Migrant Bildungsroman

Novel, autobiography, memoir? I imagine poet and editor Manfred Jurgensen dealing impatiently with the question – does categorisation matter? Aren’t books to be judged by intrinsic worth rather than labels? Up to a point, but in Book One especially (of two) there is enough equivocation to be annoying.

The central figure, a boy called Mark, reads like a gossamer-veiled recreation of his author, an impression that is emphasised by the switch from third to first person in alternate chapters, so that the detail of outer appearances gives way to the minutiae of inner thoughts, and vice versa. A picture is built up of an only child living with a mother who is slowly becoming demented, her spirit ever more hopelessly away with the husband and father who went to war and never returned. Mark becomes the carer rather than the child, doing all the shopping and bringing his mother home when she wanders off. He is a pleasant, thoughtful lad experiencing the normal curiosities of childhood and satisfying them without salacity or obsession. He maintains a secret diary and yearns to inscribe it with a Mont Blanc fountain pen. Hanna, who sits next to him, has a Mont Blanc, which is one reason, though not the only one, for the attraction Mark feels towards her.