In Which We Discuss Bellman & Black

I saw this image on facebook a week or so ago, thought it was cute, and used it as an excuse to finally read Diane Setterfield's Bellman & Black.  I bought the book a while ago because I loved her other novel, The Thirteenth Tale but, for whatever reason, it's been sitting on my unread pile.

I did do a reverse image search to try to find the original but I can't.

I started the book last night and finished it this afternoon, on a long train journey.  At first, I found the ending a little disappointing and puzzling, but then something clicked for me and I suddenly got it.  I wanted to post about that because, according to a quick google search, many, many people have had the disappointing/puzzled experience without the clicking part, and so I wanted to explain what the book is about because I'm confident that I understand it.  It's possible I don't understand it in the way Setterfield intends, but my understanding is satisfying and makes sense to me, so I'm sticking with it.  

This post will contain spoilers from this point on, and will make a lot more sense if you've read the book.

Firstly, let's look at the blurb for the book, taken from amazon.co.uk;

A haunting Victorian ghost story of love, loss and the mystery of death from the bestselling author of THE THIRTEENTH TALE.
As a boy, William Bellman commits one small cruel act that appears to have unforeseen and terrible consequences. The killing of a rook with his catapult is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. And by the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, he seems indeed, to be a man blessed by fortune.
Until tragedy strikes, and the stranger in black comes, and William Bellman starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, he enters into a bargain. A rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner, to found a decidedly macabre business.
And Bellman & Black is born.

This blurb is written by someone who misunderstood the book, but it's a starting point.  I am confident in stating that because the blurb is written as if it's describing a horror story, which this is not.  My edition contains a Q&A with Diane Setterfield who outright states that it's a ghost story, not a horror story.  I see the confusion, because there are many stories which are both ghost stories and horror stories, but this is not one of them.  The goodreads blurb is a little better;

Bellman & Black is a heart-thumpingly perfect ghost story, beautifully and irresistibly written, its ratcheting tension exquisitely calibrated line by line. Its hero is William Bellman, who, as a boy of 10, killed a shiny black rook with a catapult, and who grew up to be someone, his neighbours think, who "could go to the good or the bad." And indeed, although William Bellman's life at first seems blessed—he has a happy marriage to a beautiful woman, becomes father to a brood of bright, strong children, and thrives in business—one by one, people around him die. And at each funeral, he is startled to see a strange man in black, smiling at him. At first, the dead are distant relatives, but eventually his own children die, and then his wife, leaving behind only one child, his favourite, Dora. Unhinged by grief, William gets drunk and stumbles to his wife's fresh grave—and who should be there waiting, but the smiling stranger in black. The stranger has a proposition for William—a mysterious business called "Bellman & Black" . . .

So.  The book does start with William Bellman, as a child fooling around with his friends, deciding to try to make an impossible shot with a homemade catapult, to shoot down a rook.  He doesn't intend to succeed, but he does, killing the rook.  The rest of the book is his life story from this point on, with a particular focus on the occasions when his friends or family die.  At many of the funerals he attends, William Bellman sees a mysterious man in black, who he is afraid of, and whom, afterwards, he finds he can't quite describe.  At the death of his wife and three of his children - arguably the lowest point of his life - Bellman has a conversation with this mysterious figure, leaving him with the idea to start a retail emporium devoted to the trappings of death - mourning clothes, coffins, etc.  He names the store 'Bellman & Black', mentally assigning the name 'Black' to the mysterious figure which he believes he has made some kind of deal with.  It is never explicitly stated - because Setterfield doesn't really do explicit statements - but it is clear that Bellman believes he owes Black something for the survival of his remaining child.  Bellman lives in fear of when Black will come to claim whatever this something might be. The book ends when Bellman dies, shortly after his final meeting with Black.  In-between the chapters on Bellman are chapters on rooks, all of them ending with different collective nouns for them.

It is possible to interpret the first 90% of the book as follows; with Black as the human form of the dead rook, striking down those around Bellman, being convinced to spare Dora, the child's life, in exchange for Bellman's service in creating the moratorium emporium and eventually his life.  I think most people, lead to believe they are reading a horror story, are interpreting the first 90% of the book in this way, and that's why the ending - the meeting between Bellman and Black - is unsatisfying.  Black never explains what he wants from Bellman or why he has been killing those around him.  There is no big confrontation, no sacrifice.  Bellman...just dies.  And his daughter lives on.

