When one of the lovely women in our book club suggested The Names by Florence Knapp, I was completely and utterly unaware of what sort of book I was about to start reading. When I select a book to read for personal interest, I always do a bit of background checking to determine what the plot entails prior to reading it, just so I have some understanding of what’s going on. I normally don’t apply this same background check to books chosen in our book club for a couple of reasons; the first being that if a book is chosen, and I decide to explore it a little before reading it, I don’t want to make a false assumption simply because it isn’t something I would normally read; the second being that I like to leave a little bit of anticipation with our book club books and go into a chosen book with some unfamiliarity, since I take the unknown out of the equation with my selection methods for personal reads.
The Names is brilliant. I absolutely and highly recommend it, but I do offer a trigger warning as it deals with domestic violence. Domestic violence is a core theme in this book, but I wouldn’t say that is what this book is about at its essence; rather, Knapp’s creativity shines through her analysis of how someone’s name influences the course of their life, and how a name can both create and destroy fate.
Kanpp tells one story three different ways, with each story focusing on a young male character – in one story, his name is Gordon; in another, it is Julian; and in the third, it is Bear. Each story with each name illustrates the ways in which a supposed identity can morph a person both into something they yearn to be and simultaneously despise, and Knapp’s depiction of one family in three different contexts is magnificent.
The Names is beautiful, tragic, imaginative and moving, and it is undoubtedly one to read.
Photo by Alexandra Fuller on Unsplash
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