Fiction – hardcover; Harvill Secker; 224 pages; 2011. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.
Gail Jones is an acclaimed Australian writer with four novels to her name. Five Bells, her fifth, is set in Sydney on one day shortly after the new Labor Government has come to power, some time in 2008. It tells the stories of four individual characters as they criss-cross the city on a fine summer’s day.
There is Ellie, a tourist from rural NSW, who has ventured into the city to meet her old boyfriend, James, whom she has not seen for several years. Ellie’s home-life has been troubled, and James, now a school teacher, is recovering from a tragedy that has scarred him emotionally.
Then there is Catherine, from Dublin, who is embarking on a new life in Australia after the death of her beloved brother in a car accident. And, finally, there is Pei Xing, born in China, who is still trying to come to terms with the loss of her parents, who were killed in Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Apart from Ellie and James, these characters do not know each other but there are fleeting moments when their lives intersect. Eventually they meet, but under unexpected and tragic circumstances, right at the end of the novel.
The book is not particularly plot-driven, but it is very much a story about characters, and, in particular, their inner lives. There’s a quote about three-quarters of the way through that sums up the premise of Five Bells perfectly. In it Ellie stands at a bus-stop processing the thoughts in her head: her dad’s untimely death; her mother’s quick and unexpected re-marriage; of having sex with Jamie in her teenage years.
A bus-stop wait could cover all this, all this complicated history. A woman standing still in a main street on a Saturday afternoon could carry all this: death, time, recollected acts of love-making — all together, simultaneous, ringing in her head.
In many ways that’s exactly what reading this book feels like. You become totally immersed in the interior monologues of the four different characters, holding their thoughts in your own head, like a simultaneous refrain, and waiting for the moments of shared experience, whether physical or mental, between them.
Jones’ great achievement is that she gives each character an authentic backstory and fleshes it out without being too obvious about it. In doing this she shows how memory works, but she’s also able to demonstrate what it is to be human, and how, despite our varied backgrounds and upbringings, we are all much alike beneath the surface. In many ways this is a book about the deep personal secrets we all keep.
Pei Xing is a prime example. Her self-reliance, friendliness and kindness belies her tortured past. Every week she makes a long trek by public transport to visit an elderly woman in hospital recovering from a stroke. The woman was once her prison guard in China, but it is not something she has ever told anyone. Who, for instance, would understand their complicated relationship? Pei simply sits with the woman and reads Doctor Zhivago, which her father translated, to her.
She did not speak of Mao. She did not mention their large-scale history, the three-year famine, or the anti-rightist campaigns; just as she did not tell the most private of her family memories, the red-coat day, her mother’s music, the times she had spent learning English and Russian from her father. And so it went by, the cosy lassitude of a hospital afternoon, washed in reminiscence and a snowy story from Russia.
The city of Sydney is also a central character in this book. There are recurring motifs throughout: Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House; an Aboriginal busker playing a didgeridoo; Circular Quay and the ferries plying the water; the Museum of Contemporary Art; the sunshine and the glittering harbour waters.
And in this there are echoes of James Joyce’s Dubliners, especially in the last paragraph which is reminiscent of Joyce’s great short story The Dead, substituting the snow over Dublin for rain over Sydney.
There is a lot of music in this novel, too, a soundtrack that mirrors the cacophony of city noises. Catherine has Elvis Costello’s I Want You trailing “mournfully through her head”, listens to Sinead O’Connor singing Raglan Road, and has a crush on U2’s Bono stemming from her teenage years; James has Coldplay’s Clocks in his mind (“it is the curse of his generation, to have a soundtrack enlisted for everything”) and is haunted by the disturbing images in the video for Nirvana’s Heart-shaped Box which he’d seen as a 19-year-old. Even Pei remembers her father telling her that everyone possesses an “inward music”.
Five Bells is an ambitious, beautifully written novel, full of the lovely rich language I’ve come to expect from Gail Jones (I’ve reviewed Sorry and Sixty Lights on this blog). It’s a moving, rather gentle, story about coming to grips with the past in order to move into the future, of the ties that bind us to our families, and of the things we never tell each other. And I’d like to think it might earn Jones a place on this year’s Booker long-list…
Reading Matters 
I knew this author’s name was familiar, so thanks for mentioning ‘SORRY’–a friend recommended it (haven’t read it yet). 5 stars is high praise (I’d give 5 stars to Get Me Out of Here , BTW). Sounds like an excellent-slice of-life-book.
