Florence Knapp, The Names (2025)
Florence Knapp was a guest at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival. I didn’t attend any of her events, but I loved the podcast of her conversation with Claire Nichols (at this link). Whether it was her personal charm or the way her book’s premise touched something in me, I reserved the book at my local library immediately, and behold, instead of a six-month wait, it was ready for me to pick up almost immediately.
The premise is straightforward enough. Cora, who is trapped in a dangerously abusive marriage, has to register the birth of her newborn son. Her husband instructs her to name the baby after himself – Gordon. Her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, wants him to be named Bear. Cora toys with calling him Julian, and escaping punishment by pointing out that the name means sky father, and so is a tribute to her husband.
That much is laid out in a prologue, set in October 1987. The rest of the novel tells what follows on from each of the choices. First in 1987, then every seven years until 2022, there are three chapters, headed ‘Bear’, ‘Julian’ and ‘Gordon’, and three radically different versions of the life of the family emerge.
Early on I wondered if there was much point to actually reading the book, once the premise was laid out. Maybe it was enough that the premise turns a spotlight on the ambivalence that I imagine most people have about their names, making me wonder, for example, how my life might have gone if, say, I had been named Arthur after my mother’s father (my father’s name was already taken), or something outlandish like Bandicoot, rather than Jonathan because, as my mother said, it sounds nicer than John.
But I’m glad I persisted with Florence Knapp’s story rather than my own. The lives of all three boys and their families are gripping, full of unexpected turns, each in its own way moving. The differences made by the different namings are wonderfully convincing, in big ways as well as small – from the drama of father Gordon’s immediate responses to tiny developments down the track. For example, when the baby is named on Maia’s suggestion, she forms a powerful protective bond with him. When he is called Julian, she becomes protective of her mother. When he is Gordon, they eventually form an alliance, but it is hard won. Taken as a whole, its a nuanced set of variations the theme of domestic violence and its long shadows.
Page 79* falls in Gordon’s section of 1994, when he is seven years old. Unlike the Bear and Julian, Gordon is taken under his father’s wing. On this page, father and son return from a special time at Pizza Express where the father asks, ‘What has Mummy been up to while I’ve been at work?’ Seeing that he gets an interested response when he says, ‘And one time, she said a bad word,’ the son makes up other maternal misdemeanours, including one that involves a stray cat. We fear for young Gordon’s soul.
Though I pick on page 79 arbitrarily, it’s interesting how often the page includes key moments in a book. Here, we have the moment when young Gordon gets an inkling of how his father is using him.
At dinner that night, his dad had brought up some of the things Gordon had told him. Not about the cat, which he must have known wasn’t true, but other things. He sounded pleased by the details, almost like he was teasing his mum, and Gordon had felt vindicated. Especially when his mum didn’t say those things were made up, but only looked at her plate, blinking, leaving Gordon wondering if she really did sneak bags of Monster Munch while he and Maia were at school; if she actually had used up his birthday bubble bath.
This puzzlement is given a nudge by Maia. On another timeline she is Bear’s besotted protestor. On this one she becomes Gordon’s moral guide:
Later, Maia had appeared at his bedroom door. ‘Do you have to be such a little–’ Gordon wasn’t sure what word she’d been about to say, only that it was a bad one. And that the reason she hadn’t said it was because they’d heard their dad coming upstairs. In bed, he had an odd gnawing feeling deep in his stomach. A bit like hunger but mixed with something ugly and sad. He turned over and buried his face in the pillow, trying to block out the memory of his mum blinking in that weird way. And Maia, glaring.
It would have been tempting to make young Gordon the replica of his father that old Gordon wants, but he is torn. At this point we feel the seven-year-old’s moral unease. In the last part of the page, Gordon makes a bid to break free of the destiny brought by his name.
The teacher is putting down a rectangle of card in front of each child, telling them these will go on the front of the trays where they’ll keep their workbooks and spelling diaries for the rest of the year. She tells them they should write their name and design a decorative border around it. Gordon sits for a moment, looking at what his classmates are doing, and then settles down to his own piece of card. Using his most careful handwriting, sounding out the letters in his head to make sure he gets it absolutely right, he writes L-U-K-E in orange felt-tip.
It’s no spoiler to say that the teacher doesn’t let him get away with it, but tears his card up, and writes his name in shockingly undecorated black on a new card. He is saddled with the name and all it brings with it. It would be a spoiler to say whether Florence Knapp allows him to escape or if she ruthlessly follows through on the logic of nominal determinism.
I loved that boy, and would happily have spent a lot more time with him, all three of him.
I am a man of settler heritage living on Gadigal Wangal country, where the days are suddenly warmer and magpies seem to be everywhere. I acknowledge Elders past, present and emerging for their continuing custodianship of this land, and welcome any First Nations readers.
* My blogging practice is to focus on the page that coincides with my age, currently 79.
Me fail? I fly! 