Review: Vivien Horler

The Names, by Florence Knapp (Phoenix)

What’s in a name? Everything, says Florence Knapp, whose debut novel is premised on how a name can affect the entire trajectory of a life.

Cora and her nine-year-old daughter Maia are on their way to register the birth of Maia’s newborn brother. Cora’s husband Gordon, a respected and well-liked GP, has reminded her he expects her to name him after himself, his grandad and great-grandad before him.

But Gordon is an abuser, both mentally and physically, and Cora is concerned not only about herself, but also how Maia is clearly trying to accommodate herself to the tensions at home.

On this morning in 1987, Cora is feeling rebellious. She asks Maia what name she would choose for the baby.

Maia fancies Bear – soft and cuddly, but also brave and strong. Cora likes that. She also fancies Julian – sky father – a name Maia likes too. Cora does not want to name the baby Gordon.

They get to the registry office and name him Bear.

Back home that evening, after Maia and Bear are in bed – actually the baby is in a Moses basket tucked in a cupboard because Cora is so scared of what might be to come – Cora tells Gordon what she’s done.

All hell breaks loose, which ends in Gordon being removed from the home in handcuffs.

OR– maybe Cora decides to register the baby as Julian. That evening Gordon comes home in a good mood, happy that Cora has made his favourite lasagne for dinner. And Maia has cut out a wreath of stars and moons to go round her dad’s plate, a reference to “sky father”.

Cora feels it’s going to be all right. And at first it is, until she tells Gordon what she’s done. He is very quiet, despite Maia explaining to him about her wreath.

Cora realises Maia, only nine, is trying to placate him, put off what’s bound to come. She understands if her own behaviour around Gordon doesn’t stop, the patterns set up will repeat for ever, “each generation set on the same course”.

A switch is tripped, Cora feels. She will have to make a plan.

Maia is sent upstairs to bath, while Gordon goes to stand behind Cora and pushes her face down into her uneaten lasagne. He tells her he will not let this go.

When he goes upstairs, Cora wipes her face. Embued with new resolve, she decides she will not alter the baby’s name. Everything has changed.

OR – Cora registers the baby as Gordon. She gets home afterwards feeling the baby has been tainted, is no longer full of hope and possibility.

She understands that her real resentment is with herself – and with her husband – but “somehow it seems easier to let it fall to this newborn lying in his pram”.

Every seven years there’s a new trio of chapters about the family, the boy, Maia and Cora. Bear is one of those children everyone loves, Julian is timid, Gordon jun snitches to his dad about his mother.

With Gordon sen behind bars, Cora, Maia and Bear move out of the family home into a flat, and build a new life. When Julian is seven, he and Maia go to live with their grandmother in Ireland. Gordon jun’s family stays together, with Cora’s life increasingly restricted by her husband, to the point she is unable to receive her own post or make a telephone call. This has major repercussions.

This book has had brilliant reviews, being described as heart-wrenching, magnificent, haunting, and “a very bold, brave and moving story about domestic abuse”.

I found it touching, often sad, sometimes terrifying, often joyous. I’m not sure that the central conceit – of nominative determinism – holds true, but Florence Knapp is a warm, sympathetic writer not afraid to touch on some pretty dark themes.

You do have to keep the strands of the three difference stories straight, because the lives of the boys – and their families – are so different, but it’s an excellent read. And all the more remarkable for being a debut novel.

• The Names was one of Exclusive Books’s top reads for July.