Hand Me Down World is a fascinating story; it had me completely hooked almost from page one.
The only other book by Lloyd Jones that I’ve read was the Booker shortlisted Mr Pip (which also won the Commonwealth Writers Prize). I’ve got Paint Your Wife on the TBR, but wanted to read this one first, in part because of its intriguing cover by W.H. Chong – the woman’s face is enigmatic and I wanted to find out why. Is that disdain? anguish? a mask for self-protection? For much of the book I was none the wiser…
Mr Pip was a terrific book, original, intriguing, and quite unforgettable, and so is Hand Me Down World – but in a completely different way.
It is the story of a woman, who might or might not be called Ines, who comes as an illegal immigrant to Europe from Tunisia on a quest. I’m not going to spoil the shock of the first chapter by explaining what she seeks and why, except to say that it seems like a hopeless quest right from the start.
What is fascinating is that Jones has woven his story using an overlapping series of narrators, none of whom are reliable. Each of them has a story to tell about their encounter with her. They seem to be witnesses, but the reader doesn’t know who they are talking to. The police? A journalist? Someone – friend or enemy – searching for her?
Like people everywhere, some of the people she meets on her journey are decent, and some exploit her, or try to. By and large she keeps her dignity if not her integrity, and even when befriended by some kind-hearted soul, she remains distant. In their testimonies she refuses all attempts at engagement with others, benign or otherwise; she is either idealised as so single-minded about what troubles her it is as if she has nothing left to give of herself, or she is degraded as remote and obsessive. She is an extraordinary literary creation that will haunt you as you read your way through the book. And so she should, her circumstances are no authorial fantasy…
Ralf is an extraordinary character too. An elderly gentleman who has lost his sight, he sees the world through the eyes of others. His hearing is particularly acute…
With some of the helpers silence is a threat, something to ward off. There was a girl from Prague. She found it particularly challenging. She would fill up a perfectly lovely silence with chatter and inanity, emptying her impoverished mind into that beautiful silence, which I think she viewed as a chasm she might fall in unless she produced a clamour of words. (p110-111)
Jones’s story plays around with the impossibility of truth. Ralf thinks that opposing perspectives are possible, and that’s also what the narrative offers.
When Defoe tells Ralf about the prison ship Esmeralda used as a place of torture which also had a beautiful prow, he asks what Ralf would like to know: how it presented itself to the world or the truth we would come to know about it? Ralf thinks it is possible to hold onto both ideas. (p111) But is it? Once we know an alternative truth, how can we un-know it? What if it is irreconcilable? Hand Me Down World shows us how a woman presents herself to the world, how that world judges her through the filters of gender, race and social expectations, and her own version of the ‘truth’. Which is ‘true’? The story tears apart the impressions the reader has formed about central characters – Jones’s intent is from the outset to disorientate and dupe his readers and to refute their expectations about human nature.
What is it we are supposed to see? What is it we are supposed to think? asks Ralf (p281) as the woman describes a photo of a Nazi atrocity. The atrocity is not his focus, it is the photographer’s complicity in witnessing it that bothers him.
Not everyone likes this kind of narrative, but I like the way unreliable narrators mess with my mind. I like to try and outwit them, and Jones’s cast of characters are harder to outwit than most. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the challenge!
Highly recommended.
There is a rather grudging review at The Guardian (which has spoilers, another reason to ignore it) but John Murray at The Irish Independent thinks that few will be able to stop thinking about it after they read it. This is true: the book humanises refugees and spares complacent Westerners nothing when it comes to depicting trafficking of one sort and another.
To my delight I found a blog post by W.H.Chong about his cover art (after I wrote above about how much I admired it); it turns out he has designed six of Lloyd Jones’s books (but he didn’t do the New Zealand edition of Paint your Wife that I have on my TBR).
Author: Lloyd Jones
Title: Hand Me Down World
Publisher: Text Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 9781921656682
Source: Review copy courtesy of Text.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
I have had my eyes open for this one and this review is by far the most useful that I have read. Like you, I enjoy books characterized by uncertain (I prefer that term to unreliable) narrators, particularly when there are a number of them. I love the notion of different sets of eyes and minds seeing the same things and events — but seeing them differently, which seems to be the case with this book. I liked Mr. Pip; I think I will like this even more. I’ll check it out soon and thanks for the excellent introduction.
