The Optimists

Returning from central Africa where he photographed a massacre in which three thousand innocent women and children were hacked to death, forty-year-old photographer Clem Glass finds himself too stunned to function in the "normal" world of London. Dividing his life into the "time before" and the "time after" the horrifying event, Clem is "without desire," a man unable to work or think about the future. When his older sister Clare, an art historian, suffers a breakdown, Clem, with no assignments or job to occupy his time, offers to become her "primary carer" in Colcombe, a remote village where his aunt has a cottage.

Imposing some sort of order on their lives, he helps Clare to become less fearful, and begins to confront his own memories and face his own problems. A trip to Toronto where he meets the journalist with whom he shared the African nightmare, followed by a trip to Brussels, where he pursues the architect of the massacre, "the Bourgmestre," Sylvestre Ruzindana, whom he hopes to bring to trial, lead to Clem's realization that people and issues are far more complex than he has previously believed--that Ruzindana, despite his crimes, is a real, complex human being, not simply a "monster."

Miller is an exceptionally clear writer with the ability to create unusual and engaging characters facing unusual, but understandable, problems. Clem's inability to cope with the magnitude of the slaughter (based on a real event in Rwanda in 1994) parallels the similar inability of the comfortable reader, and the western world in general, to do so. Wisely, Miller never describes much of the massacre, leaving it up to the reader to imagine the horrors which would drive a professional photographer to such despair. Through the personal terrors of Clare's much smaller but no less frightening world, he puts her psychological trauma into a perspective that allows the reader to understand and care about her recovery, too.

The use of symbols enhances the themes--the faint outline of leaves in paving stone is a reminder of the miracle of life superimposed on stone. A swim becomes a sort of baptism and rebirth. The trying on of a pair of glasses suggests the seeing of life from someone else's perspective. These details are gracefully integrated, broadening the novel's scope without being ponderous. In a surprising conclusion (and like the proverbial snake biting its tail), Clem harks back to an early event, revisits it, and ultimately learns something new and important. Rewarding on many levels, The Optimists is carefully written and well-developed literary fiction in which every detail adds to the psychological tension and to the development of themes. Mary Whipple

Miller hitting his stride (3/5 people found this helpful)

This is a book full of eye-wateringly momumental ideas and emotions; its complexity and subtlety all too rare in modern British writing. Miller tells his tale beguilingly and manages to weave a web that emcompasses a breath-taking spectrum of human action and emotion; from African civil war and genocide to debilitating depression in a tiny English village. A must for fans of great British literature and an interesting accompaniment for anyone who has read A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali or We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families.

Struggle to find meaning in modern world (2/4 people found this helpful)

Clem Glass is a photo-journalist used to working in the world's troublespots, but has returned to London shellshocked and traumatised after witnessing and photographing the aftermath of a massacre in central Africa. Clem is a fundamentally decent character, portrayed warts and all, trying to make sense of his experiences in Africa, rekindle his faith in humanity and get his life back on track. After weeks of simply not coping, Clem flies to Toronto to meet his journalistic partner on the African story, Frank Silverman, who is likewise struggling to move on with his life by becoming involved in ground-level community projects. Still struggling, Clem returns to Britain and pays a visit on his father William, widower and retired aerospace engineer, who, in trying to make sense of the world, has withdrawn to live in an island community of like-minded brothers. Following this visit, Clem visits his sister Clare who is voluntarily seeking care for a relapse of mental health problems, experiencing anxieties and powerful fantasies. As luck would have it, Clem's Aunt Laura rather conveniently happens to have a disused, rundown cottage on her country property, and Clem becomes registered carer for his sister, setting both siblings on the track to recovery. Meanwhile, Clem receives a lead on the possible whereabouts of the mastermind of the African massacre, Sylvestre Ruzindana...

Whilst the above synopsis makes 'The Optimisits' sound heavy-going, the novel's overall tone is lightened by many perceptive observations of human behaviour that bring a smile to the face, and it is easy to identify and empathise with the cast of real, fully-developed characters who just happen to be going through difficulties in their lives. Ultimately, 'The Optimists' is life-affirming, stressing that we need faith in ourselves and stubborn belief in the goodness of others - if only to stop us going crazy!! This is the third of Miller's four novels that I have read, and is every bit as good as 'Ingenious Pain', winner of the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award, and the Booker-shortlisted 'Oxygen'.

