Candy a Novel of Love and Addiction Book Review

Candy is an easy volume to read, but not an easy i to deal with. It leaves the reader feeling shattered, equally if he or she had been through a similar feel. The verisimilitude in characterisation, setting, and in the great item of the activities of the narrator and Candy are all part of why this book weaves its spell on the reader. With the cornball resonance of a story simultaneously halcyon and horrific, the reader feels the power of the bully love felt by the narrator for people, sensations and places lost forever.

Reviewed by Magdalena Brawl

Candy
Past Luke Davies
Allen & Unwin
May 2006 (film tie-in reprint), ISBN 1741148685, paperback, $22.95aud

Davies' kickoff novelProcessedbecame a cult classic when information technology was released in 1997, and it's non hard to see why. At face up value, it has a grungy, sexy appeal, featuring the gripping, through the keyhole details of a serious heroin addiction, heroin withdrawal, and two attractive main characters who take lots of sexual activity, and experience a welter of ofttimes orgasmic pleasure and intense pain. It'due south an easily read, fast paced bildungsroman which offers a satisfyingly vicarious experience. ButProcessed is more than than a sad love story or a novel almost drug addiction. The sweet attraction of the title may be simultaneously heroin, sugary substances, and the novel'due south cute subject, simply the story is virtually more than than only the desirable substances that drives the narrative forward. This is a novel most the universals of human demand. Davies is first and foremost a poet, and the linguistic tautness of the book reflects this. Although the narration is cool, set in the detached context of a distanced memoir, at that place are italicised passages prefixed with the championship "truth" that take the reader below the skin and bones of the linear narration and move us into a place which is timeless:

Adrift. At times information technology seems that I am floating in the beauty of docility. Pulling the needle from my arm, I succumb again and again to the lucious undertow of the infinite spaces between atoms. My arm, an estuary of light in which all rivers gather. (171)

Although the entire book is written in the first person, the narrative voice changes fairly dramatically as the novel progresses, which has the outcome of creating an internal motility that is more profound than the passing of days. The book is divided into three sections, which follows the protagonist's internal journey. Commencement with "invincibility" the story begins with exuberance, and a sense of immediately equally the narration happens in the present tense. This sets upward an instant immediacy as the reader becomes an uneasy confidante and accomplice in the new matter as the beautiful Candy is drawn into the globe of heroin:

She's simply finding out what I found out a few years dorsum, the matter that heroin does to you the first few times. She is over the moon. She's in the Miranda zone—O wonder! O brave new world! Things are good beyond belief. I envy her that innocence. Nowadays, when information technology actually works – which is beginning to be not always – what I get from hammer is a kind of deep comfort. An absence of this and an absenteeism of that. Absence of everything that prickles and rankles.
What Processed'south getting is the angelic buoyancy, the profusion of colours. Good luck to her; information technology won't last long. (4)

The narrator is matter of fact and comfy in this section well-nigh what is happening. He is happy and in dear and he wants to make Candy happy. At that place'due south no malice, even though his justifications might suggest a niggling sense of guilt which he finds relatively easy to push button away in the simple mechanics of his growing collaboration: "We're but having a flake of fun right now, and shortly, I suppose, it'll be time to stop." (viii)

The descent in this chapter is slow and steady, moving 1 step at a time every bit Candy and the narrator endeavour to maintain their addiction. In that location is the single trick which turns into a brothel job; a single scam which turns into regular theft. A few gruesomely funny situations such as the incident with the crabs:

Within xx minutes we had created a scene of bucolic bliss. All effectually the edges of the lake of blood were gathered like cows a hundred docile and happy crabs. Tramautised by the ordeal fo the pair of scissors, they drank in bliss from the healing depths. (128)

Just mostly throughout this section, Candy and the narrator move towards a blueprint of regularly, which, as the narrator kids himself, there's some kind of routine, a reasonable amount of money, and as many good times as bad. It'south like shooting fish in a barrel for the couple to imagine themselves as a normal, happy couple with a minor addiction. It'southward easy for the narrator to see Candy every bit a complimentary amanuensis having a fleck of relaxed fun before the responsibility of marriage and children set in. . In that location'south no attempt at eliciting pity, or even cocky-analysis, because none seems needed. As readers, we are bamboozled along with the narrator. Candy's luminosity and dazzler blinds us.

The blinkers come off speedily even so, as we attain the 2nd part of the volume. The author begins the department with his outset truth segment. These poetic passages are very close, charting the narrator'south ain pain and sense of responsibility for what he is creating. They contrast sharply with the deadpan narration of other chapters with their immediacy and intensity: "I would vomit upward my life if I could." (154) Candy'south stillbirth and her violent flare-up with the ashtray start to show more than than but a growing discontent. The narrative simplicity in these chapters makes the intensity of the experiences more than powerful:

I reached my easily to the back of my head and cut my fingers on the chunk of glass that was lodged at that place. I pulled out the glass and flet a stab of pure pain. There was an explosion of blood from my head. I could experience its hot flow through my h air and down my cervix. All this, in its own strange mode, was less cloudy than the preceding vii hours of arguing. I was in that sweet realm where drama has a resolution in violence.(167)

The novel is richly detailed, and both the nameless narrator, and Processed meet equally rich, full bodied characters. Although we get very little of the narrator's backstory, nosotros nonetheless feel we know him every bit he undergoes modify, condign very slowly aware of his part in destroying Candy, and himself:

And if, and simply if, you're very, very lucky, then i nighttime in the silence, in the deep centre of the dark, you'll hear the afar trickling of the blood in your veins. A weary globe of rivers, hauling their hurting through the dark heat. The heart like a tom-tom, beating the message that time is running out. Y'all'll prevarication there strangely alert. You'll actually feel the inside of your torso, which is your soul, or where your soul is, and a great sadness will engulf y'all. And from the sadness an itch might begin, the crawling of want for change. (238)

Candy'south backstory is revealed simply in the tiniest hints throughout the starting time two sections, but it is revealed in the final chapter. Because it comes so belatedly in the story, the reader, forth with the narrator, begins to sense that Candy has her own story, which so spreads beyond the pages of the novel. Despite the exuberance of the early part of the volume, the implications of Candy'southward fall brainstorm to become clear, both to the narrator and the reader. As Candy writes angry words across the wall in lipstick, the readers sympathises with her, and begins to take on the narrator'southward guilt at finding the early on sections—the violations and prostitution—a calorie-free thing. The reader grows forth with the narrator equally the truth becomes clearer. Candy is an easy book to read, but not an easy one to deal with. Information technology leaves the reader feeling shattered, as if he or she had been through a like experience. The verisimilitude in characterisation, setting, and in the bully detail of the activities of the narrator and Candy are all part of why this volume weaves its spell on the reader. With the nostalgic resonance of a story simultaneously halcyon and horrific, the reader feels the power of the great love felt by the narrator for people, sensations and places lost forever. Despite the ugliness of its field of study matter, and ofttimes graphic nature of its particular, this is a beautiful story of love, loss, and self-awareness.

Views All Time

2207

Views Today

1

goddardskint1998.blogspot.com

Source: http://www.compulsivereader.com/2006/04/12/a-review-of-candy-by-luke-davies/

Share this post