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By: KevinfromCanada on November 28, 2010
at 2:15 am
I’ll be interested to see what you think of it, Kevin. I’m going to try and fit Paint Your Wife into my reading this coming summer holidays and I’m also going to hunt out his backlist. I’m hooked!
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By: Lisa Hill on November 28, 2010
at 7:20 am
[…] in a book and inhabiting the world of the characters (most recently, for example, with Hand Me Down World where Ines is still on my mind even as I write this.) Short stories nearly always leave me […]
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By: Like Being a Wife, by Catherine Harris « ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on November 28, 2010
at 7:57 am
I can’t wait to read this book. I really like the idea of seeing a person’s story through the eyes of another person, really fascinating
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By: Becky (Page Turners) on November 28, 2010
at 6:04 pm
It’s remarkable the way he has been able to create convincing personas for so many characters…
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By: Lisa Hill on November 28, 2010
at 7:57 pm
Oooh, you were nice and quick off the mark with this one Lisa. I read and enjoyed Mr Pip a year or two ago, and so read the recent reviews of Hand Me Down World in both The Australian and SMH with interest. I read hardly any NZ lit, and I should really. This one has got me intrigued and I’d love to feel that I’ll get to it one time soon. I do love stories told by multiple narrators, or from multiple points of view. I think I’m less enamoured of the reliable narrator as a concept though.
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By: Louise on November 30, 2010
at 8:52 pm
Louise, I saw something on Twitter about how this book was one getting the most publicity last week, so for once LOL I’m with the mainstream!
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By: Lisa Hill on November 30, 2010
at 9:08 pm
[…] have been remarkably lucky with my reading lately. No sooner had I put down Lloyd Jones’s Hand Me Down World, a wonderful book that is getting heaps of well deserved publicity, than I discovered a terrific […]
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By: The Philanthropist, by John Tesarsch « ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 4, 2010
at 8:18 am
[…] Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones (New Zealand) (see my review) […]
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By: ANZ authors in the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize shortlists « ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on February 11, 2011
at 8:49 pm
Loved this book, beautiful writing, and such is the also the case for Five Bells by Gail Jones. Overlapping stories of four people in Sydney for the day.
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By: meg on March 25, 2011
at 8:40 pm
You’ve reminded me that I must read Paint Your wife, Meg!
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By: Lisa Hill on March 25, 2011
at 9:06 pm
Lisa, I must look out for it too! Another trip to the library.
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By: meg on March 26, 2011
at 7:50 am
The Quest to Read Everything never ends, does it!
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By: Lisa Hill on March 26, 2011
at 8:25 am
[…] at ANZLitlovers also enjoyed this […]
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By: Lloyd Jones, Hand me down world « Whispering Gums on April 1, 2011
at 9:08 pm
Great to see you loved it from the start too Lisa. I like the way you’ve teased out the truth issue. There are so many angles from which you can talk about this book aren’t there?
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By: whisperinggums on April 1, 2011
at 9:39 pm
I liked the way you wrote about the continuum of empathy in your review:)
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By: Lisa Hill on April 2, 2011
at 7:04 am
[…] Lisa Hill at her blog recommended Lloyd’s most recent novel, but suggested I start with this one. She has excellent taste: it’s a terrific novel, and one I feel sure will haunt whoever reads it as it does me. Her post of 2010 examines another theme in the novel: the duality or multiplicity of possibilities or perspectives in interpreting alternative truths and their ‘dual capacities’ – hence the prominence in the narrative of discussions of amphibious lungfish, hermaphrodite snails, people of mixed ethnicity, etc. It’s possible to discern conflicting or opposing ‘truths’ in events or entities that seem irreconcilable, but which can be held simultaneously. It’s a subtle reading that I can’t do justice to in a few words here, for I’ve already gone on too long…I commend her post to you, as I do this remarkable novel. Thanks for the recommendation, Lisa. […]
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By: A Pure Woman. Lloyd Jones, Hand Me Down World - Tredynas Days on November 17, 2018
at 4:24 am
[…] knew Jones to be an author who writes about outsiders, most recently for me in Hand Me Down World. But The Cage is something else again. This is the […]
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By: The Cage, by Lloyd Jones | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on February 9, 2019
at 6:26 pm
[…] in the haibun we see a haiku that reminds me of Jones’ novel Hand Me Down World about the plight of a woman […]
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By: Griffith Review 74: Escape Routes, edited by Ashley Hay | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 28, 2021
at 9:14 pm