer man made-ness of it all. Cement, asphalt. Steel, graffiti. It's all so... unnatural. Where are the trees, the foliage swaying in the breeze, or the birds singing a tune known only to them? I regularly and acutely feel like, as Anthropologist Melvin Konner describes, a "Stone Ager in the fast lane."
But an unusual thing happened the other day. I was driving along this familiar stretch of highway, when I noticed how the angle of the sun caused the gleam on the center divide to light up in a completely vivid way. I felt like the color would be more at home in a surrealist painting than on a stretch of boring highway. Yet, it wasn't alone in its surprise. The sparkle off of the commercial buildings was almost like an active light display. I noticed for the first time, the curve of the overpass above and how it seemed to blend seamlessly into the onramp joining it. The grooves cut into the road seemed not to clash with my radio, but instead seemed to beat with a cadence in time with the music, as though that was the original intention of the construction team who created them. The cars of my fellow commuters seemed not to be acting out the bickering of a dysfunctional family, but instead seemed to be frolicking through the stream of highway in imitation of dolphins or ducks.
This was the same stretch of highway, at around the same time, on an average day. Yet, there seemed to be beauty here. Where before I saw only the hard lifelessness of the human footprint, I now saw life and beauty. It was weird! Of course, you may be thinking to yourself that I must have been on some sort of drug, or I am simply going crazy. I can assure you I was on no drug. I believe I simply, in a Proust way, saw the world with new eyes. It's not that the beauty of that stretch of highway was never there, I was simply never able to notice it.
It might seem a bit self-evident, but most of us lead very average lives. Most of us do not face the prospect of starving to death, nor can most of us hope to be associated with some great scientific stride as Darwin is to natural selection. We have some family, own some things, and work regularly to make some money in order to try and support the former two. Yet, we also live extraordinary lives. Even when we are overwhelmed by our powerlessness in a global society, we still all feel special, and rightly so. None of our families are the same, the things we own are often storied and some of them have very real intrinsic value, and the obstacles we face in our daily working lives are almost worthy of a theater play (whether comedy or tragedy). Our average, normal lives are wonder-filled insightful things which allow us, as human beings, to penetrate to the deepest questions and issues of our existence. It's not simply about new things happening in our lives, but experiencing the regular things in our lives in new ways. No matter how boring we may think we are, we are alive and by definition, experiencing and analyzing the life around us in ways we never did yesterday or the day before.
The idea behind a still life, is that it allows us to capture a freeze frame of life. Nothing, no matter what or where, will ever be the same again and a still-life reminds us of this fact while simultaneously allowing us to enjoy and experience something that no longer exists. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a still life.
Ebenezer Le Page was a normal, average guy (in his own way). He lived a normal, average life for a Guernsey inhabitant, and was content to do so. He never left the island or the community he knew. Yet through this normalcy, this mundanity, this consistency of existence, the reader sees and experiences (through Ebenezer's eyes) the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human. Simply put, Ebenezer is a point, in space and time. He is an anchor, and through him we see the world in all its terrifying and disgusting splendor. Every aspect of human existence plays out in the world of Ebenezer Le Page. Yet, there is nothing particularly special about him. The richness of insight, emotion, and life experience assaults the life of a normal, relatively boring man. Ebenezer could be anybody, but that's the point. He is everybody, and we are all him.
**This book was sent to me by the absolutely awesome Jason Morais. It is being lent to someone right now, but if anybody would like to read this book, please let me know and I will send it to you once it is available again. **
February 26, 2017
Out of my current Goodreads friends, only one person has given this 3 stars. One person has given this 4 stars. The rest, an overwhelming number really, has given this 5 stars.
And then there's me. A curmudgeon like Ebenezer Le Page himself, all poopy-butt over the fact that Ebenezer Le Page did not interest me in the least.
Le Page is an elderly Guernseyman reflecting upon his life, because men reflecting on their lives is a thing that has never been done before. I've long wondered what it is like to be a man because no one has ever written about that in literature, so for that reason alone, this was an insightful book. In all seriousness though, I will admit I appreciated the setting of this book being on the Channel Island of Guernsey because that truthfully is not a place that comes up very often. (And don't mention that Potato Peel book because I haven't read it yet and also I know where it takes place.)
I like island life. Some of you who have followed me for a while or know me in person know that my partner has family in Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean. We've visited a few times over the years, and while I've been to many different places in the country and in Europe, there's this strange collective thing that happens on islands that I can't quite put my finger on. In some way it has to do with the fact that because it's a more isolated space, everyone knows each other in some capacity because many (at least the older generations) rarely leave the island. Or they're related, distantly or not-so-distantly. Or they're pirates and are well-known throughout the island because pirates. Everyone knows each others' stories, something that is beautiful and annoying all at the same time because the insularity can sometimes be really glaring there.
