Are you truly happy? (A Landing on the Sun - Michael Frayn)

Member Name: duskmaiden

Product:	A Landing on the Sun - Michael Frayn
Date:	13/07/05 (336 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: mix of humour and tragedy

Disadvantages: some parts were confusing

“In front of me lay two human hands”

They say the first line of a book should be a cracker to get you hooked. Using this theory Landing on the Sun by Michael Frayn certainly had the potential to be an interesting read. However I was not sure at first whether I would enjoy it or not.

Brian Jessel is a civil servant working in Whitehall. His main task throughout the book is to investigate the mysterious death of another civil servant Stephen Summerchild that happened in 1974. Summerchild was working on a top secret mission alongside the shadowy figure of Professor Serrafin. Jessel’s life intertwines with Summerchild’s as Jessel played in an orchestra alongside Summerchild’s daughter Millie and Jessel had a brief encounter with Summerchild just before he died. The book follows Jessel as he pieces together Summerchild’s final project during the last months of his life.

This simplified plot summary describes a book I would not enjoy at all. It suggests murder mystery, thriller, spies and espionage. I hate all of them!! However there is more to this book than meets the eye. It has real human emotions such as humour and tragedy.

The humour comes from Serrafin and Summerchild’s working relationship in the Strategic Unit. It is implied that the original brief is to compete with the American’s recent moon landing by landing on the sun and harnessing its power (as the tittle of the book suggests). Serrafin gets the wrong end if the stick about the mission and thinks the unit has been set up to investigate Standards of living. What ensues is fairly witty.
Serrafin is a philosopher not a civil servant and uses unconventional presentation methods. Inserted of writing conventional reports full of clauses and subsections and conclusions she writes informal waffly letters to the Prime Minster as if she was writing to a close friend or relative. I found her recounting mundane and unimportant bits of family list quite hilarious.

Her discussions with Jessel are also amazing. Whilst he interprets “Standard and Quality of Life” to pertain to consumer items such as washing machines she takes a more philosophical line. She questions what it truly means to be happy. Having studied philosophy I found these conversations quite interesting. When you say “I am happy with that” are you truly ecstatic or are you just saying I agree? Do we use some words to much, or is that taking the question too literally?

As the project continues Summerchild and Jessel’s quality of life is enhanced by making their mundane disused office into a little paradise. They buy things such as plants, decorations and even an inflatable bed. At this point the work of the Strategic Unit became farcical.

There is comedy but there is also sadness and tragedy in the lives of the characters in the book. Like many people most of them seem to be dull, mundane and perhaps a little unfufilling and lonely. I felt sorry for Summerchild when he confessed to Serrafin that he could only identify one occasion during a power cut when he and his family played a musical piece when he could describe himself as truly happy. I found this very poignant However it is Jessel that I really feel sorry for. At 17 he had a blossoming relationship with Millie Summerchild but her father’s death broke that up. Jessel then married and had a child but his wife at the time of the book has had some kind of breakdown and is institutionalised. The book did not go into detail about how Jessel met his wife and I found myself intrigued about what happened between her.

I found the intertwining of the characters effective. However I also found it at times confusing, The book is written in the first person with Jessel as the narrator. However the book would slip into other character’s perspectives. I found this difficult as I was wondering if this was what actually happened or if it was Jessel’s take on what he had imagined happened. This was hard to get used to at first.

I found the pace of the book just about right. I found myself involved with the story and wanted to know how the events unfolded as Jessel pieced together the evidence about Summerchild’s death.

Landing on the Sun was not my choice of book as it was one I had to read for my book Group. However I found to my surprise that I actually quite like the book. It was not the best book I had read but I found that the mixture of farce, tragedy and philosophy a fairly rewarding read.

Summary: A good read if you have the time