Well, I do know that this book, Mr. Ames Against Time, by Philip Child, struck me as a little bit melodramatic. Just a wee bit. Perhaps that is what put me off to it. I can't say that I hated it, because I didn't, and it is rare that I hate a book that wins one of these prizes, for I try so very hard to like them at least a little bit. I just didn't love it. It didn't knock me off my feet. Right now I need a KNOCK ME OFF MY FEET kind of book, too.
Mr. Ames is an elderly gentleman who has a son who is involved with the wrong man, the local gangster/hustler. Mr. Ames wishes that his son would be removed from this life, and even goes to the man, Sol Mower, and begs for his son to be released from his service. It is not meant to be, and the situation becomes rapidly worse for everyone involved. Mower has his eyes on Mike Ames' fiance, the beautiful Bernie Avery. Bernie and Mike want to get out from under Mower's thumb, but before that can happen, Mower is poisoned to death and in the throes of dying, names Mike as his killer. Mr. Ames is present for this deathbed confession, and when called to the witness stand, being the ever honest person he is, he confesses that this is what he heard. It, in effect, sends his quite innocent son to the gallows. Mr. Ames spends the rest of the book trying to discover who is the real killer to save his son from the fate that he feels he is completely responsible for. This involves Bernie's father, Moulton Avery, a drunk and hanger-on of Sol's, and Arthur "Smoke," a sometime hitman/two-bit crook/sociopath that is also involved with the Mower enterprise. Smoke was saved as a young boy from the clutches of that which plagues his family(his family is famous for having the criminal gene according to the book)by Mr. Ames, so he feels a little bit indebted to him, but Smoke also doesn't want to go to jail himself. It is his love for Bernie first, but also in the end he caves to what is right.
Child's novel focuses on all the characters in the book as they go through their own personal struggles in order to attempt to save Mike Ames from the gallows or to save themselves from that same destiny. The internal psychological struggles are well-posited, and interesting, but perhaps it is the writing that is too much. It reminds me a lot of when my sister and I watched A Summer Place over ten years ago now. Everyone, for the most part, knows the theme from
A Summer Place, composed by Max Steiner; it's so completely and totally over the top that it sends shivers down your spine. The movie, however is also just like that. At the time(the movie came out in 1959, 10 years after Mr. Ames was published out), it was extremely risque, and was even rated X for its then explicit immoral content. My sister and I wanted to see it(I'm actually pretty sure it was just me who wanted to see it, and my sister, just wanting to spend time with me, wanted to see it mainly for that reason), and found ourselves laughing at and spoofing the over-emotional aspects of the film. This is odd for me, because I usually eat things of a romantic nature up, I've always been a huge Gone With the Wind/Anne of Green Gables/Pride and Prejudice fan, I love the romantic composers with their big, blowsy, over the top pieces. For whatever reason, Mr. Ames Against Time didn't do it for me. Maybe I felt it was trying a little too hard?
One of the other difficulties I had with the book was the fact that I was never really sure exactly where it took place, in Canada or even in the States. My guess is that it took place in the city of Toronto, but that is only an educated guess. This takes away from the book a little, in my opinion. One of the things that can be wonderful about the prize novels is that when they are situated in a specific location, it shows the inner workings of a people in an area, and not only how people are unique to a particular location, but how humankind is NOT unique to a particular location, and despite where we live, we all go through similar struggles with our sense of self, and how we fit into the greater, universal community of people. Mr. Ames definitely focuses on the latter, but because I didn't feel grounded in the former, I spent a few pages going, "Where the fuck does this take place?" so that was wasted energy on my part I suppose. Another difficulty I had with the book was that I struggled to fit it into a prize-winning context. Most books I can at least find something that fits it in nicely(i.e. this is the book about politics, this is the book about the French-Canadian/English-Canadian struggle, this is the book about interracial marriage in the South, etc.), this one I had a hard time figuring out its place. Perhaps, though, that its place is the universal struggles we all face as we come to terms with our lives and the choices that we make. In that case, I guess I can throw this novel a bone.
There were some really thought provoking quotes in it, though. The first one that I liked was when Mr. Ames' landlady is talking to Bernie Avery about a woman's place in society and how much it totally sucks, and how she may have to sleep with Smoke to get information out of him in order to save Mike.
