“The Names” by Florence Knapp
Cora is used to sudden explosions that come at a light being left on, or realising too late she’s been overly friendly in the way she’s spoken to a tradesman. She lives trying not to set a match to Gordon’s anger, but sill she spills petrol about her, dripping it over shoes she has forgotten to polish, sloshing it across a particular shirt not washed in time. She races from thing to thing, tending to whatever might spark, but it’s always something behind her, just out of sight that she hadn’t thought of. But today is different. She gets to choose how it’s presented. And she feels fearless. Yes, he might — will — be furious, but the consequences won’t be pointless this time. She will have got what she wants: for her son to grow up with his own name.
….
You reminded me how important it is for everyone to have their own name, but it was completely my decision to call him something different.
Debut novelist Florence Knapp’s The Names is about Cora and her family, her children Maia and Bear/Julian/Gordon — depending on which strand of the story you wish to dwell upon. Cora’s husband is a successful doctor, who is well liked in the community he serves, but his darker side of being a patriarch, who believes in the traditional gendered roles of a woman and man and is passionate about tradition — are facts that no one outside the family seems to be aware of. It is this intersection of the private and public, the relationship between the husband and wife, father and daughter, father and son that is explored by the author. The Names is spread over thirty five years, beginning with the birth and registeration of the son’s name. The story is narrated with gaps of seven years, with the story revolving around either Bear or Julian or Gordon. This is dependant on whether Cora registered her son’s name as “Bear”, as suggested by Maia or “Julian”, as preferred by Cora, or “Gordon”, as ordered by Gordon the father, to carry on the patriarchal tradition of naming the first son as his father and grandfather before him. Florence Knapp in her storytelling explores the what-if scenarios of naming Cora’s son one of the three names suggested for him. She believes that it is the smallest of actions that brings about the change in the future. The Names illustrates that belief through the three different stories. But it is the relentless and sharply observed scenarios of domestic violence, in even the “meaningless” actions of a woman/wife/mother, that makes the reader’s heart race. It is alarming.
Florence Knapp is a seamstress who wrote this novel fairly quickly but then put it into a drawer. After a few months, she read it once more and decided to have it published. In her interviews promoting the book, she often mentions that in one of her circle’s, the women were introduced to a domestic violence activist. This person spoke at length about the violence perpetrated upon women. It made Florence Knapp think about it a lot. The end result is this book.
While I understand the precision of this writing is as precise as that probably required in creating a garment or embroidering when working with a thread and a needle, it is the horror of the violence on the page that is deeply disturbing. Not that it is unheard of or is unusual but for us, living in India, in a hyper-masculine society, where patriarchal norms have returned with such a fury, this book is hard to read. Daily news consists of women being burnt to death for dowry, young girls being raped and murdered, sexual harrasment and eve teasing are rampant. Earlier we read about these violent acts of violence but today with smartphones available in everyone’s hands, there are reels easily available on social media platforms. It is ghastly. And these are only a few of the stories that make their way into the main media. There are countless such stories that play out, day and night, across socio-economic classes. So, while I can understand the rave reviews it is receiving in the Anglo-American book market, the 13-publisher auction and (so far) sale into twenty languages for translation, it is a story that will require nerves of steel to be read.
While the characters in the book, the major and the minor, are well etched, it is Gordon (the father) who comes across as a flat character. It is almost as if the entire energy of the author was spent in making the invisible in a homemaker’s life visible. A sterling effort but then the perpetrator of the gendered violence should have been a little more rounded.
Nevertheless, The Names reputation as a book that must be read in 2025 stands true. Sometimes stories like this need to be told, so that victims while reading the novel, can recognise situations for themselves, and perhaps, figure out a way forward. Many a time and oft, victims and their children/younger wards are trapped and lose their sense of reality. The simplest act, such as calling out for help, is the hardest task.
Read The Names. It is published by Hachette India.
26 August 2025
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