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I haven’t read this book, but I’ve seen it mentioned online several times (you make it sound interesting, thank you) and I can’t read the title without feeling a pause before it, as in the Slessor poem — as if the title comes with a line break. It’s uncanny.
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I believe the book’s title comes from Slessor’s poem. I wasn’t familar with the poem, so looked it up online. It makes complete sense now, because Slessor is imagining what it must have been like for his friend, found dead in Sydney Harbour, to have his life flash before his eyes between the strokes of a ship’s bell.
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I wasn’t a fan of Sorry, but do seriously recommend her earlier novel, Sixty Lights.
Oh, and I must dig out my proof copy of Get Me Out of Here; your review made the book sound like a must-read.
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I was a bit surprised when this one didn’t make the Orange Prize longlist, but I’m so glad to see you loved it. I’m adding it to my wishlist again!
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Oooh I have this on the top of the TBR. Really, really looking forward to it now.
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Oh yes, I hadn’t thought of the Orange Prize, but you’re right, it’s surprising it didn’t make the longlist. Perhaps it was just too literary?
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It’s a lovely read, Simon, very literary, a book that celebrates language and uses it beautifully, but is free of “trickery”, if that makes sense. I think it mines a rich heritage of other literary influences, too, specifically Joyce, but I’ve since read another review which suggests Virginia Woolf. Not having read Woolf, I can’t comment on that comparison. But I suspect you’ll like this book.
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Great review, so glad you enjoyed her latest. I’ve been looking forward to reading this one, as I loved her ‘Dreams of Speaking’. Again, very literary and definitely not for everyone, but I found the honesty and sensitivity with which she develops her characters simply mesmerising.
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I haven’t read Dreams of Speaking. I need to rectify that, I think.
Five Bells is very literary, but it’s easy to digest. I really loved it, and wish now that I hadn’t given my copy away, as I’d love to read it again at some point. I think it’s one of those novels that would benefit from a second reading.
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Exactly. They gave that poem to us in high school, and my primary memory of it ever since has been that repeated and portentous, “Five bells … five bells,” (like bells themselves, still points radiating) and a sense of inversion, of things dislocated and suspended, of an underworld existing in the overworld — “the Harbour floats / In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water,” and, “So dark you bore no body, had no face, / But a sheer voice that rattled out of air” — etc — (‘sheer’ is a wonderful word there) — and after reading your description I’d be interested to see how Jones carries this idea of Time Suspended through her book.
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Hi Kim
Yes, I am still alive and kicking 🙂
I feel I would be very unAustralian if I don’t read this one or Delia Falconer’s non-fiction work, Sydney. I have already purchased the latter and will be on the lookout for the former after this great review.
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When you read the book, you’ll see that the poem is reflected in the storyline in more ways than one… but I won’t say any more for fear of spoiling the plot!
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Oh wow, you’re back!!! Wonderful. I have been meaning to contact you to see if you were OK, but I now see you are back updating your blog and doing your masters! (I’m supposed to be doing a masters too, but deferred last year and now have to decide if I want to do it at all by September, I’m erring on the side of “no” at this stage, I have some other priorities to sort first.)
I think you will like this book. In some ways it is a love letter to Sydney, because the city is so well described here. I think Jones is from Western Australia but has recently moved to NSW, which might explain her fascination with the place.
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I’ve never had the chance to read a book by this author, but thanks to this great review it’s definitely in my plans!
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Hope you manage to track down a copy — not sure Gail Jones’ novels are available in North America, where I assume you are from.
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Thanks to your recommendation, I persisted in getting this book. What a treat it is — I have given it a rave review here: http://charlotte-booklog.typepad.com/booklogforcharlotte/2012/04/five-bells-by-gail-jones.html. Thanks to you for another recommendation of a wonderful book!
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Cheers, Charlotte. Pleased to hear you enjoyed it.
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Just came back from reading Kevin’s review, and I see you both had very different responses to the novel.
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Now why doesn’t that surprise me? Have come to realise that Kevin and my reading tastes don’t always chime (pun not intended) 😉
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I ordered it yesterday to my local English bookshop (I had a perfect pretext : the Australian Literature Month ;), thus I prefer not to read your review before I read the book (but I’ve seen the 5 stars).
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Ooh, I hope you like it. I loved this book, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
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I can understand this : don’t worry 🙂
The sales in France haven’t been that great (the novel has been released here last autumn), but I was willing to discover a contemporary Australian author & novel.
If I do not like it, I could give away my copy (and, of course, I will never talk to you anymore 😉
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