Reflections on An Island: An Interview with Karen Jennings
This is something that I have been thinking about ever since I was a little girl. We had elderly neighbours and I used to visit them and listen to the stories and old wives tales they told. One of these – my absolute favourite – was about how farmers, in order to see if the soil was ready for planting, used to dig a shallow hole, pull down their pants and put their bums in the earth to feel the temperature of the soil and get a sense of how it felt. I thought this was hilarious (I was a child after all), but I also thought it was wonderful. To have such an intimate connection with the land, to be able to know it in such a way that it is almost an extension of one’s body.
Karen Jennings interviewd by Katy Wimhurst.
Worlds in motion
In keeping with the entrepreneurial ethos of his main protagonists, Banerjea seems to be suggesting that everything, from style, to politics, to carnal desire, can actually be repurposed for personal gain. And that this, in fact, is the true nature of the Thatcherite ideology reshaping society in her own, self-mythologising image. It is a dispiriting idea, but harder to refute once the narrative pivots to the (then) unfolding catastrophe at Lehman Brothers and the financial meltdown which will follow.
Stephen Hayward reviews Koushik Banerjea‘s Category Unknown.