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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Triumph, September 26, 2005
I thought that I had touched the sky with Maggie Gee's previous novel, The Flood, but My Cleaner (perfect title) is even better, richly funny and moving. Vanessa Henman is a middle class writer who for the past 25 years has taught creative writing (instead of writing), who lives `in that big empty house, so much too big for only two people' and who has too many books that she doesn't read or need, too much of everything. She has raised her handsome, intelligent son Justin as a single-parent mother, but, blind to her failings as a mother, blames her ex-husband for what has happened to Justin. Justin has abandoned his job, mopes about the house all day and hates everyone except Mary, an Ugandan village girl who was Vanessa's cleaner when he was a boy. Mary now is a Makerere graduate living in Kampala, but somehow she has escaped the corrosive effects of education and urban life. Her preoccupations are the people she loves, her son who has been taken from her and her kabito (boyfriend). She believes in God and loves to sing and dance. She is grateful to be who she is. She needs money and, when Vanessa asks her to return to London to look after Justin, she accepts.
Maggie Gee confronts in this novel (one is tempted to say parable) life as so many of us in Europe and America now experience it: a sterilized life separated from the soil that nourishes us, of neuroses and trivial preoccupations, godless and lonely. She juxtaposes Vanessa and Mary (choosing an African, one suspects, because an English rustic would be a less convincing foil), leads us through a fascinating story happy and painful by turn, and makes her case with convincing authenticity of detail, grace and wit. `It is strange how Mr Blair is always smiling (he seems happier than anyone else in Britain!). And he likes our President Museveni, and so does Mr Bush, who came to visit. They all like war, and so they all get on.'
This reviewer believes that, with The White Family, The Flood and My Cleaner, Maggie Gee has secured a place in English letters that will survive our time. Another triumph.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Ugandan looks at England, November 15, 2010
This review is from: My Cleaner (Paperback)
The main characters in this beautifully written book:
Vanessa Henman is a writer, snobbish, selfish, insecure, self-deluding, a cold single mother, though her ex-husband Trevor looks in frequently to fix things in the house and to keep in touch with Justin, their son.
Mary Tendo is a Ugandan. Educated at Makerere College, she had been sent by her government to do an MA in London, but then the government grant stopped; Mary could not afford to continue with her MA and took a job with Vanessa, initially as a cleaner twice a week, but soon looking after Justin, who became very fond of her as she of him. He was three when she arrived and eleven when, having saved enough money, she returned to Kampala. There she has found a decent job as the Linen Store Keeper in one of the top hotels, and is saving money to be able to retire to her native village. She is confident and satisfied with her life (though she has one great grief whenever she thinks of her much loved son Jamil whom her Libyan ex-husband took with him to Tripoli).
Then she receives a letter from Vanessa: Justin, now 21, "is very ill. He never gets up". He was still so fond of Mary; could she possibly come back to look after him? The money would be good. So Mary returns. She secured twice the wages that she had been offered: an early sign both of her confidence and of the new relationship between her and her employer. Justin is indeed mentally very sick, and Vanessa can do nothing with him; but he responds to Mary, which further tilts the balance of power in the household towards her. There is growing tension between the two women, and the reader is on tenterhooks, especially in the last few pages, about how it will all work out. Mary is as robust as Vanessa is brittle. In the end we feel sorry for Vanessa, especially as we learn more about her background and she is not wholly dislikeable. Both characters are beautifully drawn, and I can't wait to meet them again in the sequel, "My Driver".
Mary is a delightful character, and a particular charm of the book is her attitude to Europeans: she is not in awe or in fear of them; rather she comments, almost in the manner of an anthropologist, on the artificial and stilted way in which they live, on their accumulation of possessions.
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