Most readers will be familiar with the novel Chocolat from about the year 2000 and the delightful film that followed later starring Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp and Judi Dench. This was maybe my first foray into magic realism, long before I knew the term and I eagerly lapped up the subsequent books following the same attractive themes.
And then the books went rather weird. I like weird but somehow they became too unsettling. When I ventured into a new Joanne Harris world of crime set in a school, well then the stories became grim and I stopped reading her work at all.
So, why Broken Light? Well, for the rather dull reason that it had one of Waterstones labels on it: buy one, get one half price. And, maybe I thought it was time to give Joanne Harris another chance. I think I’m glad I did! This is strange but in a different way. There is plenty of magic realism going on but also the agenda that the author has aligned herself with over the last few years. There is heavy feminism, misogyny and misandry weigh in heavily and then there is also the trans debate. If you are aware of JK Rowling’s highly profiled opinions on the subject, then consider Joanne Harris as the antithesis of these. Apparently the two authors don’t just disagree but are positively antagonistic towards each other.
So, what Broken Light offers you is a powerful story of one woman’s metaphorical journey (Bernie Moon) from feeling invisible to ‘being seen.’ It is heavy with the author’s agenda but she writes so well that the reader almost forgives her!
Consider this, quoted verbatim from the book: ‘A prominent literary author compared Jim Wood’s death to that of Orpheus, torn apart by the Maenads. The speaker of truth, she writes in the Spectator, has often been a lonely voice. And as the blistering sun of cancel culture rises over our land, the voices of the truth tellers and prophets fall silent, one by one.’
This is Joanne Harris commenting on what she feels are JK Rowling’s views and how she voices them. At times I felt I was in the middle of a complicated culture war.
Mirrors and reflections feature large in this book, hence the broken light of the title. These are of course great literary devices that novelists and poets have employed over centuries. Here, the epigrams at the beginning of each section are virtually all quotes from Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott’. The Lady, under a curse, can only look at the world through a mirror, so she lives within faded reflections of real life. Do women sometimes feel like that? The Lady is both restricted and isolated. She has no volition. This story comes from around the edge of all the Arthurian stories and references Morte d’Arthur written by Thomas Mallory in 1485, around 400 years earlier than Tennyson’s work. Tennyson’s Lady says that she is ‘half sick of these reflections of the world.’ Throughout history, and for many even today, this is true for many women, living lives that are in some way restricted. Joanne Harris has a main character, Bernie Moon, who feels she has never been seen. The story takes the reader through a series of incidents to a particular evening, the climax of the story, when she can truly say: ‘Made you look.’
For the first few chapters of this book, I felt quite ambivalent about it and just might have stopped reading. However, as has happened before, the story suddenly grabbed me and now I am very glad I read it. A great deal to think about.