From Romeo and Juliet to Elizabeth and Darcy to Emma and Dexter in David Nicholls's One Day, we love to read about couples who would be great together – if only. If only the households didn't hate each other, if only there was less pride or prejudice, if only the graduation hook-up had happened earlier.
Or if only life didn't get in the way. This is the premise of Emily Woof's second novel, The Lightning Tree, which tells the story of Ursula and Jerry, two star-crossed lovers of 1980s Newcastle.
An omniscient narrator relates proceedings, borrowing from Shakespeare the trick of the prologue that gives the ending away at the beginning. This energetic opening section bursts to tell its tale.
The story moves quickly into the lives of the characters, in middle-class Jesmond in particular, where Ursula’s family are too busy to pay attention to the youngest member.
The mother, Joyce, is a CND activist who “doesn’t have time to look like a woman”. Her adoring husband, Peter, is sidelined by his wife’s bustle, and by her hate-filled mother, Ganny Mary ,who comes to live with the family when Ursula is a child. Starved of attention from her parents and older siblings, Ursula takes to standing on her head and keeping company with Ganny Mary, whose history hangs over the narrative like a dark cloud.
Across town at the social housing of the Byker Wall, we meet Jerry, an intelligent boy who prefers the library to lounging about. Time moves effortlessly, with the paths of the two teenagers crossing after Ursula’s disastrous visit to a hairdresser. Even a poodle-headed perm doesn’t dissuade Jerry, who puts in the hours chasing Ursula before winning her hand.
The chemistry between the young couple is well handled, and the intensity and idealism of their love skilfully depicted. Sex scenes are graphic, with Ursula finding in the act a release and unity she has sought since childhood.
Long distance romance
As they vow to save the world and never split up, we hear the knock on the door. Life is calling, and when the two separate – Ursula to volunteer in India, Jerry to Oxford on a scholarship – their plans to make the relationship work on different continents is doomed.
There are strong echoes of One Day, both with the happenstance nature of the relationship and the widely divergent paths the lovers take. After a transcendental experience in India changes Ursula forever, she chooses a career as an actress.
The superficiality and insecurity of the industry is brilliantly related by Woof, herself a former actress: “Vodafone, Patty says, the money is good, the director’s hot, and the other actor is going to be big. All the right, short adjectives.” Jerry, meanwhile, follows his social conscience and puts his brains to good use, reforming the health service.
This is Woof's second novel, after acclaimed 2010 debut The Whole Wide Beauty. From Newcastle, she lives in London and has written for stage, film and radio, including a number of plays for the Royal Court, South Bank Centre and BBC Radio 4.
The Lightning Tree is a more ambitious book than One Day, moving away from the relationship much of the time to focus on themes of class, family and religion. There are undertones of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot, which also sees its college- age protagonists wade through issues of love and spirituality while looking for answers.
Spirituality in practice
The difference between spirituality and religion is made clear in Woof’s book through Ganny Mary’s harrowing story. Her mother Annie was forever changed after a mystical experience on Pendle Hill in Lancashire, neatly echoed by Ursula’s India encounter.
The euphoria Annie feels after Pendle Hill is feared by society and by her husband, who turns her over to a hard-line religious group that wrings the love from her and replaces it with shame.
This misery is handed down through generations of mothers, culminating in Ursula’s frayed relationship with her young son: “Gabe needs unfailing love. She can’t find the ease in herself to give it. She loves him in bursts, switching between rushes of wild abandoned affection, and the feeling of being trapped, even bored.”
These later parts of the novel are compelling, following a shaky middle section, with letters between Ursula and Jerry that don’t quite convince. As she pimps herself out in a nude scene on a Sydney beach, Ursula fears that she, too, will become like her ancestors: “She’s learnt to hide her doubt but it gathers in her like wind-blown pollen.”
Ursula’s long journey back to Jerry, to the lightning tree on Pendle Hill where she will find the answers, makes for an engaging story of if- onlys and how they are overcome.
