“Charged struggle in the trailerpark”
“Jack Hilden read Jennifer Clement’s new novel about the weapons, poverty and love.”
“My mother was a deciliter of sugar. Her could you borrow when you wanted to,” reads the first sentence in Jennifer Clements Gun. Love, and makes me remember that I became just as embroiled in the introduction, in her previous novel, Prayers for the stolen (2015).”
“here is the document positioned in the middle of the drama, which almost automatically present themselves in the borderland between the united states and Mexico. Old Pearl lives with her mother, Margot, in a trailer in a small community somewhere in California. Even in the miserable husvagnsparken stand Pearl and Margot out, because their home is a Mercury model year 1994. It has been parked in the same place then, Margot, fled with his newborn baby, and since then they have slept in the front and the back seat in anticipation of better times. Pearl begins to realize that the times do not seem to come.”
“One of the first scenes depicts how a malformed alligator is born with two heads. In a couple of days will be trailerparken almost a national concern. The Media will get there and shoot the poor chained reptile. Then pushed it to beyond recognition, and the park will be deserted again. A harbinger of the novel’s focus – the guns are constantly present. Only the distant shots in the air, because people tend to shoot down into the water to spot more alligators.”
“One morning wakes up Margot and Pearl up and finds bullet holes in the car’s sheet metal. Next, move the violence closer and closer, until it is the Pearl that holds the gun in his hand.”
“Jennifer Clement takes a grip on one of the most infected issues in the united states – the right to bear arms. Here are the inseparable trio of weapons-drugs-poverty up in all its hopelessness. What comes first, and what does it matter?”
“Clement is the president of PEN International and has been praised in unison for the Gun. Love. But it would be, of course, a much inferior novel if it was shaped as a contribution to the debate. The fact is that you are grateful for their presence, on at least two occasions in the book. The poetic, evocative language is also making its part. It brings to mind both Lana Del rey’s romantic undergångsmusik and the movie American Honey, which follows a couple of lost young people through the dangerous and beautiful landscape.”
“Clement also has an ability to be fully in solidarity with their characters, who find themselves in the society’s absolute bottom. In the Prayer for the stolen was the mothers that were left after their daughters have been kidnapped by drug cartels. Here are the Margot and Pearl, which in the absence of any support from society, finds his own world and doing the best they can of it. Margot may not have any money, but she has the ability to dream, perhaps, of that she had once actually lived assets, had to learn French and piano. A vital feature she for over to the Pearl. Yes, it’s nice to live without a home? Then you avoid the electric shock.”
“As readers will quickly realise that life in the car must be unbearable, but Margot points at the stars and say: Look.”
“Pearl has its own shape of the formation by the mother’s words of wisdom as she is doing her best to interpret. The narrative falls never in a self-pitying Save the Children-trap, but manages to evoke an authenticity in how children feel about their situation: as a matter of course, because it is the life one has been assigned.”
“But not even Margot manages to keep their footing when Eli pops up. A sinister type who smuggles weapons together with the society’s priest. Eli takes the daughter’s place, and Margot becomes just as easy prey as the book’s first sentence indicates. Or as Pearl herself thinks when she sees Margot turned to the steward: ”If mom had seen a woman behave so she would have had a diagnosis ready in a moment”.”
“Even when the mother finally is gone so live her proverb on in the Pearl. As a map when no other guidance is available. There are actually two words in the title. Gun. Love is a story that cannot possibly be summarized in a fair way, but it is similar to nothing else. “
“nGun. LovenJennifer Clementn(Transl. Niclas Hval)nAlbert Bonniers förlag”
