Published less than a month ago, I bought No Such Thing As Monday, by Sian Hughes, on the back of an intriguing and highly complimentary short review in The Saturday Paper. When Linda Jaivin calls a book “Gold” I tend to think I’ll probably like it.
The story is told by Stephanie Cartwright (Steffie) one of two sisters who grew up in the 1970s in working class Birmingham, UK.
According to Steffie, her sister Caroline is the clever, polite one but she is also the butt of her father’s terrible physical and emotional abuse.
Stan’s violence is reserved for Caroline, and he does awful things to her while favouring Steffie with treats and kindness, something Steffie doesn’t seem to understand or even process as unusual.
There’s quite a lot Steffie doesn’t notice or understand, and it’s only in adulthood that she questions some of the things that happened in her family, including her father’s hatred of Caroline and her mother’s submissive acceptance of it.
When Caroline disappears in her teens, no-one talks about it, but then there are a lot of things not talked about in the Cartwright household.
The book’s title comes from this belief that some things are best left unsaid.
Imagine someone suddenly starts saying Tuesday comes straight after Sunday. There’s no such thing as Monday. You learn not to mention Monday. Monday is not a thing in your house.
Stan doesn’t have a proper job, he fights for money in local pubs, which leads to a stint in jail. No-one is surprised when Steffie follows suit as a young adult, still lacking context, comprehension, or control over her life.
Hughes conveys this by totally inhabiting Steffie: her character, her personality, her phsyical presence, and her seemingly willing ignorance. We experience Steffie’s life into middle age as she experiences it, gradually gaining some perspective, if not complete control.
Hughes imbues the young child with an often horrific indifference. She gobbles down the food her mother prepares solely for her at her father’s insistence and to her sister’s exclusion. He won’t even let Caroline have the top sliver of a boiled egg.
Steffie greets her father with joy each day, hugging and clinging to his legs, the same legs she sees him use to kick Caroline as she lies on the floor in a foetal position.
And Steffie never questions any of this, or any of the other tortures inflicted by Stan, accepting it as just the way things are.
Only as an adult does Steffie begin to reflect that maybe she could have, should have said something, done something to protect Caroline from her father’s inexplicable wrath.
It’s only when her father dies that she finds – or is presented with – an imperative to even find out what happened to Caroline: why she disappeared, whether she’s still alive.
If this all sounds emotionally wrenching, it is. Yet Hughes is such a deft writer that Steffie is not a monster, just a child who becomes a woman wracked with guilt and remorse, slowly understanding that her upbringing was not as normal as it felt at the time.
And there is quite a lot of humour – often black – in No Such Thing As Monday, interwoven with the emotional and physical violence so that it’s a relief, although not an escape.
Hughes is a masterful writer, with a deft touch in portraying both the exterior and interior life of a damaged family in a desperately tough environment.
No Such Thing As Monday is domestic drama at its most devastating and a fine addition to contemporary British literary fiction.
I suspect it will be nominated for a slew of awards, and will probably win more than a few.
Highly recommended.