Metafiction – fiction about fiction – sometimes also referred to as ‘self-conscious fiction’, is usually associated with the postmodern movement in literature (c. 1950s onwards). In metafiction the writer takes delight in alluding to the fictional nature of the work the reader is reading and to their own role as writer or compiler of that work.
In fact, metafiction is nothing new. Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (published in 9 volumes between 1759 and 1767) is the ultimate novel about writing a novel. Metafiction is also there in the opening sentence of the final chapter of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) – ‘reader I married him‘ – and in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) – ‘Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort,and to have done with all the rest‘ .
But undoubtedly it is the 20th and 21st century novel that has particularly exploited this form, one such example being Ian McEwan’s Atonement (published 2001), probably my favourite of McEwan’s novels.
The narrative of Atonement unfolds in three time periods: one hot summer’s day in 1935; the Second World War (in both England and France), and 1999. At the heart of the story is Briony Tallis: in 1935 she is a bored 13 year-old with a lively interest in creative writing; during the war she nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital in London; and in 1999 she is an acclaimed 77-year old writer who has been recently diagnosed with vascular dementia.
Like Stephen in Michael Frayn’s Spies – which I wrote about in my last post – Briony is at that transitional age of wanting to be part of the adult world but not yet able to fully understand it. Misinterpreting the events that are taking place around her, in particular the interactions between her elder sister Cecilia and a long-time family friend from a lower social class, when a crime is committed in the grounds of her family’s home, Briony’s poor understanding of adult sexual interactions, combined with her fevered imagination, lead her to false interpretations and wrong conclusions that will have a disastrous and irreversible impact on both herself and those she implicates. Through the act of writing Briony will then seek to atone for the terrible ‘crime’ she has committed.
Related to metafiction is the concept of intertextuality, the implicit and explicit referencing of other texts within a text. Texts are not created in a vacuum but are both consciously and unconsciously developed from other texts: their plots, structural conventions, language etc.
McEwan makes his debt to other books clear from the outset – he uses as an epigraph a long quotation from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1817), another novel in which a young person draws false conclusions about events as the result of a fevered imagination. Throughout the novel, as Briony develops as a writer, she experiments with different styles of writing: as noted in the opening section, anticipating the final section of the novel: ‘Six decades later she would describe how at the age of thirteen she had written her way through a whole history of literature.’
One important literary influence in Atonement – and particularly in the opening 1935 section – is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (published 1927) which I wrote about here. Both novels feature the gathering of a family and many guests in the years leading up to a world war (the First World War in Woolf’s novel, the Second in McEwan’s); both novels are about art and creativity (Lily Briscoe is the artist figure in Woolf; Briony Tallis in McEwan) and both feature a central matriarchal figure – though with profound differences.
In Woolf’s novel Mrs Ramsay is an influential figure looked up to by both family and guests. Her parallel in Atonement is Emily Tallis, mother of Briony (and her elder siblings, Cecilia and Leon), but she is a more problematic figure. Whilst Mrs Ramsay is loved by all – her death conveyed beautifully by Woolf in the passage, ‘[Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage stretched his arms out one dark morning, but Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before he stretched his arms out. They remained empty.]’ – Emily Tallis musters less warmth. Her husband, Jack, is conspicuous by his absence – the reader infers he is having an affair – and Emily and her elder daughter Cecilia have a hostile relationship. And whilst Mrs Ramsay exerts a calming influence over all and sundry, Emily Tallis does anything but – whilst demonstrating complete unawareness of the fact. Having lain in bed for much of the day with a migraine, Emily Tallis gets up and prepares to ‘soothe the household’, though her elder daughter, Cecilia, knows that in fact ‘her mother… would be spreading anxiety and confusion all about her’.
That anxiety and confusion are felt primarily in the kitchen where Emily Tallis goes to request some last-minute changes to the dinner plans. Whereas Mrs Ramsay presides over a calm, successful dinner of the French classic boeuf en daube, Emily Tallis creates chaos and upset by asking the cook, Betty, and the maids to convert the roast meal they have been working on all day into a meal more appropriate for a hot summer day. Betty’s response shows little deference to her employer. Pointing at the huge quantity of roast potatoes that have just been pulled from the oven, she asks:
‘”You want these, Ma’am, in a potato salad?”
“Exactly so. Cut the burnt bits away, wipe off the fat, put them in the big Tuscan bowl and give them a good dousing in olive oil and then…” Emily gestured vaguely towards a display of fruit by the larder door where there may or may not have been a lemon.
Betty addressed the ceiling. “Will you be wanting a Brussels sprouts salad?”
“Really, Betty.”
“A cauliflower gratin salad? A horseradish sauce salad?”
“You’re making a great fuss about nothing”
“A bread and butter pudding salad?”’
Whilst I feel for Betty and the way Mrs Tallis tears in and ruins all her plans, there is much to be said for a salad which draws on some of the best elements of a roast meal. When thinking about this meal, I remembered Nigella Lawson’s suggestion in How to Eat (published 1998) of making roast potato croutons for a caesar salad, so I used that suggestion in my recipe (though it’s more of a throw a few things together dish, than a real recipe):
ROAST DINNER SALAD FOR A SUMMER’S DAY
Ingredients (serves 2):
500g potatoes
Olive-oil and 3 crushed garlic cloves (or use garlic-infused olive oil)
Sufficient cold roast meat for two people (I used chicken)
A selection of salad leaves
1 avocado
Salad dressing (I have a jar in my fridge that I top up as it runs low, composed of twice the amount of extra virgin olive oil to red wine vinegar, a couple of teaspoons of whole grain mustard and salt and pepper. I keep it in a lidded jar with two peeled garlic cloves, and it just needs a good shake before pouring the required amount over a salad).
Method:
Preset the oven to 200C / 180C fan / gas mark 6. Peel the potatoes and cut into small dice. Put them in a bowl and mix with a generous amount of olive oil and the crushed garlic (or just use garlic-infused olive oil). Season with salt and pepper before placing the potato cubes into a roasting tray and roasting in the oven for 20 minutes until golden brown and cooked through. Remove from the oven and cool the potato cubes on a double layer of kitchen roll for 10 minutes.
Gather all the salad items together – arrange them as you see fit in a bowl or on a plate and pour over the salad dressing.
