Book Review: Lucy Diamond aims to repair cracks with gold in The Best Days of Our Lives
Lucy Diamond. Picture: Lou Abercrombie
- The Best Days of Our Lives
- Lucy Diamond
- Quercus, hb €19.00
At the end of the first chapter of , Lucy Diamond’s character, Leni, asks herself this question: “When so many things were broken, how on earth did you go about sticking them back together again?” This idea contrasts with the title of Diamond’s latest novel, intriguing the reader from the start.
The art of kintsugi or kintsukori, the Japanese method of mending broken ceramics with a decorative line of gold lacquer, has become popular as a metaphor among writers. In it stands for a positive approach to life and Leni, a primary school teacher, is well versed in this attitude.
She instructs herself to think “calm, kind thoughts” as she navigates her way through her profoundly disappointing birthday party, at which every close family member has managed to upset her before lunch is even served, by failing to keep promises: make a cake or cook the celebration meal.
As Leni struggles to keep cheerful and make the best of the situation, she carelessly drops her set of dinner plates; “crackle effect porcelain in turquoise, plum and emerald shades”, smashing every single one into large or smaller shards. Never was kintsugi more desirable.
Leni dies soon after this celebration bequeathing any repairs to be undertaken by her sister, Alice, who must inherit the painstaking task or feel that she has let her late sibling down.
The remains of the McKenzie family are broken inside themselves and fragmented as a unit. Belinda, the mother, takes up with a medium so that she can continue to speak with Leni — in a way which, strangely, seems more satisfactory than their conversations when her daughter was alive. Leni is so much more appreciative of her mum now that she speaks through the clairvoyant, Apolline.
Brother Will is off in Thailand where he’s trying to make a living selling fake designer sunglasses and flip-flops on the beach. Alice has lost her job, and her boyfriend and becomes obsessed with discovering the whereabouts of Leni in the hours before her death. She initiates a wild goose chase in the environs of Shepherd’s Bush and White City.
The father, Tony, is already expecting another child with his current partner, Jackie. At the end of chapter six Tony vows to do “his best to repair the fractures and fault lines” within his first family, which have been compounded by Leni’s death. Time for some urgent golden joinery?
Each character seeks a way to improve themselves, and their lives, in reaction to Leni’s passing. Like the plates, some can be reformed and reused, but some are little more than random chips and powdered clay.
Lucy Diamond has written many novels within the genre “female lead” and in women outnumber men. The narrative viewpoint is passed from mouth to mouth but the focus is on, what used to be termed, women’s matters.
Babies are important — mainly as a thing to be desired rather than the actuality of living with one. Shopping and cooking are central. Bad things happen in the book, but they are domestic issues rather than global matters such as climate change or pandemics.
Leni’s relatives say they are mourning her but there is little sense of real grief; perhaps because characterisation is not fully developed.
The pattern on the dinner plates seems more detailed and credible that the personalities of the family and their friends. All in all the story struggles to get out of the shallows and the extended metaphor is overused.
