The Limit is Rosalind Belbin’s third novel, originally published in 1974, only two years after her first novel, Bogies. Her rate of publication has since diminished considerably with only one novel in the eighties and one in the nineties; as her work has fallen out of print so too has her reputation, despite winning the James Tait Black Memorial Award for her 2007 novel, Our Horses in Egypt. Yet her sporadic publishing history is only one reason she remains relatively unknown. As Kirsty Gunn has pointed out:
“I think Belben may be the first contemporary writer in English since Muriel Spark I’ve come across who makes a virtue of being contrary for the sake of it—in Belben’s case, not wanting to be “good” in the sense of either creating smoothly comprehensible sentences in English nor making the subjects of her books necessarily appealing or easy for the reader to feel empathy.”
In The Limit, however, the smooth-running prose of Spark is replaced by something with uncomfortably sharp edges, as Paul Griffiths indicates in his introduction:
“Points of view (his, hers, third person) and tenses (past, present) are at once distinct and compacted.”
And so we have a novel which disconcerts the reader with both form and content. Centred on the death of an Englishwoman, Anna, cared for by her Italian husband, Ilario, as she approaches the end, the novel moves both back and forward from that moment.
“To her it seemed interminable: I have a job, my job is departure, I need to get on. I am not doing it well.”
Belbin does not shy away from Anna’s physical deterioration, the “utter ugliness of Anna.” She is compared to an “old skinny baboon,” or “as you’re so heavily whiskered, an orang-outang; a whale”, “her breasts little squabs, skin and gristle, flippers, deformities…” Belbin goes further, however, matching her grotesque physical state with her desire, Ilario “kissing her sickly flesh.” Her belly, swollen by a tumour, is likened to pregnancy – Ilario’s calls it “my pet balloon.” Above all, her ‘crutch’ is described again and again: “a putrid bog I poke at” and, later:
“Your cunt stuck like a pig’s throat, drenches our earthland in blood, pulsing torrents of it: and still, still the heart beats.”
Rather than simply an intent to shock, Belbin seeks to reveal the intensity of their love through Ilario’s acceptance of Anna’s physical condition – in fact, more than acceptance as there is almost a relish in the refusal to be disgusted. Of course, these sections are interspersed with others, including chapters on their relationship when they first meet. Belbin uses a series of chapter headings which reoccur – phrases from, according to a note, the Hamlyn Encyclopaedic World Dictionary. Those which tell of the early days of their love for each other are entitled ‘A Change Brought About by the Sea’ (Ilario is a sailor) and present a different Anna:
“Brown, she’d lain in the Caribbean sun, nose peeling, eye aching, a delightful weariness…”
The happiness of her relationship contrasts with an unhappy childhood (in chapters headed ‘The State of Time of Being a Child’). At one point we are told:
“…she intended to endure death as years ago she endured childhood.”
Her childhood consists of unaffectionate parents and moments of sudden violence: “My dog is killing a cat.” At a hunt she will be daubed in blood:
“…the Master shakes me by the hand tips up my chin as if to kiss me and dabs my cheeks with a bleeding stump.”
She runs away from home as a teenager and when she is brought back her dog is dead: “An eye for an eye.” What little joy she has had in her life comes from Ilario, and the desolate nature of what comes before (and the days in which she is dying) only enhances their depth of feeling. It is a love story that feels like the antithesis.
Clearly, The Limit is not for the faint-hearted – in fact, it often feels like Belbin is challenging the reader not to look away. Yet, unlike other novels where this might feel calculated only to shock, there is a definite sense that Belbin is capturing something of life which eludes most writers.
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