Becoming Dinah

"This one was shortlisted for the 2020 Great Reads Award in the junior category. It’s the story of Dinah, age 17, who grew up in a commune. The novel opens very dramatically with a scene where Dinah is cutting off all of her hair, beautiful long curls that flow down her back. She’s running away from home in embarrassment and shame because she kissed her friend Queenie, who didn’t return her feelings. The narrative shape alternates between Dinah in her identity of who she was in the fellowship, and Ishmael, whom she wants to become when she cuts off her hair and runs away. Ishmael finds herself going on a journey with Ahab, her neighbour who has lost his leg in an accident. Ahab has offered her money to drive across the country in pursuit of his prosthetic leg that is in a stolen van. It’s a road trip novel in a sense, and it’s really a novel of self discovery. I like the odd relationship between Ishmael and Ahab, who is a grumpy old man. He’s rude, he seems to have no appreciation for any kindness, he insults people and is always complaining. Gradually Ishmael comes to a greater understanding of Ahab. She realises how much in pain he is, and when their journey takes them to Ahab’s sister, she comes to realise that there is a softer, more human side to Ahab beneath the gruffness. It’s drawing on Moby Dick , Herman Melville’s 19th century novel. Moby Dick involves sailors on a whaling ship called the Pequod, and Kit de Waal draws on the parallels of the names of the characters, the van, and the location of the commune where Dinah has grown up, in New Bedford. There’s a lovely phrase toward the end of the novel where they find Ahab’s van and Ishmael describes it as whale-white. Moby Dick is not likely to be read by youngsters nowadays, so Kit de Waal has an explanatory note at the back of the novel to bring that into the narrative, which I think is very good. In Becoming Dinah , Ahab is obsessed with finding this van, which he thinks will go some way to restore his relationship with his former wife, but really it’s restoring his relationship with his son which is more important. I love works which have that sense of intertextuality. The way de Waal has drawn Moby Dick into the narrative is really well done. Yes, Dinah takes some control of the journey and I think that’s a nice aspect to this modern retelling. Another aspect of this novel that I really like is the richness of the raven metaphor. The raven has various symbolic significance but here I think de Waal is drawing on it as a creature of wisdom and insight, with certain healing powers, which feeds into Dinah’s story. The raven is associated with protecting us and helping to awaken our wider vision. Dinah is immersed in her own despair but on the journey she acquires a wider view, helped along by the characters who are associated with the raven. Bird imagery is commonplace in literature, think of Emily Dickinson , Sylvia Plath and Robert C. O’Brien, for example. When Rabindranath Tagore writes that “faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark” I think he gives us the idea that the people who are going to change your life, they sing to us before we even realise it. The character Jude does that in this story. The raven in the novel doesn’t speak but it points the way for Dinah to return to her family and deal with the challenges that she has. The journey of self discovery is tied in with Dinah’s confusion around her sexual identity. She has feelings for Queenie initially, and then she feels something similar for Pip when she meets him and realises that she also likes boys. The writer gives her the freedom to not be pushed in a particular direction. Exploring one’s sexual identity in teenage life is often a part of growing up. To find your way through all of this is challenging, and I like the approach in this novel."