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The Rocks

Peter Nichols

By Betsy Kane Ellis
Published: Jun 28, 2015
Category: Fiction

Guest Butler Betsy Kane Ellis, when not reading, is a Life Enrichment Specialist at Jewish Family Service of St. Paul and an artist. She loves nothing more than putting books in the hands of young readers and finding “the next read” for friends and family. It surprises me not at all that she’s found a just-published book that is, at the very least, this year’s Beautiful Ruins.

It is one of my great pleasures in life to get completely lost in a good book. It feels like an unexpected Christmas present when I find a story I can’t put down, and I become bereft if the next one is too long in coming.

I finished “The Rocks” by Peter Nichols yesterday and, as I write, I’m still so stunned that I refuse to return it to the library or start another book. Strange behavior, but one that lovers of a great read will surely understand. I want to savor the feelings the book gave me and honor the characters who lived and breathed on these pages — I’d feel almost disrespectful if I engaged with another story and other characters too quickly.

“The Rocks” is about Big Things: love and loss, the crushing heartache of missed opportunity and misperception, and the glimmer of redemption. But it doesn’t do that in the obvious, sequential way. It’s a story told in reverse.

In the first pages we meet the main characters, Lulu and Gerald. The year is 2005. Both are in their eighties and living on the island of Mallorca, though neither has seen each other for many decades.

Lulu is the ageless, glamorous owner and grande dame of The Rocks, a cliffside haven for tourists and loyal summer expats. It’s a rich life, supervising the drinking, the partying and the occasional misbehavior.

Gerald lives in a simple farmhouse on a hill some miles from The Rocks. He produces the finest olive oil on the island from his beloved acreage of olive trees, and he fights the growing encroachment of developers even while he struggles to support himself.

When Lulu and Gerald bump into each other — literally — it’s obvious there is volatile history between them, full of passion of the best and worst kind, though we’re not given any details. And in a few breathtaking moments, before Chapter One is even finished, and to the reader’s complete astonishment, they… well, I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the pleasure. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. For the Audible audio book, click here.]

Full stop, for now Nichols takes you back in time and unveils how each of the characters in the story are connected and how they came to the island.

Lulu’s son is Luc, a struggling filmmaker, whose youthful summers were spent on the island in between his years at boarding school in Paris. Luc’s fractious bond with his mother both draws and repels him from seeking her approval. Here are Luc, in his forties, and Lulu discussing the young actress Luc has brought to Lulu’s seventieth birthday party:

“Listen to you: this one, she says,” Luc said more irritably than he’d wished. “I mean, what about you? When’s the last time you tried having a relationship with someone?”

“Darling, I have many dear friends, as you know. I don’t do relationships, like taking the waters at Baden-Baden.”

Gerald’s daughter Aegina grew up on the island as well, but as the daughter of a mallorquina, Gerald’s second wife, she’s sent to boarding school in England. Luc and Aegina will meet and separate repeatedly over the decades.

Another strand: Gerald’s book, “The Way to Ithaca: A Sailor’s Discovery of the Route of Homer’s Odyssey,” details Gerald’s post-WWII journey, sailing the Mediterranean from Alexandria to Egypt, convinced he could recreate Homer’s ten-year journey home. [The author has extensive experience in sailing the high seas. Nichols lived aboard a 27-foot engineless boat for five years, crossing the Atlantic three times. His book, Sea Change, chronicles that last crossing, which saw the sinking of his boat at sea while his marriage was foundering on land.] Out of print for forty years, the book has recently been resurrected by a publishing house in England that wants to bring out a new edition, showering more money and attention on Gerald than he knows what to do with.

The publishers had invited him, pressed and flattered him… to come to London for the book’s launch party… He’d spent the last few weeks in the grip of a virulent and mounting stage fright. He woke now in the predawn hours in a sweating panic, picturing himself surrounded by a Scylla-like throng of smiling, teeth-gnashing heads belonging to clever, literary academics… He was sure he would stammer, splutter, find himself robbed of the power of speech, possibly even have an accident in his trousers, or be so inclined to do so that he would be unable to leave the museum’s toilet.

As each chapter of “The Rocks” reveals more secrets, the pieces start coming together, but never in a predictable way. Nichols has a gift for arranging these players in their proper positions with great sympathy for them, whether they be the adolescent Aegina’s determination to lose her virginity at fourteen or the drunken, sunburned pair of gentlemen who have played backgammon for fifty years on the patio of The Rocks.

In addition to Nichols’ completely seductive story, there are riches here in the form of history and geography lessons. Homer’s “The Odyssey” plays a supporting role, as does the island of Mallorca and its rich connection to Spain. There are side trips to Paris and Morocco, with the sights and smells of the latter fairly leaping off the page. Nichols obviously knows the locations and their languages, and generously brings us along for an insider’s view.

Reader beware: if you pick up this book, it will be a while before you surface again, blinking at the soft light around you, trying to bring your everyday world into focus.