My Name is Leon
Since college (or earlier?), I’ve pondered the theory that there are a finite number of story structures (ie “overcoming the monster,” “tragedy,” etc.) I was chatting about this with someone recently, so I did a little research. Most notably, there’s a 700-page book by Christopher Booker called The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories — and while “7 plots” is perhaps true on a very, very broad level and while I love the psychology behind this position, I just cannot think about my own micro-reading (or -writing) using that framework.
Instead of thinking about books by story type (“redemptive” as one big example), I tend to subconsciously do a like-and-like comparison of books using either prose style (a more esoteric barometer and a good contemporary example might be Marilynne Robinson to Wendell Berry) or setting (not esoteric at all). For instance, I just read a novel called My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal. It’s a tightly written novel about a little boy (Leon) who is taken from his unstable mother and placed into foster care. It takes place in 1981 in England (royal wedding summer!), so where did my mind go? 1) Shuggie Bain, the Booker winner by Douglas Stuart (alcoholic mother and public housing — Scotland, 1980s); 2) Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey (unstable alcoholic parents — Ireland, 1960s and 70s). There are surely thousands of novels written about dysfunctional families, yet my mind automatically grouped them due to relative proximity of settings.
But when it comes to “story arc,” I will tell you, though, that I prefer the latter two because both Stuart and Dwyer Hickey closed their novels with the equivalent of an upturned palm, welcoming uncertainty — or a pensive gaze, embracing a jumble of complicated emotions. I suppose there’s a tiny whiff of “redemption” in all of them, but something about My Name is Leon felt too “tied up” for me. (It was, actually, made into a movie for BBC Two.)
What is life if not mysterious — and un-plottable?
{PS: Years ago, I wrote about the book The Sense of an Ending by Sebastian Barry for The Curator. Is it asking too much of fiction to make it “redemptive”?}
originally published on instagram