West by Carys Davies
Most critics have Davies’ latest book, ‘The Mission House”, high up in their list of 2020’s best novels. Ever behind the curve, though, I decided to read her first novel, also well-received by critics.
‘West’ is a short but quietly affecting story about mule breeder, Cy Bellman’s, decision to leave his farm in 1815 Pennsylvania to journey west into lands still relatively uncharted by the white man. He is convinced that there are wonderful giant beasts to be discovered as a result of unimaginably huge bones and fossils unearthed in the swamp regions of Kentucky by recent exploratory expeditions. This quest, that has come to obsess him, means that he must leave behind his ten year old daughter, Bess, in the care of his hard-edged, resentful but dutiful sister, Julia.
In a different time, we’d call his decision a form of mid-life crisis. Davies’ shows it to be something more through Cy’s touching memories of his much-loved dead wife. His mission to discover these prehistoric creatures, which we know from the start is a doomed enterprise, is a personal journey to discover some purpose in his own life that has been knocked off kilter. Yet Davies is too intelligent a writer to present his behaviour in too simple terms. After all, he and his daughter have a touching relationship, they love one another, and it is clear that Cy has done a good job raising her for the past eight or nine years. Despite all this, he sets off on a mission that he knows will take him at least more than a year; a journey that involves travelling through beautiful but harsh environments, peopled by indigenous tribes fearful and resentful of the white settlers who have driven them out of the east of the continent.
Davies is a skilled short story writer and this is apparent on every page in the way she concisely brings to life the story’s small collection of characters and the overwhelming, varied landscapes. She chooses to follow two strands: the journey west by Bellman and the journey made by Bess as she begins to grow from a child to an adolescent. This change brings its own dangers for her in the unwanted attentions of older, sexually frustrated men. She first becomes aware of the effect that her nascent womanhood has when the grotesque, predatory librarian gives her free access to the written accounts of the recent expeditions to the west of the continent that have paved the way for her father. This seeming act of kindness is simply a ruse to enable him to presses himself to closely to her and touch her intimately. More threatening are the silent machinations of Elmer Jackson, the rough neighbour who makes himself indispensable to Aunt Julia during Cy’s absence. Bess can sense better this time the predator’s cunning as Elmer manoeuvres himself into Aunt Julia’s favour, waiting for his moment to get her niece alone. The looming danger he represents is more real than the monsters her father seeks.
Cy is a complex but appealing character. He is a decent man unaware of and unable to properly resolve his underlying, long-term sense of loss. He knows that he is not particularly well-suited to the task he has set himself. This gives him the air of a religious zealot willing to suffer in the cause of finding something marvellous. He rarely wavers in his belief that a great discovery will be his if he just keeps going. As he moves beyond the outer limits of the areas inhabited by white settlers, he hires an unprepossessing adolescent native boy, ’Old Woman From A Distance’, to help him survive in lands that few white men had traversed at that time.
The relationship between these two becomes central to the second section of the novel. They do not speak each other’s language and both are wary about the other. Cy, in particular, as a man of his time and circumstances finds it hard to imagine that ‘Old Woman From A Distance’ has the same sensibilities as himself but, as the journey gets tougher with a brutal winter, he understands this is not the case. The ‘Old Woman…’ realises that not all white men are exploitative invaders and begins to feel an incoherent bond of loyalty to Cy and his mission.
Ultimately this bond is the reason the novel moves to some form of resolution; but it is not neat – the novel may end, yet the characters’ stories still have some way to go.
I thought this was an excellent novel. The story is quietly engrossing and the milieu is brilliantly evoked by Davies. The beauty and danger of this new world for the white settlers, gradually colonising the Native Americans’ land, is at the heart of this novel – you can feel the gnawing hunger, the cold’s knife thrusts and are awed by the grandeur of the monumental landscape.