The reason the ending doesn't make sense with this interpretation is because, again, the book is not a horror story. Black isn't the dead rook taking revenge.  All of the people around William Bellman die of natural causes. His life isn't filled with more death than those around him.  The first to go are his grandfather, his uncle, and his mother.  All sad, but, also, very natural.  Most people's grandfathers, uncles, and mothers will die before they do because, by definition (except in some rare cases for the uncles), these relatives are a generation ahead of you.  They're supposed to die before you do.  That isn't an unnatural occurrence.

I may be mistaken on the order here (or anywhere in this list of deaths), but the next death is that of one of William Bellman's friends, who saw the rook fall.  He dies in an accident.  Again, sad, but also not that unusual.  Sure, some of us will be the first amongst our generation to die but most of us won't.  A guy I went to primary school with died at eighteen because he was accidentally shot (in Britain, which made it especially weird).  Another child I attended primary school with - whom I barely recall at all, because I was five - died of leukaemia.  Another of my friends died of leukaemia a few weeks before his 21st birthday.  During my access course, before attending uni, another student died of an accidental drug overdose over the Christmas holidays.  I saw a stranger get hit by a car and die on impact when we were both in our early twenties.  All of these were tragic, of course, but they were not unusual.  I am not unusually beset by death and nor is William Bellman. This is not an unusual amount of death. It feels like it is because that's what the narration focuses on, and we're used to seeing what the narration focuses on as unusual and significant, but I will shortly explain why that is not the case.

The next deaths are those of Bellman's wife and three of his children, and the near death of his eldest child.  This would be unusual for us, but it is made explicit that it is not unusual at that time and place.  A fever runs through the village and almost every family has lost someone.  Setterfield describes the fact that the dead have to be buried in groups, daily, because there'll be another pile tomorrow.  Other characters - who are explicitly stated to have lost family members - notice that Bellman, who is normally focused on the work of running the mill he inherited from his uncle - is, instead, focused on his family.  Bellman is able to do this because he's been so successful at building up a solid reputation with the mill's clients, with making the mill better able to weather variables, and building up a trustworthy, competent staff, who can keep the mill going despite losses in their own families. They've all lost people, but only Bellman dwells on it. He doesn't face an unusual amount of death; he places an unusual amount of focus on it.

It is after the loss of his family - specifically after his wife's burial - that Bellman spends the night at her grave and meets with Black.  He is left with the idea of turning his business acumen to creating the moratorium emporium.  When Bellman returns home, he expects his daughter to breathe her last - because he has kept copious records of the symptoms of the rest of his family and all the treatments he tried in an effort to save them, and so knows exactly how people die from this illness - but she doesn't.  Dora survives, though she is left permanently disabled from the experience, requiring help for the rest of her life.

Bellman focuses obsessively on work.  He hears of the deaths of his cousin and his other friend (the other two children who saw him kill the rook), both before the ages of 49.  It's implied the cousin committed suicide - and, again, I know at least one person who died that way and I'm 31 - while the friend died of a heart attack (I think).  While one of these deaths was a little on the young side, I don't think it's strange that Bellman outlived three of his childhood friends.  Out of any group of four childhood friends, any of them has a 25% chance of being the last one to die (except in scenarios where, for example, two die in an accident together).  Personally, I think the story followed Bellman because he was the last of his four friends to die, not that his friends died because there was something unusual about Bellman. Bellman is unusually obsessed with death, not abnormally surrounded by it.

So who is Black?  Well, remember that this, while not a horror story, is a ghost story.  Black is the ghost.  But who's ghost?  For me, the answer to this question is what unlocks the whole book.  I think Black represents Bellman's own ghost, not in the sense of being his post-mortem spirit, but more in the sense of the death-daemons in The Subtle Knife.  Black is Bellman's knowledge and fear that Bellman himself will someday die.  That's why Bellman sees him at funerals, when he's reminded of his own immortality.  That's why Bellman's afraid of him, because Black is the representation of his fear of dying.  That's why Bellman can't find Black when he tries to find him at a funeral and is distracted by the act of searching, but only when he begins to fear that he won't see him.  That's why, after Bellman names his store Bellman & Black (I only bold book titles, and while this is the same as the title of the book I am not actually saying the title of the book), characters constantly mistake Bellman for Black.  That's why, after his wife's death, Bellman tries to fill every single minute with business and productivity - as he himself explains, time passes more slowly for busy people.  Making time pass more slowly is one way to keep his death further from him, although, in the end, the overwork is a factor in his death.  Putting money aside for Black - as Bellman does, in his fear that Black will return to claim something from him - doesn't work because death can't be kept away with money.  It can be delayed, in the sense that money can pay for healthcare and nutrition, but it can't be stopped.

