John Boyne’s novel, the first of four based on the elements, is a journey with a woman who is trying to find her way forward after an horrific experience. She can only do this by looking back and understanding something about herself while she does so. As a senior teacher in a London school many years ago, there was an awful morning when it was reported to me that one of our students had divulged to her form teacher that she had been abused. The abuse had gone on for several years and the person doing it was her father.
The police and social services were called, and our processes activated to ensure that the girl was safe and that, while the process was never going to be painless, as little future damage would occur to the victim or any other children at risk.
Sadly, this was not the only case of child abuse which I encountered, but there were two things in this case which have lasted with me since the days in which they happened.
The first was in the late morning when the abuse had been reported. The mother of the girl arrived in the entrance of the school. She started shouting that she wanted to see ‘that lying bitch’. All her anger was directed at her daughter. Trying to calm her down was pointless and she only left the premises once she was assured her daughter was no longer there.
This all seemed shocking at the time, but over time it is easy to understand what led to her anger. In a short period, presumably when the police arrived at their door, her whole life had collapsed. She had lost a family (the other children were all taken into care that morning), she had lost a husband and she had lost her standing, whatever that was, in the community in which she lived.
The second thing was when I attended a case conference at Great Ormand Street Childrens’ Hospital related to the case. After a rather heated conversation between the social work team and the police about ‘responsibility’ within the family, a psychiatrist took me aside and said, ‘In 90% of cases, the mother knows’. I don’t know whether this is true, but it stuck in my mind and reminded me of the morning when the angry mother had arrived at the school wanting to ‘kill that lying bitch’.
John Boyne’s novel is about a woman who is trying to survive a trauma as great as the one I have described. Her response is to run away to an island off the coast of Ireland, change her name and spend some time to think. She needs to think about the horrors which her husband inflicted, but she also needs to think about herself and if she is guilty of any of the things people in the press and the social media have accused her.
Her reflections are helped by the fact that seemingly no-one recognises her from the stories in the media and she spends time developing muted relations with the islanders. What she is trying to understand is the nature of guilt and whether she should feel it.
It is a moving book and certainly places beside the character as she tries to deal with what has happened. John Boyne manages to create feelings in his work which move between anger and hopefulness and despair.
As she tries to resolve her life, she learns lessons about herself and, perhaps, knows more of who she is than she ever did before.
This is a novel which uses the external as well as the internal to deftly describe the conflict which must be the experience of those caught within the nightmare of child abuse. The child, of course, must take priority, but the damage which abusers do extends well beyond their victims. Boyne’s novel is an attempt to recognise this and begins to address how, at least, one person tries to deal with the aftermath.
(In Australia it is reported that over 45,000 children had been abused in the year 2021-2022. 90% of child abuse happens within the home.)
