Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

A Clue to the Exit

London

Chatto & Windus

2000

"The scattered jigsaw puzzle of my attention reassembled into a single image."

Back home I was dismembered by exhaustion and hunger. I made the bowl of soup I had refused on board Les Enfants du Paradis. The heat pulsed through my body in widening rings like the broadcast of an important victory. The scattered jigsaw puzzle of my attention reassembled into a single image. The sea and the sky didn't seem so far apart after all; 'the incense of the sea' drifts up and falls again in a gentle rain. I felt myself tumbling into sleep, but I knew already that it was time to leave. The beauty of the South of France has been embalmed on this little island. It can be visited like an inspiring tomb, helping people to imagine a time when the whole coast was wild, before land became property, and property became lots, and the lots became little. In the absence of nature and of land, there is natureland, a theme park of biodiversity, crammed with educational material and environmental projects, financed by a partnership between a regional council, a national park and an oil company. Infuriated by its lack of development, the air force roars overhead all day long, and the envious mainland disgorges boatloads of tourists hourly on to its fragile shores. Silence and darkness, which people used to be able to get by stepping outside their houses, are finished in Europe. There is always the hum of a road, the whine of a jet, the screech of a train, the glow of lights over the hill, and, in really remote areas, army exercises. I thought I might find some silence and darkness in Porquerolles, and although the lighthouse beam cornered me in the creek, there was a little silence, until the dawn patrol ripped open the sky.
(p. 177)

Uncategorized::Jigsaw Puzzle

Reading

Edward St. Aubyn, A Clue to the Exit (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000).

09/19/2015