Le Page writes about island life too, and in great detail. There are a lot of similarities, though the islands are different. Everyone on Le Page's island is related in some way, and he likes to tell us about each of them. When you're in person with people who want to tell their stories is they engage you. They draw you in with their gestures, the faces they make, the way they put their hand on your arm for emphasis or just for help crossing the street. You're there, even if you weren't there for the origins of the story.
Unfortunately I didn't get any of that engagement while reading Le Page's story. The closest I got was in his tellings of his friend, Jim, but that was short-lived and none of the other stories connected with me, not even the Occupation of the island. Corsica also had an Occupation and I have heard the stories directly from the mouths of the people affected and it's terrifying and awful, especially when you're standing in the same space where things happened to them as they tell you the stories.
Le Page tells his stories so far removed from them and without much emotion that I found it hard to reach them in any emotional manner as a reader. I am glad that other readers have this almost visceral response to this book, but I found it a complete drag. I have learned that these stories that are really just someone blabbing about the people in their neighborhood or whatever are really a drag to me. Somebody do something is all I can really think as I read.
I don't mind curmudgeons. As I am one myself, I thought I'd be able to connect to Le Page on that level at least, but other than agreeing on one or two things (like agreeing that people just don't need to have cars, it's such a waste, and tourists really are the bane of any existence, even when they're a necessary evil), I found all of his curmudgeonly statements terribly uninteresting. Again, maybe it's a matter of been-there-done-that, curmudgeonly white men talking about their white men lives and white men experiences, and how that still can't be transcended when the locale is in the English Channel.
I wanted to enjoy this more; I found myself irritated with having to pick it up, but kept doing so in the hopes that I would feel something, anything by the end. Instead, today as I read the last few chapters, I found myself putting the book down after each chapter and looking at my phone, clipping my nails, going for more water, playing with the dogs. I would do anything between those last few chapters than actually want to pick the book back up and finish reading, even though I was so painfully close to the end.
Edwards was, I understand, planning on writing two other books, so this would have been a trilogy. I'm sorry for all of you who loved the shit out of this book that that never happened, because you all deserve having more books you like to read. Personally, though, I could not imagine being in any way drawn to pick up either of the other two books if they did exist. Is it Edwards' writing? Is it Le Page's "voice"? I don't know, and worse - I don't even really care.
I don't expect anyone to agree with me, and I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this because clearly a lot of people really love it. I'm just not one of them.
And then there's me. A curmudgeon like Ebenezer Le Page himself, all poopy-butt over the fact that Ebenezer Le Page did not interest me in the least.
Le Page is an elderly Guernseyman reflecting upon his life, because men reflecting on their lives is a thing that has never been done before. I've long wondered what it is like to be a man because no one has ever written about that in literature, so for that reason alone, this was an insightful book. In all seriousness though, I will admit I appreciated the setting of this book being on the Channel Island of Guernsey because that truthfully is not a place that comes up very often. (And don't mention that Potato Peel book because I haven't read it yet and also I know where it takes place.)
I like island life. Some of you who have followed me for a while or know me in person know that my partner has family in Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean. We've visited a few times over the years, and while I've been to many different places in the country and in Europe, there's this strange collective thing that happens on islands that I can't quite put my finger on. In some way it has to do with the fact that because it's a more isolated space, everyone knows each other in some capacity because many (at least the older generations) rarely leave the island. Or they're related, distantly or not-so-distantly. Or they're pirates and are well-known throughout the island because pirates. Everyone knows each others' stories, something that is beautiful and annoying all at the same time because the insularity can sometimes be really glaring there.
Le Page writes about island life too, and in great detail. There are a lot of similarities, though the islands are different. Everyone on Le Page's island is related in some way, and he likes to tell us about each of them. When you're in person with people who want to tell their stories is they engage you. They draw you in with their gestures, the faces they make, the way they put their hand on your arm for emphasis or just for help crossing the street. You're there, even if you weren't there for the origins of the story.
Unfortunately I didn't get any of that engagement while reading Le Page's story. The closest I got was in his tellings of his friend, Jim, but that was short-lived and none of the other stories connected with me, not even the Occupation of the island. Corsica also had an Occupation and I have heard the stories directly from the mouths of the people affected and it's terrifying and awful, especially when you're standing in the same space where things happened to them as they tell you the stories.
