Beautiful Loan Review by Mary Costello – A Deep Exploration of Inner Life | imaginary

IIn all of her previous novels and short story collections, Irish writer Mary Costello has revealed the inner vastness hidden in even the quietest life. Her latest book, Beautiful Loan, goes even further, with a heartfelt poetic exploration of the multitudes we contain and what it means to be human.

From the beginning, in the introduction to the novel, Anna tells us that she is determined to sacrifice herself and her life. But we do not expect any ordinary narrative, concerned only with “actual events”, “based on evidence” or relying on “historical data”. No, Anna is interested in the “climate of the soul” and the “vibrations of the soul.” Is it possible that the very things we cannot measure or justify are what make life meaningful?

When she meets Peter, the older, worldly man she is to marry, Anna tells us that she wants to know everything about him—every part of his existence. Only Peter is distant and elusive. He has no desire to spend time with her family and sees no need to compromise his own desires. There’s a sense over the years that Anna has some understanding of what’s wrong here, but she denies this knowledge almost immediately, just as he denies the answers to her questions.

Later, when Anna frees herself from Peter, she falls in love with Karim. He is a Muslim – although not religious – kind-hearted, generous and boyish. She also finds solace in his faith. However, tragedy leads him to become increasingly dogmatic, lacking compassion.

Beneath the intense terrain of emotional life, there is a narrative of thoughts. We are asked what it might be like to know another person, and whether such a thing is even possible. Childhood is portrayed as perhaps the only time one is ever “fully known,” so losing it seems racist, while adulthood represents an increasing alienation from others.

Elsewhere, Peter’s callousness and emotional detachment are couched in the language of science and reason, challenging his limited means of describing our lives. When Anna miscarried, he said to her: “Look, I know you’re upset about this… but remember, it was just a bunch of cells.” Facts – scientific facts – do not give a true or complete description of meaning. These cells symbolize more than that.

It’s a piece that mirrors the way Costello’s previous novels have explored animal rights, as Anna’s growing awareness is inspired not by humans but by her dog, Beau. “It changed me, and generated within me a new awareness of animal consciousness, of their moment-to-moment existence.” It’s this kind of attentive presence that brings joy to Anna’s life: chopping vegetables “consciously, slow and deliberate, as if I might hurt them,” or “I turn on the tap and when the water flows, it’s a miracle.” The necessity of common feeling she describes sounds like a moral insistence on compassion, which she calls “suffering” with everything.

At the same time, this animal consciousness seems to explain Anna’s ability to intuit or dream things that foretell knowledge. Her body frequently takes in things of which she is only dimly aware. But when her husband dismisses this as fantasy or childishness, we realize Anna’s dilemma – and our own – in interpreting the truth when it challenges convention.

How then can we explain things that fall outside the scope of ordinary language? One answer is through the power of art and metaphor. The novel is enriched with vivid experiences in music, literature and cinema. However, art is not a panacea – this is not a hackneyed defense of literature as an education in empathy.

“I see wounded people everywhere,” Anna tells us. “Wounded trees…broken statues.” We come to see that Peter and Karim are wounded too, and that it is Anna’s experience of love, longing, and loss that enables her to see this. In order to see the suffering of others, we must experience suffering ourselves. Costello returns again and again to the cycle of pain he experienced and the pain he was treated for. She spoke of her admiration for Albert Camus, and he and his work had a clear presence. However, the figure I was thinking of all along was Simone Weil, the philosopher and mystic Camus heralded as “the one great soul of our time.” Because Weil claims that “suffering” is our moral duty.

Many authors describe a writer’s primary duty as being interested in the world around us in all its beauty and ugliness. In a sense, this is also a moral act. Costello does this in all of her work. That we as readers might be surprised by the importance and depth it brings to each life is a measure of the depth of its interest, and is perhaps why there is no greater chronicler of the inner life at this moment. As artificial intelligence and big technology force upon us an increasingly diminishing definition of what it means to be human, this novel reminds us that we are much more than that.