Naomi Wood is a London based writer whose debute novel The Godless Boys was published last April. I first learned about the book only some weeks ago and immediately wanted to read it. Luckily my library had a copy.
The Godless Boys is set in the 1980s in a world where England is ruled by the Church and non-believers have been expelled to a remote island somewhere in the north. The book is subtitled "a story of love and violence" and yes, there is violence there. The island folks are being bothered by Malades, a gang of local boys, who are determined to find everyone who as much as thinks of religion. The Malades are lead by Nathaniel, whose world is turned upside down when a stowaway from England arrives on the weekly boat delivering provisions to the Islanders.
The stowaway is Sarah, who for the past ten years had been told her mother had run away with another man. By chance Sarah has learned that, in fact, her mother had been a member of the Secular Movement and had been involved in a church burning. Sarah has reason to believe her mother was expelled to the Island and she is determined to find her.
I love alternate histories. I love the aspect of what if. In her novel Wood has created an interesting world that for someone like me, who grew up in the 80s, feels intriguingly familiar and at the same time -luckily- totally alien. Wood has said in an interview that she chose to set the story in the 1980s, because "that decade felt like the high point of post-war secularisation". It was, at least in Finland and I guess in most of the western world, a decade of immense optimism, anything and everything was possible, things could only get better. Money was the new religion. The England of Wood's novel has been ruled by the Church since 1950. You believe or at least you act like you do, if you don't want to get in trouble.
However, not the English nor the Islander society is portrayed as totally either or. What is good or evil? Is the English society really as bad as the Malades think it is? Are the Islanders really as oneminded in their thinking as it seems at first? Actually Wood leaves a lot untold. I loved the book. My only criticism, or not really a criticism, more like a wish, is that I kept hoping to learn more about the Church ruled England. On the other hand I do admire writers who know what not to tell and leave some things to the imagination of the reader. In that aspect the ending of The Godless Boys was pretty much perfect! And one more thing about that bit about love and violence. There is much more love, and so beautifully told, or the love shines through more brightly, than violence in the book. Though, violence in different forms also plays an integral part in the story.
As I already said, I loved this book, so much so that I might reread it at some point. I will definitely look forward to any other books by Naomi Wood. I'll leave you with a few thoughts by my favorite characher in the book. She is Eliza Michalca, a baker turned whore and undertaker, who is hopelessly in love with Arthur the fish monger and has a habit of writing words on her forehead, under her fringe.
"She wondered - would a girl of English origin - brought up by the Church and fostered in its teachings - look different to the Island girls here? Would God somehow strenghten the whites of her eyes so that they were brighter than her own? Make her hair more flaxen, her nails less soft, her skin more luminious? Eliza had not seen the girl up close: only the red length of hair and the freckled skin. Eliza tought it wonderful: to be brought up in believing in some kind and gently steering presence; to have a much stronger stake in some infinitely wiser thing than youself. Nothing could be wasted, not in God's eyes; no. Eliza imagined that the girl would be boundlessly positive, since isn't that what the Church made you believe in, in the irresistible rightness of every act? Eliza had never believed in God - how could she, she had never been taught - but she had always thought that - given a different life in England - she would have been a natural in it. But it was too late for it now." [p. 42]
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