Le Page tells his stories so far removed from them and without much emotion that I found it hard to reach them in any emotional manner as a reader. I am glad that other readers have this almost visceral response to this book, but I found it a complete drag. I have learned that these stories that are really just someone blabbing about the people in their neighborhood or whatever are really a drag to me. Somebody do something is all I can really think as I read.
I don't mind curmudgeons. As I am one myself, I thought I'd be able to connect to Le Page on that level at least, but other than agreeing on one or two things (like agreeing that people just don't need to have cars, it's such a waste, and tourists really are the bane of any existence, even when they're a necessary evil), I found all of his curmudgeonly statements terribly uninteresting. Again, maybe it's a matter of been-there-done-that, curmudgeonly white men talking about their white men lives and white men experiences, and how that still can't be transcended when the locale is in the English Channel.
I wanted to enjoy this more; I found myself irritated with having to pick it up, but kept doing so in the hopes that I would feel something, anything by the end. Instead, today as I read the last few chapters, I found myself putting the book down after each chapter and looking at my phone, clipping my nails, going for more water, playing with the dogs. I would do anything between those last few chapters than actually want to pick the book back up and finish reading, even though I was so painfully close to the end.
Edwards was, I understand, planning on writing two other books, so this would have been a trilogy. I'm sorry for all of you who loved the shit out of this book that that never happened, because you all deserve having more books you like to read. Personally, though, I could not imagine being in any way drawn to pick up either of the other two books if they did exist. Is it Edwards' writing? Is it Le Page's "voice"? I don't know, and worse - I don't even really care.
I don't expect anyone to agree with me, and I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this because clearly a lot of people really love it. I'm just not one of them.
June 2, 2016
. . . its voice and method are so unusual that it belongs nowhere on our conventional literary maps.writes John Fowles in the introduction to this epic novel about Guernseyman Ebenezer La Page. The sweep of this life comes with every possible detail and name of friends and relations imaginable (and it seems most people on Guernsey, an island world unto itself in the English Channel, are somehow related). Ebenezer writes his life story as one might speak it over decades of kitchen table chatter to a very good friend. Being that friend—the reader—could be overwhelming—especially because it was impossible to remember who everybody is—but it is not. It is deeply affecting.
This book is not just a journey through somebody else's life, but through a land that is as much a character in the story as any of the people. I don't think I will ever forget this reading experience.
To see more comprehensive reviews of this nearly indescribable book, I defer to my Goodreads friends, on whose opinions I relied and therefore bucked my bias against loose-woven writing: Dolors, Margitte, and Steve.
I read this as an ebook; I would recommend reading it as a paper book. I didn't even realize there was a glossary until I got to the end.
December 2, 2014
I really enjoyed my week with Ebenezer. I even found time for him during the busy holiday. His book was one of those rare books that I didn't want to end, but I also didn't want to stop reading.
Other readers have written superb reviews that make it unnecessary for me to write one of my own. My advice to any potential reader is to take a look at those reviews.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
It was Margitte's fantastic, heartfelt championing of the book that led me to read it. Later, I read the excellent, thought-provoking reviews of sckenda, Steve, and Algernon.
Even if you decide not to read the book, I think you will profit from reading what they have to say.
Other readers have written superb reviews that make it unnecessary for me to write one of my own. My advice to any potential reader is to take a look at those reviews.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
It was Margitte's fantastic, heartfelt championing of the book that led me to read it. Later, I read the excellent, thought-provoking reviews of sckenda, Steve, and Algernon.
Even if you decide not to read the book, I think you will profit from reading what they have to say.
October 29, 2013
Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them.
- Marcel Proust
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page was completed in 1974; it was never seen published by its author, Gerald Basil Edwards (1899-1976)
Ebenezer's memoir relates provincial life on the Isle of Guernsey, in gradual inevitable motion, affected by The Great War and the German Occupation in WWII, on toward the second half of the twentieth century. His haunted memories are ironic, humorous, melancholic, deeply touching and securely kept all those years in a place of loneliness. His thoughts pour out unchecked, his remembrances ramble into each chapter with dissolute abandon and run unrestrained as time passes unnoticeably.
He notes the changes on the island, the Guernsey life he has loved and lived- of cows and farms and close relationships, its community of people whom for generations have been on the island, such that perhaps inbreeding might have occurred more frequently than said. He acknowledges begrudgingly, the unstoppable process that, by devastation of war and the loss of loved ones, is slowly replacing the old. This is difficult to consider for Ebenezer, the oldest citizen on Guernsey.
He is an ornery soul, difficult to budge from his set ways, sometimes pessimistic and bad tempered, tough of spirit, intensely self-sufficient and loyal to his friends. But there's something about his agedness that's wise and sincere; the reader realizes it comes from a good heart.
