Common Ground By Naomi Ishiguro

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Part 1

This account of Stan and Charlie finding a friendship and then having circumstance pull them apart again is sad in the inevitability of it. “Society” said their friendship couldn’t work, and society acted to prove itself right.

Maybe many people read themselves into characters that are outsiders, do people generally overstate our own troubles or is that just my anxiety at work? It is Stan the loner that is bullied at school that connect with rather than Charlie the traveller – looking through Stan’s eyes we are attracted to the confidence of Charlie, but we see there is a troubled inner life below the surface.

I have had to take it back to the library as it is reserved by another reader before I got to Part 2 …

Part 2

As there is a decade between the parts the enforced gap in my reading is appropriate, my recall of the first part not entirely prefect in a way that would also be the case for Charlie and Stan.

Charlie is now in a phase in life which echoes that described in Easy Meat by Rachel Trezise, beyond the hopes of youth and into an adulthood that disappoints, no clear pathway in which things would get better.

There is also the worry that Stan has become a bit of dickhead hipster Uni student – there was a purity in their friendship.

There are times when we all fail to be the good friend we would wish to be – it touches on a deep sadness as we long for that better version of ourselves. Maybe this is the core theme of the whole book, everyone is seeking to be that better version.

Part 3

In order to get out of their rut Charlie and Kate are heading to Ireland, and in this exchange Charlie captures that little glimmer of hope ...

“Charlie nodded. ‘Good,’ he said.

‘Is it?’ said Stan then.

And Charlie’s face broke into what looked like the first real grin Stan had seen from him in a while, even if it did have a kind of desolate edge. ‘I don’t know, mate, but it’s what we’ve got,’ he said.” (p350)

… things might not get better when you take that risk, make that change, “but it’s what we’ve got” - you have got to live the life that is in front of you – not the Photoshopped fantasy you see on social media.

There is a concluding moment of drama, in which we see our cast of characters being the better version of themselves – but it is not a fairy-tale happy ever after – a battle won, perhaps, but by no means the war.