In my memorial catch-up read to bring myself up to date with all of Christopher Priest’s books, I came to The Separation. I am a sucker for alternate histories and this did not disappoint. (Warning: some spoilers may follow.)
On a dismal March afternoon in 1999, a military historian is doing a signing session in a bookshop in the Derbyshire spa town of Buxton, in the Peak District. A customer comes into the shop and offers him her father’s wartime memoirs, detailing his experiences in RAF Bomber Command. But we find that the account in the memoir seems to be from an alternate reality.
The author researches further and uncovers a story of two identical twins, Joe and Jack Sawyer, both known (confusingly) as J.L. Sawyer. In their day, they won medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics for rowing; but war separates them. One becomes a bomber pilot; the other a conscientious objector, who ends up working for the Red Cross. Both become embroiled with the defection to Britain of the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess – but each has a very different experience of the same event.
But the two timelines aren’t irretrievably separated; although their differing attitudes to war cause a rift between the two brothers, their separation and those of the timelines aren’t total. Things are complicated by their relationship with Birgit, a Jewish refugee that the two brothers smuggle out of Germany after the Olympics. Both love her; one marries her. Events take tragic turns in each timeline; yet the timelines are intertwined, leading to dislocating events for both brothers.
The themes of identity and duplication re-appear here, as in Priest’s earlier novel The Prestige. We also see themes of dislocation and whether what an individual is experiencing at any one time is real or not. At the same time, Priest’s grasp of detail is very good; I detected only a handful of minor errors or omissions, no more than you would get in any other memoir of historical events written in our reality by a real person. We are treated to pen portraits of Churchill and Hess; the pacifist brother’s reaction to Churchill is interesting, as he considers Churchill to be a despicable warmonger, and yet when he hears him speak he cannot but fail to be moved by his determination and steadfastness. (There is also an account, as from the official minutes, of a key meeting of Churchill’s War Cabinet which I found very amusing.) Even these major characters display separations; Churchill uses body doubles so that he can appear be in two places at the same time, whilst JL (the pilot) sees two different instances of Hess’ flight to Britain, though there are different explanations for the events he sees.
As the novel was set, partly, in places I know well (Buxton, Bakewell and Lincolnshire), it started by giving me a great sense of presence which persisted for me through the rest of the book. There is also an account of the drafting of a major international treaty which struck me as a very likely depiction of how these things happen in real life. (I suspect that one of Priest’s sources was the diary of John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary during the war years, as he is namechecked in the book.) There is a minor loose end which isn’t adequately explained, but it’s incidental to the story and doesn’t really impact on the narrative.
Perhaps the thing that I was most worried about as the book drew to a close was the instance of Priest’s framing device, the military historian. I could not see how that was going to be closed; yet it was, in an ingenious way. I said that the alternate histories were intertwined instead of being discrete, and that might cause some readers expecting a literal or more science-fictional approach to the subject to have trouble with this book. Yet I am often struck, on looking at old films or photographs of cities, or travelling by train to another town or even another country, by all the individuals I see in passing. They all have their own lives, which I know nothing about. I see them once, and then they are gone from my view. From their viewpoint, the same could be said of me. Is not each of these lives a separate alternate reality, a parallel history affected in different ways by the same events?
The intertwining timelines in this novel have a certain inevitability about them; the parts fit together with elegance even if the impacts on the two protagonists are life-changing. I found this a most intriguing exploration of history and the effects of separations on both private lives and great events.
Deep Waters Reading 