G.B.Edwards blended prose with the native patois and idiomatic English, making the story so authentic to Guernsey life, some critics have said the novel may be autobiographic. Ebenezer's frankness and humor, the arduous labor and the foolishness all lend originality: “I didn’t want to wake up and find myself dead;" or "It take all sorts to make a world, my boy; or you, for one, wouldn’t be allowed to live in it. " My favorite 'Ebenezerism': "Whatever you do in this life, keep away from doctors and lawyers or else you'll end up dead and have nothing left."
Within the novel emotion is wholly recognized through a life of anger, deprivation and sobering loneliness. There is regret for the loss of his friends slaughtered during the two World Wars, and the loss for the opportunity to have spent his long life with the woman he had always loved.
As Ebenezer wraps up his book, he reflects on his life's worth with sentimentality, and dares to hope with the powerful spirit that he has lived with all his life.
- Marcel Proust
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page was completed in 1974; it was never seen published by its author, Gerald Basil Edwards (1899-1976)
Ebenezer's memoir relates provincial life on the Isle of Guernsey, in gradual inevitable motion, affected by The Great War and the German Occupation in WWII, on toward the second half of the twentieth century. His haunted memories are ironic, humorous, melancholic, deeply touching and securely kept all those years in a place of loneliness. His thoughts pour out unchecked, his remembrances ramble into each chapter with dissolute abandon and run unrestrained as time passes unnoticeably.
He notes the changes on the island, the Guernsey life he has loved and lived- of cows and farms and close relationships, its community of people whom for generations have been on the island, such that perhaps inbreeding might have occurred more frequently than said. He acknowledges begrudgingly, the unstoppable process that, by devastation of war and the loss of loved ones, is slowly replacing the old. This is difficult to consider for Ebenezer, the oldest citizen on Guernsey.
He is an ornery soul, difficult to budge from his set ways, sometimes pessimistic and bad tempered, tough of spirit, intensely self-sufficient and loyal to his friends. But there's something about his agedness that's wise and sincere; the reader realizes it comes from a good heart.
I doubt everything I hear, even if I say it myself; and, after things I have been through and seen happen to other people on this island and known to have happened in the world, I sometimes wonder about the existence of God: but I know I am Ebenezer Le Page.
G.B.Edwards blended prose with the native patois and idiomatic English, making the story so authentic to Guernsey life, some critics have said the novel may be autobiographic. Ebenezer's frankness and humor, the arduous labor and the foolishness all lend originality: “I didn’t want to wake up and find myself dead;" or "It take all sorts to make a world, my boy; or you, for one, wouldn’t be allowed to live in it. " My favorite 'Ebenezerism': "Whatever you do in this life, keep away from doctors and lawyers or else you'll end up dead and have nothing left."
Within the novel emotion is wholly recognized through a life of anger, deprivation and sobering loneliness. There is regret for the loss of his friends slaughtered during the two World Wars, and the loss for the opportunity to have spent his long life with the woman he had always loved.
As Ebenezer wraps up his book, he reflects on his life's worth with sentimentality, and dares to hope with the powerful spirit that he has lived with all his life.
I don't want to die me! I want to stop alive for ever, if only to see the ships pass… But now it is death and what come after I am thinking of....I wish I could live my life again. I wish I could write my story again. I have judged people. I want to bless. I want to bless every soul who has ever lived and laughed and suffered on this whore of an island, this island in the sun, this Island in God's sea...
Ah well, that is all for now. À la prochaine!
December 21, 2012
My impression of Guernsey, from spending a few weeks there as a journalist some years back, was that it was an island with sixty-five thousand people and barely a dozen surnames between them. You get the same idea reading The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, all the characters of which are continually discovered to be distant third or fourth cousins of each other. I like this novel, but it didn't make quite the impression on me that it seems to have made on others – I wonder if the dramatic story of how it came to light at the very end of the author's life just made me want it to be more than it is. What it is is enough – a good book with a likeable and genuine central character.
It has the feel of a sprawling family saga, even though it only covers the lifespan of one (enviably long-lived) Guernseyman down to the 1960s. The narrative mode is simple and declarative, and a good example (pace the advice of countless writers' groups) that telling rather than showing can be a nicely effective way of writing a novel when the narrative voice is sufficiently interesting. Themes and encounters occur and recur in different iterations through the story as Ebenezer circles around the things that seem to have had the most meaning for him. Although he is not a big thinker – he's a practical person rather than a philosopher – he still reasons his way to a kind of simple epiphany at the end, and in fact the ending is one of the most accomplished and moving parts of the book. The language throughout is simple but endearing, larded with Guernsey terms like ‘ormering’, ‘terpid’ or ‘green-bed’ as well as with flashes of that peculiar Romance dialect called by Ebenezer patois and known to linguists as Guernésiais. It's certainly the most interesting novel to come out of Guernsey since Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la Mer , and contains an interesting potted history of the island through two world wars and the start of the tourism boom. It's a good old-fashioned novel – wise, gentle, engaging, and a window on a part of Europe and a style of life that doesn't usually get much literary attention.
