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Against the Stream
A railway carriage is travelling from London to a village in the English countryside. In the carriage a child of six is staring at a man seated directly opposite him with a black bowler hat.
This stranger asks him leading questions trying to find out how the little boy discovered that his father had just died.
In the tense atmosphere the answers unfold in reluctance. We learn of the child's abandonment by his mother; of the bereft child and father sleeping together for comfort in their loneliness; the little boy's love for his father; the sudden death in the bed and the long time it takes for the six-year old to discover what this death is.
The beginnings of the truth are thus tentatively revealed to the stranger, a manservant sent down by the mother's family to bring the boy to the country mansion where they live: his two grandparents, two great-aunts, two great-uncles--a house where no child's voice has ever been heard.
The six elderly relatives, each one's life affected differently by his appearance, make up a formidable community to a solitary and wondering child. His unconscious protest, the protest of new life, and youth, and growth, takes emphatic and dangerous forms, but he is saved by the affection of his great-aunt Agatha.
Their new existence is interrupted by the sudden, willful arrival of his father's mother--this other grandmother come from a life of poverty in a welfare flat--loving the boy and insistent upon claiming him. It is a riveting scene, of conflict and the pain of love and the suspense of imminent choice. It is the child himself who must decide between the two worlds, the family of his father whom he loved and that of his mother whom he has had to shut out of his life as she had done to him.
Against the Stream exemplifies what E. S. Duvall wrote about other novels by James Hanley in the Boston Globe: "Referred to as one of “the ten most able and influential living writers in the English language" . . . Hanley's work is unlike anyone else's . . . [his] crystalline, rhythmic prose has a cumulative power that resonates deeper and deeper into the lives of his characters . . . Hanley uncovers the terrifying but beautiful variations of the human heart . . . He is quite literally a wonderful writer."
This stranger asks him leading questions trying to find out how the little boy discovered that his father had just died.
In the tense atmosphere the answers unfold in reluctance. We learn of the child's abandonment by his mother; of the bereft child and father sleeping together for comfort in their loneliness; the little boy's love for his father; the sudden death in the bed and the long time it takes for the six-year old to discover what this death is.
The beginnings of the truth are thus tentatively revealed to the stranger, a manservant sent down by the mother's family to bring the boy to the country mansion where they live: his two grandparents, two great-aunts, two great-uncles--a house where no child's voice has ever been heard.
The six elderly relatives, each one's life affected differently by his appearance, make up a formidable community to a solitary and wondering child. His unconscious protest, the protest of new life, and youth, and growth, takes emphatic and dangerous forms, but he is saved by the affection of his great-aunt Agatha.
Their new existence is interrupted by the sudden, willful arrival of his father's mother--this other grandmother come from a life of poverty in a welfare flat--loving the boy and insistent upon claiming him. It is a riveting scene, of conflict and the pain of love and the suspense of imminent choice. It is the child himself who must decide between the two worlds, the family of his father whom he loved and that of his mother whom he has had to shut out of his life as she had done to him.
Against the Stream exemplifies what E. S. Duvall wrote about other novels by James Hanley in the Boston Globe: "Referred to as one of “the ten most able and influential living writers in the English language" . . . Hanley's work is unlike anyone else's . . . [his] crystalline, rhythmic prose has a cumulative power that resonates deeper and deeper into the lives of his characters . . . Hanley uncovers the terrifying but beautiful variations of the human heart . . . He is quite literally a wonderful writer."
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
5 people want to read
About the author
James Hanley
77 books13 followersBorn in Kirkdale, Liverpool, in 1897 (not Dublin, nor 1901 as he generally implied) to a working-class family, Hanley probably left school in 1911 and worked as a clerk, before going to sea in 1915 at the age of 17 (not 13 as he again implied). Thus life at sea was a formative influence and much of his early writing is about seamen.
Then, in April 1917, Hanley jumped ship in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and shortly thereafter joined the Canadian Army in Fredericton, NB. Hanley fought in France in the summer of 1918, but was invalided out shortly thereafter. He then went to Toronto, Canada, for two months, in the winter of 1919, to be demobbed, before returning to Liverpool on 28 March 1919. He may have taken one final voyage before working as a railway porter in Bootle. In addition to working as a railway porter, he devoted himself "to a prodiguous range of autodidactic, high cultural activities – learning the piano ...attending ... concerts ... reading voraciously and, above all, writing." It is also probable that he later worked at a number of other jobs, while writing fiction in his spare time. However, it was not until 1929 that his novel Drift was accepted, and this was published in March, 1930.
Then, in April 1917, Hanley jumped ship in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and shortly thereafter joined the Canadian Army in Fredericton, NB. Hanley fought in France in the summer of 1918, but was invalided out shortly thereafter. He then went to Toronto, Canada, for two months, in the winter of 1919, to be demobbed, before returning to Liverpool on 28 March 1919. He may have taken one final voyage before working as a railway porter in Bootle. In addition to working as a railway porter, he devoted himself "to a prodiguous range of autodidactic, high cultural activities – learning the piano ...attending ... concerts ... reading voraciously and, above all, writing." It is also probable that he later worked at a number of other jobs, while writing fiction in his spare time. However, it was not until 1929 that his novel Drift was accepted, and this was published in March, 1930.
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June 13, 2012
Believe this is actually by James Hanley-not Hawley.
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