The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin Review

This is a novel set in Argentina in the 1980s about a young gay man called Richard who is half Argentinian and half English.
Following the death of his father, Richard is brought up by his proudly English mother, and as he comes to adulthood he continues living with her in their low rent apartment, working at an undistinguished job at a language school. He lives a quiet, somewhat lonely life, satisfying his sexual urges with furtive, anonymous visits to saunas.

Although the "disappearances" - the secret arrests, torture and probable murders of political dissidents goes on around him, he claims, in retrospect, to have very little awareness of this and is later shamed when angrily challenged that he must have known about the disappearance of a girl he studied with. He seems to move through his world in a kind of fog, to be curiously disengaged. Ironically, it is when he is caught up in the patriotic fervour of Argentina's war with Britain that he feels truly and proudly Argentinian. That he is both of Argentina and yet something of an outsider, speaking perfect English, with an English accent is what draws the attention of an American diplomatic couple Susan and Donald who find work for him, when he finally walks out of the hated language school. Although his life takes on a new dimension, he still remains within his mother's fusty apartment, which he neglects to alter in any way, though he feels embarassed on the rare occasions he brings anyone back. The apartment seems to symbolise some kind of refusal to grow up, to fully live in the world.

Through the first two thirds of the book, we watch Richard floating on the edges of power, of the changes that are taking place in his country, partly through his agency. He remains fairly apolitical, though he is sickened when Susan confesses that she and her husband were in Chile, during the time of Pinochet's brutal repression and did nothing. Through Richard's eyes we gains some interesting impressions of Argentina during that period, though always from a certain distance.

In the last third of the book, the tone changes, becomes more focused and gripping, as Richard finally becomes emotionally engaged and is astonished to experience love, happiness and vulnerability. Harsh realities intrude but he does finally repaint his apartment and we get the sense he is finally, fully alive fully himself.

A delicate, subtle, sad and romantic book, whose meandering progress mimics the drifting quality of the hero's life and somehow draws you deep into the world of this elusive individual.

Romulus and Remus

I've just published a new article on Romulus and Remus, basically giving an account of Livy's version of the story and briefly exploring the relevance it would have had to Livy, who had seen Rome suffer through years of civil war.

It's an interesting story that I might like to explore in more depth, at some point - why would a civilisation have, as their founding myth, the story of one brother killing another? It is remniscient of the story of Cain and Abel of course but also of the Romans' relish of the idea of their own nastiness. Their early history is full of stories of heroic men who put loyalty to the city above family ties, such as the Horatii, who killed their sister because she loved an enemy of Rome. By killing Remus, as he disrespected the walls of the city, in essence invading, Romulus was setting a precedent of protecting the city's boundariesat all costs.

I wonder if the killing of Remus could also be interpreted as a sacrifice to propitiate the gods at the founding of the city, or so that his spirit would be embedded as protector  - an idea that seems to lie deep in many ancient belief systems (or else I've been reading too much Peter Ackroyd on London or Alan Moore on Northampton.

I've started to read a book on the myth by T. P Wiseman Remus: A Roman Myth and I'll come back with a review.