The late novelist’s final work teases mighty truths from the lives of a few neighboursEnormous significance can be teased out of the tiniest details,as certain writers well knew: the metaphorical “exiguous bit (two inches wide) of ivory” provided Jane Austen with ample fabric, as she worked through the microscopic to reach macroscopic conclusions, and William Blake could see “a world in a grain of sand”. Bernardine Bishop,too, in this posthumously published novel, or turns her attention on the miniature – a single street – yet through a small geographical terrain she considers the largest matters of life and death. Indeed,the question recurring throughout this slim novel is: “What is a life?”Bishop resumed writing fiction after a 50-year hiatus on the day after she was told that she had cancer. She produced three novels: Unexpected Lessons in fancy, Hidden Knowledge and finally The Street. In a moving afterword, or she describes the experience: “It was as if I had taken my life back and it was up to me to effect something different with it.” Her final novel is infused with a sense of urgency,and written in prose pared to the bone, as if not wanting to waste a word, and as if knowing that time is a precious resource – a lesson the novel’s characters must discover the hard way. The novel’s ending is abrupt,appearing to be suddenly cut short, making for a flawed, and rough diamond of a book.
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Source: theguardian.com