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A review by thegrimtidings
Shooting Martha by David Thewlis
5.0
An excellently compelling read, powered by a crisp, snappy yet literary narrative voice and a series of interesting motifs and themes. Having just read it, I feel like putting my ideas down on the main themes of the book so as to emphasise how neatly this book explores them. They are only vague ideas, but I have no doubt this book could be analysed with a more academic eye.
Circularity / cyclicality, rebirth, nature vs nurture
This is a book about two characters. Jack Drake, the director, who is directing a film about his father who commits suicide. He embodies the role of his father in the film (and mirrors it in his life) and by the end of the filming, kills himself also. Cyclical. It is also the story of Betty Dean, who has her own arc but largely exists to serve the messages of the Drake plot, mirroring and rebirthing Martha Drake in herself and filling the break in Drake's circle.
The very theme of circularity is referenced multiple times in the book. For instance, the only chance for an ugly man to get with a beautiful woman, Jack Drake writes in his play, is if he looks like her father. So she marries the man her mother married, in a different form. Their son then looks like the father, the cycle continues. Jack is in the middle of his generational bloodline, the son of a dead father and the father of a dead son. In his play, he becomes his father. It was, Nora says, inevitable (as it was inevitable too that he would become his father in his real life). He casts his wife, Martha, as his mother. In the same way women may marry men like their fathers, Jack has married a woman who reminds him of his mother. Whom he loves, but doesn’t understand – and therefore resents her for. Together they birth a son, Oliver, who they also love but don’t understand, and therefore resent. The boy dies (self-inflicted, drowning in a pool) just as Jack’s father dies (self-inflicted, asphyxiation by hanging), just as his wife kills herself, just as he does. Via a prosthetic at first, but the very fact his play is scheduled with the final scene being the father’s death shows Jack’s suicide was inevitable. He switches place with his prosthetic doll, leaving it on the phone with Martha and hanging himself in its stead. The prosthetic doll is the perceived view of him, and this is very much a book of perceptions and celebrity. Monuments to his own identity in the doll, or his wife’s identity in her dolls, her clothes, etc., appear constantly throughout the book. Jack is a director, a passion spawning because the only gesture of affection his father ever showed him was the gift of a camera. He uses it compulsively, his first instinct to take a photograph when walking in on his father committing adultery. We only ever understand his and Martha’s relationship through videos and pictures. Perception is everything. This is reflected in Martha’s speech which Betty learns and repeats at the beginning and end of the book ‘They think I'm dirty, therefore I must be dirty'.
This whole speech is about perception, both in terms of being perceived by others and also of how your perceptions of the past alter your view of the present (seeing patterns/cyclicality). Martha wants to stop being perceived by others, and she wants to break the cyclical nature of her life. Then comes Betty, who exists to resurrect this cycle. The element of her that is Betty resists this, but the fact her life runs in parallel to Martha’s sucks her in to this character she is playing. She is the same conflicted female actress. She is the same failure of a mother (or thinks she is). Her dad, like Jack’s dad who is never – throughout the book – shown to talk, or like Oliver, who is mute, is a silent yet ominous presence in her life, one she feels she has let down. She only breaks the cycle by proving she is a successful actress, by understanding she loves her son and returning to England to look after her father. She breaks her own cycle of destruction – and Jack’s – by defying the circle.
Identity
A clear theme in Shooting Martha, both in Jack’s internal contest with his identity in relation to his father (and his son) but also, namely in Betty’s split personality with Martha. Betty is an obsessive character actor, from a young age embodying the love of character acting. Starving herself to play an anorexic character. Here, becoming Martha because that is what she needs to do to play her character. It ends up consuming her in an unhealthy way, but as raised above this is a process by which she helps herself and Jack – just as she intended to do when she took the job. As a character, Betty is fascinating to read about even though it’s hard (by design) to make her out. So much of what we see is, ‘just acting’. At the end, she physically bashes her fist against the lift wall to remove Martha’s ring from her finger, which had become stuck to her after it slid so easily on. This ring represents her attachment to the Martha character. She only removes herself of it by hurting herself, i.e. making the difficult sacrifices of committing to her son and looking after her father.
Self-Sacrifice, repenting, religion
I’m sure there’s probably a lot more religious themes than I picked up but there is evidently the common motif of the crucifixes throughout Jack’s houses, his mother’s bible and the fact Betty is discovered as an actress while playing the role of a nun. Jesus on the crucifix is an obvious enough symbol for the characters in this book, who all repent for their respective sins. Jack’s father kills himself after being discovered cheating. His mother goes to prison for hiding his body. Martha throws herself in front of a train for staging Oliver’s death. Jack hangs himself for failing to break the cycle between himself and his father. Betty isolates herself from her son and allows the Martha identity to take her over in order to reset her life.
