Ash before Oak by Jeremy Cooper

*(Trigger warning – this post, and indeed this book, discuss themes of breakdown and suicide)*

One of this year’s issues from the lovely Fitzcarraldo Editions, this is an intriguing piece of writing, and one which to a certain extend defies classification. Published in their blue livery, indicating fiction, it takes on the form of a diary or journal and follows the life of an unnamed male narrator. The solitary man lives in a cottage on a solitary Somerset estate which is in the process of being renovated, both by him and other locals. The narrator records the natural life around him, from the changing seasons to the trees and plants, the birds and wild creatures to the moths and butterflies. Initially, it’s hard to place the journal entries in a particular era, as simply the date without a year is given; but as the narrative progresses, references to external world events such as 9/11 are slipped in so that the reader realises this is the early part of the 21st century.

So we share our narrator’s days, as he observes moles tunnelling under his lawn, tries to tackle the cottage’s mouse problem in a humane way and interacts with his neighbours – particularly a woman called Beth, 20 years his junior. The observations of nature are beautiful and the narrative hypnotic and compelling; however, as we read it becomes clear that not all is quite right with our narrator. Cracks in the descriptions of flora and fauna allow comments to slip through which are almost asides but which reveal that the mental state of the narrator is a fragile one, and we begin to realise that he is isolated in the country for a reason, that he has been through or is going through some kind of mental trauma, and that our view of this is only going to be partial.

With neat observations I make myself seem rational and urbane.
Far from true.

As the book moves on, parts of the narrator’s past slip into the writing; his past work; his marriage, over for 20 years; his complex relationship with his family. Beth also appears regularly in the journal and we start to realise that she is more than just a neighbour, and something of a crutch to the man as he works through his issues. There are visits to a therapist; fragments of memory about his parents and the experiences of his youth; and the sense grows that the narrators is damaged by his past. However, off camera events take a dramatic turn; we see the aftermath of an attempt at self-murder; and it is touch and go as to whether our narrator will regain any kind of equilibrium.

I don’t want to say too much more which is specific about this extraordinary book because it would deaden the impact of reading it; that process is vital to the understanding of the narrator, his place in the world and what he’s going through. The gradual revealing of past and current events, the careful building up of the tapestry of his life, is done in a masterly fashion and “Ash…” needs to be read mindfully so as to pick up the nuances stitched into the narrative. It’s also a consciously literary book; it’s laced with telling references to other works and writers, such as Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Virginia Woolf, amongst many others; and these are all discreet hints as to the narrator’s state of mind.

Accept the solitude, I tell myself, if that’s how things currently must be. It’s enough this moment to enjoy the sight of the candle-like blooms on the weeping bird cherry tree, released this year by my cuttings and clearings to flourish near the bench.

“Ash before Oak” is a remarkable and immersive piece of storytelling, and it’s a book in which the gaps are as important as the actual narrative itself. Bravely, the publisher has made use of the white space on page; each new day has a separate page of its own, and some of these only have a single line entry. This emphasises the bleakness of the days when the narrator cannot write, and if the entries had run continuously on from page to page the effect would have been severely diminished.

Although “Ash…” is a book which is extremely beautiful in places, in others it can be excruciatingly sad, charting as it does the complex mental state of a man clearly suffering a breakdown. Nevertheless, there is hope of redemption and a more positive future, with the narrator seeing chinks of light at the end of the tunnel and the ending is upbeat rather than downbeat. More than that I will not say!

I have the feeling that purpose is a spectre of man’s delusion, that it does not, did not, never will exist, that we’ve invented purpose in the hope of easing our burden while, in fact, torturing each other with the prospect. We may, quite soon, impale ourselves on purpose, extinguish the human race in our attempt to conquer meaning.

I mentioned at the start of this post that the book defies classification, and I’m going to have to explain this by delving into the knotty issue of autofiction. I’d not really thought very deeply about this as a genre before; after all, doesn’t every piece of fiction drawn to some extent on the author’s life and thoughts and actions and the events they’ve experienced? “Ash…” is described as Cooper’s first novel in over a decade, which suggests it should be read simply as fiction. It is, however, impossible to read this as anything other than autofiction, since the narrative is peppered with real people, real books and real facts; the narrator is a writer; he shares the same career trajectory as the author, such as spending many years appearing on Antiques Roadshow and having a large collection of art postcards. The narrator’s friends are real people; for example, one who wrote a book mentioned in the journals, which is actually real and available on Amazon; and the curator Jeremy Compston, who appears in the book as the narrator’s friend – Cooper has actually written a biography of him. So, much as I try not to conflate and author and their characters, by the end of this I clearly had.

This did set me thinking a little bit about autofiction in general; and in a weird kind of synchronicity, I read an article by Tim Parks on the subject just after finishing “Ash”. It was a very illuminating piece, pointing out that autofiction has existed back to the time of Dante, and quoting also Tolstoy’s use of his life in his fictions. I ended up thinking that in the past an author would use real life sources but change names, places and probably facts to make the fiction. Nowadays, the reality isn’t cloaked; instead, the *real* events, people and places feature, but still filtered through the novelist’s lens.

And at the end of that, I came to the conclusion that it actually doesn’t matter. Cooper chose to tell his story (and I’m assuming, possibly incorrectly, that it’s a story of *his* breakdown) in a fictionalised way, and that’s fine. It’s a book I found myself reading compulsively, drawn in by the imagery of the natural world around the narrator and the wish to follow his journey to whatever end it reached. In many ways, the book reads as an act of catharsis, of writing out of one’s pain, and the result is really stunning. I think it might be a good time to stop worrying about what’s fact and fiction, and just accept that there is very little written that’s actually true (I reckon most autobiographies are probably very fictionalised, for example!) Because however you want to classify it, “Ash before Oak” is a profound, moving and beautifully written work blending nature and humanity, and another winner from Fitzcarraldo.

(Just in case you’re wondering, the title is taken from a traditional country rhyme predicting the amount of rain we’re likely to have depending on which of the two trees produces leaves first! Yes, we really are obsessed with the weather in this country…!)