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Earth and Heaven by Sue Gee. Published by Review. £17.99 hardback
The title of Sue Gee's latest novel is taken from the writing of the prolific engraver,
typographer, sculptor (I could go on) Erie Gill, writing of his belief that art should
integrate 'bed and board, home and school... earth and heaven.' An interesting choice of
superscription, given Gill's recently revealed penchant for integrating himself with his
daughters and the novel itself examines the belief, according to Bonnard, that 'the
permanence of a painting transcends an individual experience.'
Earth and Heaven explores how a group of artists (a painter, a sculptor and a
woodengraver) attempt to use their various arts to fix certain bad events in their lives,
and then to use them as a tool for healing.
The narrative is centred on Walter and Sarah Cox, and their friend Euan Harrison, who meet
at the Slade as students. Both men have suffered bereavement in the Great War Walter's
brother died, and Euan is traumatised by the loss of men in his command. All three move to
the Kent countryside, where Walter grew up. Two children are born to the Coxes 'We are
making a new world'- they know peace and contentment. Then tragedy enfolds them all, and
the integration of the four elements on which their happiness depends is lost. The
remainder of the book charts the hard journey back to wholeness, the achievement of which
is illustrated by a highly improbable love affair, and a happy-ever-after epilogue which
undoes all that remains of the narrative's dramatic tension and weakens the powerful theme
- loss and growth.
Which is a great shame, for Sue Gee writes movingly and lyrically of life in the Kentish
countryside, and her observations, particularly regarding the sweep of the seasons in an
agricultural community, are precisely recorded in an almost painterly fashion, revealing
an impressive depth of knowledge of the chosen locale. Similarly her London scenes contain
much geographical detail, giving the reader a pleasing familiarity with the settings -
which are usually sooty, flaking, grim, broken and neglected, while the rural scenes are
liquid, millky, silvered, dewed. Water is a frequently recurring device - the floods, the
tears, the storms, the non-lover Nina dreaming of herself as a tormenting water-creature
all presage change. Also both Walter's and his daughters' artistic awakening is signalled
by the repeated 'All that water, all that light.' Wings too feature throughout the
narrative - the menacing gander that flies into Walter's first major work and Meredith's
life, and the cold avenging angel of the second major painting, neither of whose presences
are willed by the artist.
And although Sue Gee brings many fine things to her story - her meticulous research into
the history of the Slade and the post-Impressionist movement, the recondite vocabulary of
the bell-ringer, the sensuous pleasures of the artists' materials, and the craft of the
woodengraver for example, there is a certain flatness - her characters seem poorly
developed and do not engage one's sympathy, and while often persuasively handled, Earth
and Heaven lacks a certain edge - less birdsong and more mud might have improved things.
Sue Gee lives in Stoke Newington. She is the author of five previous novels, including
Letters from Prague, which was serialised on BBC Radio 's Woman 's Hour and The Hours of
the Night, which won the 1997 Romantic Novel of the Year award.
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