The End
Most of all, I wonder what exactly the message at the end of this book was. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me, I think it takes some thought. Betty visits Jack’s hospital room to leave him a letter. It is not addressed to him, nor is it for his benefit – it’s for an unknown reader if he dies, to explain things (presumably – about Martha and their son, about why he chose to end his life). She has just detached herself from the Martha identity, slipping off the ring, which she leaves at his table. Her part is done here. Jack’s mother is sat at his bedside, she tells Betty ‘it’s over’. In all this, the mother, like Martha, has had to watch events repeat themselves. She has seen her son completely take over the role of his father, as she probably knew he would – cheating and committing suicide. By killing the Martha identity, Betty finally puts an end to it, breaking the cycle.
This book is paying homage to many different ideas and concepts here, but in all ways it succeeds. One of the testimonials says Shooting Martha is a ‘human drama with the pace of a thriller’ and many of the other testimonials refer to this being a thriller. Indeed it’s written with the easy pace of a contemporary thriller, but it’s much more than that in my view. The thrilling pace is just a medium for the story. There is, despite this tone to the prose, a great many literary phrases in here too. I would describe this as a literary book first and a thriller/drama second. Purely because of what it is trying – and succeeding – to do in conveying its themes and messaging. The testimonials also describe it as comical, and this I’m torn on – it was light-hearted at many points and always written with a thick wit, but I certainly wouldn’t go into it expecting a comical novel. I’m surprised the book sells itself as being so, while it was funny in parts I really wouldn’t draw any attention to that in particular. It’s first and foremost a character study, and in exploring these characters we see their humour, as humour is a crucial element of anyone’s personality. In general I think the marketing of this as a comical thriller is downplaying how good a literary book this is too, but it's not a wholly inaccurate description.
It was interesting reading Thewlis’ perspective of characterisation, like how Betty observes Martha and copies her. Mimicking her body language, the nuances of her voice, her ticks. It was a way of seeing, and expressing, characters in a way I haven't seen done before. Subsequently discovering Thewlis is an actor explains this. It's like trying to draw the human body without understanding its anatomy, perhaps many authors without his background would struggle to truly know what to look for in their characters before expressing them on the page - but here all the characters feel very well observed, flowing seamlessly from page to imagination. I will be pleased to recognise this book to others, hidden gem that it is. I thought it was a brilliant piece of work, and I hope the author writes more novels. His writing was highly engaging and brought life to what was already an interesting concept.
Circularity / cyclicality, rebirth, nature vs nurture
This is a book about two characters. Jack Drake, the director, who is directing a film about his father who commits suicide. He embodies the role of his father in the film (and mirrors it in his life) and by the end of the filming, kills himself also. Cyclical. It is also the story of Betty Dean, who has her own arc but largely exists to serve the messages of the Drake plot, mirroring and rebirthing Martha Drake in herself and filling the break in Drake's circle.
The very theme of circularity is referenced multiple times in the book. For instance, the only chance for an ugly man to get with a beautiful woman, Jack Drake writes in his play, is if he looks like her father. So she marries the man her mother married, in a different form. Their son then looks like the father, the cycle continues. Jack is in the middle of his generational bloodline, the son of a dead father and the father of a dead son. In his play, he becomes his father. It was, Nora says, inevitable (as it was inevitable too that he would become his father in his real life). He casts his wife, Martha, as his mother. In the same way women may marry men like their fathers, Jack has married a woman who reminds him of his mother. Whom he loves, but doesn’t understand – and therefore resents her for. Together they birth a son, Oliver, who they also love but don’t understand, and therefore resent. The boy dies (self-inflicted, drowning in a pool) just as Jack’s father dies (self-inflicted, asphyxiation by hanging), just as his wife kills herself, just as he does. Via a prosthetic at first, but the very fact his play is scheduled with the final scene being the father’s death shows Jack’s suicide was inevitable. He switches place with his prosthetic doll, leaving it on the phone with Martha and hanging himself in its stead. The prosthetic doll is the perceived view of him, and this is very much a book of perceptions and celebrity. Monuments to his own identity in the doll, or his wife’s identity in her dolls, her clothes, etc., appear constantly throughout the book. Jack is a director, a passion spawning because the only gesture of affection his father ever showed him was the gift of a camera. He uses it compulsively, his first instinct to take a photograph when walking in on his father committing adultery. We only ever understand his and Martha’s relationship through videos and pictures. Perception is everything. This is reflected in Martha’s speech which Betty learns and repeats at the beginning and end of the book ‘They think I'm dirty, therefore I must be dirty'.
