Rating: 
Summary: Spare, restrained but no less powerful : a literary triumph
Review: Valerie Martin's Orange Prize winning novel "Property" opens with an unforgettable scene which hints at sexual perversion straight from Tennessee Williams territory. But Martin is a mistress of restraint, economy and understatement. She shows how in her hands, less is more. Eschewing sensationalism, she serves up some of the most spare yet articulately written prose I have read in recent years, recalling a style that has become unfashionably rare among contemporary fiction writers. "Property" aptly describes the relationship that existed between white plantation owners and their black slaves during the 1800s in the deep south of America. Less obviously, it also characterises the relationship between men and women, whose legal status in society relegates them to the position of chattel. Should it therefore surprise readers that we have a cold, unfeeling and utterly self-absorbed heroine in Manon, a hapless young woman trapped in an arranged and loveless marriage to a boor, a philanderer, and a pervert ? Can we expect chattel to behave humanly towards other chattel, when its own humanity has been denied rightful expression ? Note how Sarah, Manon's slave and her husband's kept woman, remains almost silent throughout. The few words spoken between mistress and slave never defined their owner-chattel relationship more eloquently. The thinly disguised contempt Sarah feels for her mistress to whom she was "gifted", mirrors the cruelty - born of frustration and sexual jealousy - of Manon, who relentlessly pursues her property rights when Sarah escapes only to realise she has gained a hollow victory. The novel achieves its dramatic climax in a scene which has Manon eating her heart out upon discovery that Sarah, her property, has at least experienced albeit briefly the trappings of being a white man, when she herself will forever be condemned as his property in her own polite society. The irony of this observation cannot escape any perceptive reader. Martin's "Property" is a huge triumph of literary substance over form. It is understated but no less powerful than the emotions its subject evokes. A major achievement and highly, highly recommended.
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