"'Mike's your man, ain't he?' demanded Prancy. 'All right, then, you gotta shoot the works for him. Listen, Bernie, a woman's job ain't play in this world. Bearing babies, bringin' them up, keepin' your man going', givin' life and helpin' them you love to die, stickin' to them and seein' em through come what may--that's a woman's job. A hard, sweatin;, heartbreakin' job, Bernie, and a dirty job sometimes too! Men never see things like they really are. Always makin' dreams about things. Makin' gods out of themselves and ladies outa women!'" (180).
At one point Smoke is running away, after he watches another character, Gipsy, die and gets the real story of his mother from the nurse who took care of her before she died. Smoke has big time abandonment issues towards his mother. The quote is:"He began to run down the alley. But why he ran he could not tell. For what was the good of running; you couldn't get away from yourself." (218)
My spirituality has become especially heightened in the past nearly two years, but certainly in the past six months. And Mr. Ames at one point in the book seems to think a little bit like I have now for quite a while, possibly my whole life. I like what he thinks here:
"...Supposing, thought Mr. Ames, we were able for only one instant to forget the ending of life; or supposing, even if only for one instant we could feel with all our being that everything we suffer and all the mistakes we make and the sins we do that corrupt and alter us--do not change us forever, but are like chisel cuts carving stone into something that has a wonderful meaning." (236)
A few pages later he continues this thought.
"Leaving the underworld gloom of the shop Mr. Ames looked up toward the clear sky which people thought of as empty space without end except for the stars and planets, and he wondered where prayers were answered from. For answered they were sometimes, though how or by "whom," or why sometimes they were not answered, Mr. Ames did not know. He did not believe that God would put out His finger to stop the minute hand of a watch in order to prove something to Mr. Ames. You could not "see" God and He did not give "signs." All the same, perhaps He did put out His finger and stop time, working a miracle through men's hearts and minds. "Working it in my mind, giving me courage," thought Mr. Ames. "The watch stopping at twelve isn't a sign; that was chance, coincidence. No, not quite. Everything has a purpose, and that was to make me think--what I've just thought."(238)
And a few pages later...
"...No. A new soul for Mr. Avery--or rather a freed soul. Out of his agony, freedom. Out of his agony and out of ours (since we are all bound together beyond separation)--freedom.
And it seemed to Mr. Ames, at that instant, that the birth of all living souls was one birth--all one birth. A life was born--no, say rather, life itself was born. It was a thing to make you stop still and quiet in sudden awe when at last you really understood that prayer was answered from that same place wherever it might be (though all you could see with your eyes was blue, empty sky) from which life itself came into this planet of lifeless rock. Surely the one was as much a miracle as the other, and perhaps, even, they were the same miracle, coming from the desire of the Spirit...And time. Why, if this is so, then there is all the time in the world, thought Mr. Ames suddenly. Or rather, there isn't any time at all, really; only eternity. Is it all planned from the beginning, even the anguish?
[]
'As if we were all one person,' he muttered. 'so that a lost soul is a soul lost from us all, something strayed from our Maker's Wholeness, that must come back some day.' (241)
The last quote is a little bit of a similar thought process to an idea in Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, one that I very much subscribe to when looking at and living my own spiritual life. According to it, when the world was created, G-d took the fresh new light he had made and poured it into each of the vessels of the spheres of the universe. But the light was too powerful and the vessels shattered and burst and the light spilled out all over the universe, embedding themselves in everything. Since then, the light has always strove to return to the Source, and when we do a mitzvah(a good deed) we awaken the sparks of light and the light rises, returning to the Source. In this way, we can start to heal the brokenness of this world, with one mitzvah at a time, as G-d redeems us.
This book has a clearly Christian message, which is made all the more emphatic by a poem written(by the author??) and included at the end as a "Postlude" called "Descent for the Lost", where it talks about the relationship between Judas and Christ, and how Judas challenges Christ's love for him because of what he did to his G-d. In this way, I suppose you could look at Mr. Ames as kind of a Christ-like figure and Smoke as the Judas in the novel, though at the end, Smoke as Judas redeems Mike Ames and therefore Mr. Ames, but also, in the effort of saving a child from a burning house, does a mitzvah, and perhaps is himself redeemed. Who knows, right?
P.S. This blog was actually finished on April 25th though it will have a date of 4/21 or something attached to it. Plus, all the formatting is totally fucked up and I have no idea how to fix it. I will try at a later date to do so. My apologies to anyone forced to read it.:)
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