This whole speech is about perception, both in terms of being perceived by others and also of how your perceptions of the past alter your view of the present (seeing patterns/cyclicality). Martha wants to stop being perceived by others, and she wants to break the cyclical nature of her life. Then comes Betty, who exists to resurrect this cycle. The element of her that is Betty resists this, but the fact her life runs in parallel to Martha’s sucks her in to this character she is playing. She is the same conflicted female actress. She is the same failure of a mother (or thinks she is). Her dad, like Jack’s dad who is never – throughout the book – shown to talk, or like Oliver, who is mute, is a silent yet ominous presence in her life, one she feels she has let down. She only breaks the cycle by proving she is a successful actress, by understanding she loves her son and returning to England to look after her father. She breaks her own cycle of destruction – and Jack’s – by defying the circle.
Identity
A clear theme in Shooting Martha, both in Jack’s internal contest with his identity in relation to his father (and his son) but also, namely in Betty’s split personality with Martha. Betty is an obsessive character actor, from a young age embodying the love of character acting. Starving herself to play an anorexic character. Here, becoming Martha because that is what she needs to do to play her character. It ends up consuming her in an unhealthy way, but as raised above this is a process by which she helps herself and Jack – just as she intended to do when she took the job. As a character, Betty is fascinating to read about even though it’s hard (by design) to make her out. So much of what we see is, ‘just acting’. At the end, she physically bashes her fist against the lift wall to remove Martha’s ring from her finger, which had become stuck to her after it slid so easily on. This ring represents her attachment to the Martha character. She only removes herself of it by hurting herself, i.e. making the difficult sacrifices of committing to her son and looking after her father.
Self-Sacrifice, repenting, religion
I’m sure there’s probably a lot more religious themes than I picked up but there is evidently the common motif of the crucifixes throughout Jack’s houses, his mother’s bible and the fact Betty is discovered as an actress while playing the role of a nun. Jesus on the crucifix is an obvious enough symbol for the characters in this book, who all repent for their respective sins. Jack’s father kills himself after being discovered cheating. His mother goes to prison for hiding his body. Martha throws herself in front of a train for staging Oliver’s death. Jack hangs himself for failing to break the cycle between himself and his father. Betty isolates herself from her son and allows the Martha identity to take her over in order to reset her life.
The End
Most of all, I wonder what exactly the message at the end of this book was. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me, I think it takes some thought. Betty visits Jack’s hospital room to leave him a letter. It is not addressed to him, nor is it for his benefit – it’s for an unknown reader if he dies, to explain things (presumably – about Martha and their son, about why he chose to end his life). She has just detached herself from the Martha identity, slipping off the ring, which she leaves at his table. Her part is done here. Jack’s mother is sat at his bedside, she tells Betty ‘it’s over’. In all this, the mother, like Martha, has had to watch events repeat themselves. She has seen her son completely take over the role of his father, as she probably knew he would – cheating and committing suicide. By killing the Martha identity, Betty finally puts an end to it, breaking the cycle.
This book is paying homage to many different ideas and concepts here, but in all ways it succeeds. One of the testimonials says Shooting Martha is a ‘human drama with the pace of a thriller’ and many of the other testimonials refer to this being a thriller. Indeed it’s written with the easy pace of a contemporary thriller, but it’s much more than that in my view. The thrilling pace is just a medium for the story. There is, despite this tone to the prose, a great many literary phrases in here too. I would describe this as a literary book first and a thriller/drama second. Purely because of what it is trying – and succeeding – to do in conveying its themes and messaging. The testimonials also describe it as comical, and this I’m torn on – it was light-hearted at many points and always written with a thick wit, but I certainly wouldn’t go into it expecting a comical novel. I’m surprised the book sells itself as being so, while it was funny in parts I really wouldn’t draw any attention to that in particular. It’s first and foremost a character study, and in exploring these characters we see their humour, as humour is a crucial element of anyone’s personality. In general I think the marketing of this as a comical thriller is downplaying how good a literary book this is too, but it's not a wholly inaccurate description.
It was interesting reading Thewlis’ perspective of characterisation, like how Betty observes Martha and copies her. Mimicking her body language, the nuances of her voice, her ticks. It was a way of seeing, and expressing, characters in a way I haven't seen done before. Subsequently discovering Thewlis is an actor explains this. It's like trying to draw the human body without understanding its anatomy, perhaps many authors without his background would struggle to truly know what to look for in their characters before expressing them on the page - but here all the characters feel very well observed, flowing seamlessly from page to imagination. I will be pleased to recognise this book to others, hidden gem that it is. I thought it was a brilliant piece of work, and I hope the author writes more novels. His writing was highly engaging and brought life to what was already an interesting concept.