Sacrifices
Michael Fishwick Jonathan Cape, 248pp, £16.99
ISBN 0224061275
Michael Fishwick's second novel opens with the funeral of the former headmaster Christopher Hughes, whose tenure at Meniston School in the West Country earned him both a band of loyal followers and - more pertinently - a string of enemies. It is this last group that preoccupies Christopher's daughter, Anna, as she watches her father's former colleagues and acquaintances bowing their heads to "pay their last disrespects".
As we learn from Anna's invective against her father's detractors, Christopher's forthright and domineering style in-spired many of his pupils to worship him. The thorny question of how the boys expressed their adulation is still a matter of lively debate among local parents, and even the police. What follows is an exploration of the dysfunctional relationships that radiate outwards from Christopher's reign at Meniston. Fishwick gradually illuminates the headmaster's enigmatic behaviour and questionable sexual appetites through the per-spectives of Anna, her ex-lover Daniel, the sacked school matron Mrs Kobak, deputy headmaster Alex Rainsford and Christopher's beleaguered wife, Deborah.
Anna's narrative is the focal point. Combining childlike vim and intellectual vigour, she emerges as the tragic product of her father's precocious teaching talent and overbearing patriarchal instinct. Her description of a childhood part in The Tempest is poignant, given her father's Prospero-like role at Meniston. His omnipotence in the classroom is mirrored in his private life, as those who oppose his wishes are crushed and those close to him are suffocated with love.
Unfortunately, the emotional force of Anna's account is compromised by subsequent chapters. Fishwick's decision to explore the central character of Christopher from a number of perspectives is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's treatment of Percival in The Waves. However, the novel's five distinct narratives are bound so loosely that they seem unrelated at times. Mrs Kobak - the matron who befriended Anna and was sacked by Christopher - is neither interested in nor articulate about events outside the domestic sphere. Daniel's battle against alcoholism and depression is linked to Christopher's role in the breakdown of his relationship with Anna, but it is expressed through banal description. If anything unites the central characters' points of view, it is their inability to rationalise Christopher's motives or desires. On one level, the novel is a fascinating critique of subjectivity; on another, it is an unbalanced medley of narratives. Each takes us further from a meaningful understanding of the two main characters, and when the revelatory scene finally comes it feels impersonal and hollow.
Perhaps the essential truth of Sacrifices is that, no matter how much we love someone, he or she will always have a kernel of pure egotism that is beyond our comprehension. It is just a pity that our emotional estrangement from Fishwick's central characters reveals the faults of his novel rather than exemplifying its success.
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