It has the feel of a sprawling family saga, even though it only covers the lifespan of one (enviably long-lived) Guernseyman down to the 1960s. The narrative mode is simple and declarative, and a good example (pace the advice of countless writers' groups) that telling rather than showing can be a nicely effective way of writing a novel when the narrative voice is sufficiently interesting. Themes and encounters occur and recur in different iterations through the story as Ebenezer circles around the things that seem to have had the most meaning for him. Although he is not a big thinker – he's a practical person rather than a philosopher – he still reasons his way to a kind of simple epiphany at the end, and in fact the ending is one of the most accomplished and moving parts of the book. The language throughout is simple but endearing, larded with Guernsey terms like ‘ormering’, ‘terpid’ or ‘green-bed’ as well as with flashes of that peculiar Romance dialect called by Ebenezer patois and known to linguists as Guernésiais. It's certainly the most interesting novel to come out of Guernsey since Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la Mer , and contains an interesting potted history of the island through two world wars and the start of the tourism boom. It's a good old-fashioned novel – wise, gentle, engaging, and a window on a part of Europe and a style of life that doesn't usually get much literary attention.
![area of the world](http://i1276.photobucket.com/albums/y472/ancatdubh2/guernsey_zps38110dd6.jpg""){kind=link}
July 31, 2019
Imagine the scene: you enter an old pub in Guernsey and order a locally brewed ale. You look around and notice that most of the seats are taken. Over in one corner there is an unoccupied stool, next to an old man who appears to be alone. You too are alone and wouldn't mind a bit of company so, pint in hand, you go over and ask if he'd mind you sitting there. He appears quite pleased to have someone to talk to and the outlines of a conversation are lightly sketched. Soon the dialogue becomes more of a monologue, but you don't mind because he is quite a teller of tales and his language, impregnated with the local dialect, is rich and lyrical.
He tells you about his mother, a devoutly religious woman; about the petty rivalry between his aunts and his friendship with his cousins one of whom, Raymond, was a particularly close confidant. He tells you too about his great pal Jim Mahy and some of what he says makes you wonder if it was a little more like a love affair than a mere friendship and you start to wonder about a lot of what he is telling you especially when at one point he says that he has tried to tell you the worst about himself, as well as the best "but you got to read between the lines". You wonder too about his long, quarrelsome, unresolved relationship with Liza Queripel, the one woman - of the many he has had "under the hedge" - whom he would have married, if only she had agreed. She never married and he never married and so his funny old life story progresses; always interesting even when, as is often the case, nothing very eventful is happening. But his way of telling every detail is utterly beguiling and there is, in any case, much that is epic in local events (as the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote when pondering the significance of a local dispute:
"Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance".)
When he tells you about the friendship that develops in his old age you are again agreeably surprised, and I could spoil that surprise by giving you the details here. But it would be much better if you heard it from the man himself. So pull up a chair, get yourself a pint of bitter and let old Ebenezer tell you his story, in his leisurely and unique way.
He tells you about his mother, a devoutly religious woman; about the petty rivalry between his aunts and his friendship with his cousins one of whom, Raymond, was a particularly close confidant. He tells you too about his great pal Jim Mahy and some of what he says makes you wonder if it was a little more like a love affair than a mere friendship and you start to wonder about a lot of what he is telling you especially when at one point he says that he has tried to tell you the worst about himself, as well as the best "but you got to read between the lines". You wonder too about his long, quarrelsome, unresolved relationship with Liza Queripel, the one woman - of the many he has had "under the hedge" - whom he would have married, if only she had agreed. She never married and he never married and so his funny old life story progresses; always interesting even when, as is often the case, nothing very eventful is happening. But his way of telling every detail is utterly beguiling and there is, in any case, much that is epic in local events (as the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote when pondering the significance of a local dispute:
"Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance".)
When he tells you about the friendship that develops in his old age you are again agreeably surprised, and I could spoil that surprise by giving you the details here. But it would be much better if you heard it from the man himself. So pull up a chair, get yourself a pint of bitter and let old Ebenezer tell you his story, in his leisurely and unique way.
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