So, what's up with the rooks?  The '&' chapters describe them, both literally and figuratively.  The first chapter describes the magnificence of rooks - their feathers, their ability to split black into different shades - and asks why such a magnificent creature spends its time in such common places, like with cows.  The same chapter answers by explaining that they go where they want.  Rooks are egalitarian.  In my opinion, both Black (the shade and the character) and the rooks are metaphors for death and grief in this novel.  Both are egalitarian - death accepts everyone equally.  

The first '&' chapter mentions that some people say "a parish of rooks".  Parishes, among other things, are associated with both death and grief.  The next '&' chapter follows the description of fever running through the village, and ends by stating that some people say "a clamour of rooks".  This, after describing a clamour of death and grief throughout the village.  The third '&' chapter mentions Huginn and Munnin, rooks from Norse mythology with names translated by this book as 'Thought' and 'Memory'.  The chapter ends by stating that some people say "an unkindness" of rooks, but adds that Thought and Memory find this puzzling.  Since this chapter states that the rooks represent Thought and Memory, then I am taking the 'unkindness' to be a description of them, which the narrative disagrees with, implicitly stating that thoughts and memories are not unkind.  That ties into the ending, so I'll come back to it in a minute.  The next collective noun is 'parliament'.  Arguably, death is the highest legislation.  It's a law no one has ever broken.  That wasn't the first thing I thought of, though.  I thought of democracy when I read that and, and death and grief are nothing if not democratic.

The next collective noun is 'building', coming right after the completion of the building (both noun and verb) of Bellman & Black, an edifice dedicated to death and grief.  The final noun is 'storytelling', and that's explained by the very last line.  This book has a little trick in it.  Right up until the last page it seems to be written in third person, but it's not.  It's written in first person, and the rooks are telling the story.  This is a story about how Bellman deals with death and grief in his live - by constantly working and distracting himself, to keep both at bay.  When confronted by Black - his own death - he is first forced to face that fear, by remembering his grief, but then he recalls his life and all the happy moments (via thought and memory).  The narrative character is/are these metaphorical rooks because the rook was his first experience of death.  The story is built around the deaths in his life not because those deaths are unusual but because Bellman's entire life is shaped by his grief and his fear of his own death, both of them triggered by the deaths of others in his life.  In addition, there are specific expectations of narration, namely that, if it is third person then it is unbiased.  However, this narration is not in third person - it's in first person.  It is biased towards specific events and topics, not because they are objectively interesting but because they are subjectively interesting.  The narrator itself is the embodiment of a metaphor for grief and death and so the narration focuses on those things.

Bellman remembers his deal with Black as Black having offered him an opportunity.  Bellman thought the opportunity was the opening of Bellman & Black, and the money he made from the enterprise, but Black tells him that was incorrect during their final meeting.  I think one thing that people find disappointing at the ending is what the opportunity was isn't stated by Black.  The final chapter repeats that some people say "a storytelling of rooks", and expands on the idea that rooks harvest lives and stories, as "I harvested William Bellman's story".   The opportunity given by your death is the fact that, to die, you must have first lived.  This is a bit of a tricky one because some people, and even some characters in this book, die at a very young age, so I welcome other interpretations.  I do have a vague memory of Neil Gaiman making the point that all lives are the same length - they all last a lifetime.  Which I think is a similar idea.

I post this suspecting that blogger will add a bunch of characters to my ampersands, but I cba to fix it.

Edit:  A few things have occured to me since posting this.  Firstly that, in order to grieve someone's death, you must have loved them.  That's the opportunity inherent in grief.  Love.  In the same way that life is the opportunity inherent in death.  That's why, after Black makes Bellman remember grieving his family, Bellman remembers the other memories that he repressed - how much he loved them.  Funerals can be an act of love and respect as well as an expression of grief, and that's where Bellman channels all his energy.

Secondly, because the rooks are Bellman's personal metaphor for grief and loss, and because they are the ones telling the story that means, in a way, that the story is being told by Bellman.  That's why it's biased to how he sees the world, as being unreasonably filled with death and loss, despite the fact that the deaths surrounding him are not unusual.

Edit the Second: this is an excellent analysis that picks up on some things I missed.  I don't think it contradicts my interpretation.