January Thaw Comes Early

January always comes with a thaw, but I didn’t expect it to come so early. It’s been a week of slushy warm weather and some rain instead of snow. The squirrels are damp. My anxieties about the house are all ignited. It has not been an easy week. On top of that, the nagging tasks that we left off for the holidays did not magically disappear and now are rather urgent. I know, all I have to be frustrated with is Past Me, who seems to do this to me too often. I am hoping books will help to soothe some of the dissonance that I’m feeling as time begins to return to its regular non-holiday rhythms and meaning, but I know I’ll have to take some time to let my brain wander back on its own.

A Laugh in Midwinter

Comedic novels aren’t exactly plentiful in my stacks, but I do turn to them, especially in bleak times and on bleak days. A gloomy January thaw is the perfect time to enjoy one and so I dug one out of my read stacks that I have been meaning to review for a while. It was an Instagram post of past Booker Prize winners that drew me to Magnus Mills’ The Restraint of Beasts. The plot seems simple as the book follows a group of three Scottish fencers as they put up fences designed to keep livestock contained. As one particular contract gets more complicated and stranger, the reader is left wondering just what the fencers are up against and just what beasts are they going to end up restraining.

The Nature of Work

Of course, the novel isn’t just about fencing. It’s about the nature of work, especially work that straddles the line between manual and skilled labour. The book not only questions the value of the labour and how poorly it is judged despite of both the importance and effort it involves, it also questions just what value is placed on the workers themselves as they remain trapped in a cycle of low-paying jobs and trying to squeeze the most they can out of life. Perpetually in debt, is there any real escape of this cycle and who is most invested in ensuring that there isn’t?

Where it Falls Apart

While I did enjoy the deadpan, very dry, and morbid humour of The Restraint of Beasts, it is immediately obvious that it will not be everyone’s cup of tea. A body count of dissatisfied customers does in fact start piling up and not really much is done with this eventuality. Perhaps there is a greater meaning — something to do with how being treated as barely human at work bleeds into treating others are barely human outside of it. It cheapens life. All kinds of life. At the end, it’s a point that’s left hanging with no easy answers. Perhaps that’s just as well.

Time for Some Films

There are some good things that come out of getting back to pre-holiday things. We’ve now started to go to the cinema agains and watch some TCM. Special programming is great, but I have a hankering for the lush technicolour of old celluloid. We’re enjoying some newer things too — new as in 1970s — in TCM’s ode to the working class depicted on film.

I know we have some MGM musicals lined up as well as some classic documentaries. Lots to look forward to!