Book Review: The Names by Florence Knapp – a ‘sliding doors’ novel describing one character across three possible lives

I like a book that takes you on a different kind of journey, so that you don’t quite know what to expect next. You’re not always looking out for plot points, twists or turning points. The Names is the story of a baby boy, born to Cora and Gordon and the question of his name. His father insists he must be called Gordon, like him and his father before him, both doctors and both domineering men. But Cora would prefer Julian, an altogether gentler sounding name, while the baby’s older sister, Maia, thinks he should be Bear.

We get three different stories – one for Bear, another for Julian and the last for Gordon, showing the man he becomes, a new chapter for every seven years. But it’s also the story of Cora and the abuse she suffers at the hands of her husband. Each story offers a different set of outcomes, and the different effects this has on each of our core characters, Cora, Maia and Bear/Julian/Gordon.

It’s an interesting concept which keeps you hooked on the story, wondering what is going to happen next. I found I was enjoying one version of B/J/G more than another for one chapter, but this would be different in the next. To start with Bear wasn’t really all that interesting – he’s so confident, like his name, likeable and successful. But Florence Knapp makes sure there are interesting things that happen so that life isn’t always plain sailing.

Julian is damaged by what happens to him, and struggles to open up. He worries he’ll be like his father, that he has that same ability to hurt, and avoids relationships. Gordon is also damaged by his childhood and growing up, and learns things the hard way. He was difficult to read about to start with, but in the end I felt he was the most interesting of the three. You feel for all of them in different ways. Alongside the young man is his relationship with his sister, who is also going through some soul searching. What is it like to grow up with a parent who is capable of such violence? To what extent do you also inherit that gene?

But it was Cora who really has your sympathy. In one story, the author captures the manipulation, control and violence the elder Gordon inflicts on her, which makes for grim reading. The way it goes on through the years and how her husband shuts down her chances to live her own life, to be her own person. The hopelessness and acquiescence. I found I desperately wanted to stay with Cora’s story to see if she will make it out alive.

And when she speaks, she hears herself as he will: pathetic, weak.
‘I went to register the birth like you asked, and I – I hope you won’t mind, but I’ve called him something else. Not Gordon. You know I’ve never really wanted to call him that and I – I -‘
She stops because he hasn’t blinked; his eyes haven’t left her face. And this part, it’s like someone with a fear of heights, someone at the top of a ladder, so sure they’re about to fall, they have the impulse to jump and get it over with. It takes all her strength not to sink to his feet and let him kick her, to not even try to escape its inevitability, but to submit, because this anticipation only delays what she knows is coming.

In the background there are other characters coming into the picture, as each starts to build their own life, and grows their family. There are some interesting descriptions of the work they do, particularly the work of silversmithing and archaeology. The Names would make great fodder for book groups and I will be interested to see what Florence Knapp writes next – a more traditionally plotted story, or something different again. The Names is an engaging debut and a four-star read from me.