A quick one from me, because I’m back home late after driving home from Hay-on-Wye (haul to be revealed at some point, possibly after May), via an afternoon at Hidcote National Trust and Chipping Camden, and then straight to Devil Wears Prada 2 (good for nostalgia’s sake, if very patchy). Somewhere along the way, I managed to finish Only About Love (2021) by Debbi Voisey.
After loving Douglas Bruton’s Blue Postcards, I decided to buy up a whole bunch of other Fairlight Moderns. They’re such lovely little editions, and a really interesting range of titles. Admittedly, I read another one that I didn’t like (and decided not to write about) but Only About Love was more of a success.
It tells the story of Frank – in many ways, an ordinary sort of man. He lives in a normal house, has a job that is neither exciting nor particularly the opposite, and marries a nice woman and has nice children. Along the way, he has at least one affair – which is sadly also not that out of the ordinary. But the style in which it is told is where the unusual element comes in. Voisey has taken this everyman’s life and told it in fragments and vignettes – out of chronological order – from Frank’s perspective and from the perspective of his wife and children, and occasionally objective lists and bullet points. Since these are not framed with an explanation, the reader has to quickly catch up with who is telling their story, and where we are in Frank’s life history. It means Only About Love is an endless chain of mild disorientations, always having to establish and re-establish our surroundings – but it comes together in a very coherent whole.
The disorientation also puts us a little in Frank’s place – because the crux of the novella is his diagnosis, decline and eventual death with dementia. An acknowledgement from Voisey suggests she has first-hand experience of this from her father, and that is perhaps why this plot is told with such observation, kindness and charity. Illness does not exonerate Frank of his misdeeds, but nor should it overshadow the everyday nobleness that was also part of his character. (Incidentally, once you know that dementia is central to the story, I think it makes Sam Kalda’s illustration on the cover feel very poignant.)
The title comes from a section late in the novella, from the perspective of Frank’s daughter as she tends to him in the late stages of dementia. I’ll finish by quoting this vignette in full:
When you shave him, he moves his mouth and face around like he’s chewing an invisible sweet. He offers up his neck with absolute trust; you glide the blade down beneath his chin and over his Asam’s apple. It’s massive, like he’s swallowed a rock.
You hear the rasp of his stubble and it’s almost like the noise is coming from you, because there’s sandpaper inside you. Your stomach is made of it. Your heart is made of it. Your throat. Your insides have been transformed into a million tiny pieces of rock.
He can no longer speak, but words are unnecessary. Life is now simply in its cruelty; he once cared for you and now you’re caring for him.
Each touch of your fingers on his skin reminds him that love still exists. You want all his waking thoughts from now on to be only about love.