Property (2003)
Who wrote it?
Valerie Martin (nee Metcalf; 1948- ; active 1977- ), born Sedalia, Missouri, USA. She studied at the University of New Orleans before graduating from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts in 1974. She became a teacher at college level soon after, and has continuing with her teaching work despite her significant success as a writer.
Her first published work was 1977’s Love: Short Stories, with her first novel Set in Motion following in 1978. Her 1990 novel Mary Reilly, a retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story from the perspective of a servant, won the Kafka prize and was adapted as a film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Malkovich in 1996. She has written ten novels to date, most recently The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (2014), as well as three more short story collections, a non-fiction work on the life of St. Francis and a series of three children’s books about cats called Anton and Cecil (2013-).
What's it about?
Property is told from the perspective of Manon Gaudet, the wife of a slave-owning sugar plantation owner in the Louisiana countryside in the 1820s. We initially have some sympathy for Manon, as we are introduced to her cruel and abusive unnamed husband through her eyes. Unhappy in her arranged marriage, her hatred for her husband is compounded by his frequently consummated obsession with the young slave Sarah, with whom he has two children (including a child revealed to be deaf), while Manon remains childless.
The novel is situated among historical events, situated amidst numerous slave rebellions (which ultimately directly affect Manon’s household) and epidemics of cholera and yellow fever in “the city” (New Orleans) which impact Manon’s family. While we are left in doubt as to Manon’s own suffering, throughout she is in a position of relative privilege, and utterly indifferent to the plight of slaves, hardly able to comprehend that others might believe them to have rights of any form. She is bitter, vindictive, incapable of empathy, and as a result a largely very unsympathetic narrator.
What I liked
The language in this novel is as near to my idea of perfection as it is possible to get. Beautifully economical, stark and precise. There isn’t a word wasted, and nearly every page packs a punch as a result.
Manon as a narrator is evidently unsympathetic, with clues sown relatively early that we can’t necessarily trust her perspective, and yet at the same time we are encouraged to place ourselves in her position. I enjoy an unsympathetic narrator in general, and while Manon is ultimately revealed to be more challenging than many others of her type, I still hugely admired the fine balancing act that the author performs in making us care about her.
It is shocking. I am not easily shocked, and nor did I expect to find anything truly shocking in a novel which is, after all, about actual slavery. But there are countless moments throughout, beginning on the very first page, that will make even the most hardened reader gasp. Martin’s style is absolutely unflinching, determined to render the hellscape of slavery and disease as a visceral reality.
What I didn’t like
As usual, my section headings are not really complex enough to encompass what’s going on in the most interesting, multi-layered novels…
For me, this is a near-perfect novel, but one that raised a constant question throughout. Of course Martin’s intent is to immerse you thoroughly in the perspective of an extremely difficult character, who suffers and is to a large degree a victim of the era and situation in which she finds herself, but nonetheless is unaware of her own privilege and a conduit of sorts for the most repellent opinions of the time. But it’s a narrative that, perhaps necessarily, but uncomfortably still, excludes the voices of those who suffered most unimaginably. I had a nagging concern throughout around whether, brilliantly written as it is, it isn’t perhaps a somewhat indulgent exploration of white guilt?
At the same time, is that an invalid perspective to explore? One might say that in 2022 it would garner less attention than a novel that sought to explore truth from the perspective of the victims, but I personally can’t help but ultimately decide that interrogating the inner lives of the oppressors is also a subject worthy of study, if we’re to ever learn from past mistakes? It’s a tough one, and ultimately an issue that I’m Martin is absolutely aware of in writing, rendering it possibly even more bold a novel to write than it seems at first. (It reminded me in this sense, very tangentially, of Damon Galgut’s recent Booker winner The Promise, which very consciously excluded the voices of the oppressed in post-Apartheid South Africa in order to allow the oppressors to damn themselves in their own words.)
In short, I felt uncomfortable; but I’m sure that’s exactly what the author intended.
Food & drink pairings
Port
Gumbo
Fun facts
While teaching at the University of Alabama in the 80s, Martin became friends with Margaret Atwood and was one of the earliest readers of The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood has performed a similar early-reader role for many of Martin’s novels, and is single out for special thanks in the Acknowledgements of Property.
Property made it onto a list put together by The Observer (UK) in 2012 of the “10 Best Historical Novels.”
Martin was considered an outsider by bookmakers for the 2003 Prize. Carol Shields, already a winner with Larry’s Party, was favourite with Unless, and second novels by literary sensations Zadie Smith and Donna Tartt were also highly tipped.
Vanquished Foes
Anne Donovan (Buddha Da)
Shena Mackay (Heligoland)
Carol Shields (Unless)
Zadie Smith (The Autograph Man)
Donna Tartt (The Little Friend)
Unless (Shields’ final novel) was also Booker-nominated in 2002. A heavyweight list, and despite some big titles in there (yes, including The Little Friend!) I’ve read none of them. Which should I check out?
2003 saw DBC Pierre’s debut Vernon God Little take the Booker.
Context
In 2003:
Invasion of Iraq, led by the US under George W. Bush and the UK under Tony Blair, preceded by enormous protests in both countries and elsewhere.
Malta, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary approve joining the European Union in referendums.
End of the 73-year long existence of Yugoslavia as a country, as its remaining constituents are renamed (for now) "Serbia and Montenegro"
WHO issues a global alert on a SARS virus originating in mainland China and spreading to Hong Kong and Vietnam
Completion of the Human Genome Project
Launch of controversial internet forum 4chan; founding of "Anonymous" hacker group
China launches Shenzhou 5, their first human spaceflight
Last commercial Concorde flight brings to an end the era of supersonic air travel
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Finding Nemo
Lost in Translation
Love Actually
Beyoncé, Dangerously in Love
OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Dizzee Rascal, Boy in da Corner
Jay-Z, The Black Album
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell
Life Lessons
Big ones here, I feel. Question yourself: what prejudices are you unquestioningly perpetuating, without necessarily being aware of them?
Check your privilege, perhaps, to use the terminology of the 2020s.
Score
9.5
This is a very big score, and probably higher than some more straightforwardly enjoyable novels I’ve reviewed on here. But ultimately I think its balance of linguistic virtuosity and seriously challenging subject matter means that it deserves to be read.
Over at the Booker, I gave 2003 winner Vernon God Little a solid and, I think, fair 7.5.
Ranking to date:
Property (2003) - Valerie Martin - 9.5
The Idea of Perfection (2001) - Kate Grenville - 9
When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) - Linda Grant - 9
Larry’s Party (1998) - Carol Shields - 8.5
Bel Canto (2002) - Ann Patchett - 8.5
A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999) - Suzanne Berne - 8.5
A Spell of Winter (1996) - Helen Dunmore - 8
Fugitive Pieces (1997) - Anne Michaels - 6.5
Next up
I’m in the mood to dive straight in to the next Women’s Prize winner, 2004’s Small Island by Andrea Levy, which also won 2005’s “Orange of Oranges” (OK…) - an award celebrating the first decade of the Prize.
