Elvis and his mother Gladys

In Graceland, Bethan Roberts’s fictionalised recreation of the early life of Elvis Presley, and his close relationship with his mother Gladys.

 

At 22, 1957, Elvis already a huge star is called up for his military service, the novel looks into the performer’s chaotic   childhood with several chapters filled with grownup dilemas concerning show business, love and money Between 1937 and 1958 Robert shows how the child is father to the superstar.

 

Elvis’s early life was often extreme, we see his uncomprehending trepidation as a small child waiting outside the jailhouse while his mother visits his father who is doing time for forgery. (was he chained up or did he sleep on straw).

We were shown the grief of Elvis and his mother share for Elvis’s twin Jesse who was still born 35 minutes before Elvis’s birth.

 

The pair visits Jesse’s grave and pray to him and this loss creates their close bond as well their anxiety.

We are shown the sustaining effect religion has on the `Presley family. WE are also shown faith’s darker aspects in one deeply troubling scene a preacher and three male parishioners attempt to cast the devil out of a wayward teenage girl with so much vigour that she loses consciousness from sheer terror.

 

The Presley family move house continually in this novel, at first because of poverty and later on because of their vast wealth.

When Glady’s could not locate a light switch and Elvis has to be reminded where the bathroom is because they do not remember which house it is.

Elvis’s father Vernon is hopeless, violent and unfaithful.

When Elvis sings in church or hears a storekeeper in Memphis play the blues on his trombone, he identifies something even more profound than religious ecstasy. He knows instinctively that music is the best thing in the world. 

He starts to carry a guitar with him everywhere and to hum or sing instead of pray. Gladys is frightened for him when she realises how talented he is. Her favourite song of his is “ Don‘t Be Cruel”, because it locates a high exuberance in loss and no shame at all.

Gladys’s obsession with her son in untoward for she craves absolute closeness; Physical emotional and spiritual. Gladys’s desperately wants him to settle down. Meeting her son’s first serious girlfriend Dixie, she could not help confiding “ I always hoped Elvis would marry somebody just like you”

Elvis’s lyrics like “above the roof, the sky is prickling with stars oer the moon is full, hanging heavy and golden in the sky.

According to the novel Elvis is man who wore suits fashioned from gold leaf on stage, which occasionally prompts the reader to burst into singing.

Graceland by Bethan Roberts, Michael Owen/Penguin, Random House £14.99/$129.99, 432 pages.