Enlightenment through darkness (4/5 people found this helpful)

The Optimists is a remarkable, essential novel - but it does take a brave reader as well as a brave writer to follow the book's journey and to engage with such dark and troubling themes. The story concerns Clem Glass (names have an almost mythic significance throughout this novel) a photojournalist who has witnessed a genocide of obscene proportions in an unnamed African township. The novel is not about the massacre itself - though there are fragments of description of it - but about the aftermath, Clem's attempts at coping and some sort of recovery. Arguably, the novel's premise provides a way of exploring recovery from any form of intense and shocking grief, charting as it does the stages - denial, apathy, anger and so on - that are well-documented in any account of bereavement.
Clem, like many of us without the protection of an unshakable set of religious beliefs, must find a way to go on living while shaken to the core by what he's seen. The novel quietly explores and, for the most part dismisses, some of the possibilities on offer - separatism from the world as personified by Clem's father and his life in a religious order; acts of charity as pursued by Clem's former colleague Silverman. Clem's own solution revolves around his extended family, specifically from acts of kindness while caring for his sister, Clare, an art historian who is suffering from a breakdown. The siblings retreat to the landscape of their childhood, to an everyday existence of strawberry jam and haircuts, which provides a gentle respite from their damaged lives. At the end of the novel, Clem attempts to confront the man responsible for the massacre, a way of staring deep into the devil's eyes - though Miller, to his considerable credit, does not present this as an easy resolution to Clem, but instead takes us through a series of stranger and more jolting realisations.
In outline this novel may it sound like a philosophical treatise, but it was one of the most emotionally affecting novels I've read for a long time. In spite of its bleakness, in spite of the way it forces the reader to confront when they would far rather pull back, there is always hope running through its pages, always a sense that recovery can and will happen, but uncompromisingly, realistically, a thoughtful and intelligent optimism rather than the oblivious joy of fools. Time and again when I was reading I was struck by the way fiction is a more powerful medium than television or film in exploring emotional experience in close focus - the images in one's head are not only more horrific, but once conjured seemingly impossible to escape from. Like Clem Glass, I simply couldn't make the pictures go away.
As in all Miller's novels the writing is immaculate, resonant and beautiful. His use of imagery is as poetic and precise as ever, and is all the more striking for being used more sparsely here than in the lush world of Ingenious Pain or Casanova. His ability to evoke a very English sort of family life, or to capture the sense of a place in a few phrases is unrivalled. He is undoubtedly one of the best writers of his generation.
I know The Optimists has made me see the world differently, which is the mark of any worthwhile book. I loved this novel in spite of all the tears and nightmares it brought me.

A Glass half empty (3/9 people found this helpful)

Clem Glass is a photojournalist, but never found with a camera in his hand. Never obligated to duty, work or social responsibility he has plenty of time on his hands. Alone he spends most of that time smoking and masturbating; amongst family and friends he whiles away many an hour making scathing comments about their chosen vocations, lives far richer and worthier than his own.

We have no sympathy with Clem Glass whatsoever. His experience of the Rwandan genocide is his best hope of escape from a vacuum of indifference. Sin could be his means of redemption.

This book is a surprising departure from Andrew Miller's Ingenious Pain and Casanova, but a wholly unsuccessful experiment. Miller is a cracking storywriter, but there's little story of any interest here, and his writing isn't substantial enough to justify the morality tale undergirding it. You're left with Clem Glass: an empty caricature animated by some kind of teenage angst, but who's old enough to know better.

Andrew Miller

Reader Reviews:

"What kind of person can take photographs like these?" (6/7 people found this helpful)

Miller hitting his stride (3/5 people found this helpful)

Struggle to find meaning in modern world (2/4 people found this helpful)

Enlightenment through darkness (4/5 people found this helpful)

A Glass half empty (3/9 people found this helpful)

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