It was JacquiWine’s enthusiasm for Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy which caused me to add it to the TBR, and a conversation with Marcie in the comments of Jacqui’s Levant Trilogy post which led to me finally getting the first instalment read! I’m delighted that Marcie and I are doing a buddy read for all three volumes this year, starting with The Great Fortune (1960) in June.

I’d originally planned to get this read by good time starting in April, but life took over, then novellas, and I’ve ended up finishing it on 29 June – one day spare! It says something for Manning’s writing that even my terrible memory and total inability with names kept her pretty large cast of characters straight despite a gap of about 8 weeks or so…

Guy and Harriet Pringle are newly married. The book opens with their arrival in Bucharest, a new experience for Harriet, but Guy has been there a year, working for the British Council at the university. It is 1939 and the new war across Europe looms large.

“‘Who is that?’ Harriet whispered. ‘Does he know us?’

‘Everyone knows us. We are the English. We are at war.’

‘But who is he?’

‘lonescu, the Minister of Information. He’s always here.’

‘How odd to live in such a small capital!’

‘There are advantages. Whatever happens here, one is in the midst of it.’”

It’s a time of adjustment to a new life and each other, against a rapidly changing, unstable background. Harriet begins to realise they are not easily compatible, with Guy’s relentless sociability at odds with her need for intimacy:

“They had slipped into marriage as though there could be no other possibly resolution of such an encounter. Yet — supposing she had known him better? Supposing she had known him for a year and during that time observed him in all his other relationships? She would have hesitated, thinking the net of his affections too widespread to hold the weighty accompaniment of marriage.”

The characterisation of these two young people is complex. Although Guy is constantly in company, this is motivated by his communist beliefs and a general generosity of spirit, rather than any particular interest or warmth regarding individuals.

“Guy said: ‘He leads his life, as we all do. What do you care what he does?’

‘Naturally I’m interested.’

‘Why be interested in people’s private lives? What they are pleased to let us know should be enough for us.’

‘Well, I just am. You’re interested in ideas; I in people. If you were more interested in people, you might not like them so much.’

Guy did not reply. Harriet supposed he was reflecting on the logic of her statement, but when he spoke she realised he had not given it a thought.”

My experience of Guy was that he was one of the most irritating, infuriating characters I’ve ever come across. His generosity paradoxically made him entirely selfish, as he seemed to have no real consideration for Harriet at all. She isn’t particularly likeable either, often xenophobic and begrudging with people. But as their relationship matures, she is more forgiving than me, recognising “a husband made unreliable only by his abysmal kindness”.

Manning makes them both so real (apparently based on her and her husband) that it became of little consequence that I didn’t like them – I wanted to hear about their lives at this time. Guy does live by his ideals, so he is not a deliberately unkind person, just utterly oblivious. He has enough redeeming qualities for Harriet’s love to be understandable:

“We must help him, not because he’s a good person but because he needs help. You understand that.”

Through Guy, we meet a range of characters who have ended up in Bucharest at this particular moment. These include but are not limited to:

Sophie, a student Guy considering marrying in order for her to have a passport – in his usual way he is unconcerned regarding her being in love with him; Sacha is another of his students, part of an immensely rich family called the Druckers; Harriet makes friends with Bella, an English woman married to a Romanian, Nikko Niculescu; we meet staff at the university, and journalists at the English Bar. Manning handles her large cast deftly, and even the less prominent characters are sketched distinctly.

There is also my favourite character – in many ways equally irritating as Guy – Prince Yakimov, an Irish/Russian prince. Yakimov is perpetually sponging off his friends, promising an always due to arrive remittance, pleading with them to pity “poor Yaki”. He is preoccupied by fine food, and starving most of the time. His English is peppered with phrases that sound almost Wodehouseian. He is utterly ill-equipped to deal with life in any way whatsoever, and yet somehow he endures on his own terms:

“Had Yakimov been content to eat modestly, he could have existed from one remittance to the next, but he was not content. When his allowance arrived, he ate himself into a stupor, then, penniless again, returned, a beggar, to the English Bar. It was not that he despised simple food. He despised no food of any kind. When he could afford nothing more, he would go to the Dâmbovița and eat the peasant’s staple food, a mess of maize. But food, rich food, was an obsessive longing. He needed it as other men need drink, tobacco or drugs.”

The progress of the war is documented, but never heavy-handed. The characters stop by a publicly displayed map of Europe which shows the fall of Poland and the invasion of Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries. Through the journalists in the English bar, the Battle of Dunkirk is relayed.

As the risk to Harriet and Guy grows, he responds surprisingly by becoming entirely wrapped up in producing a performance of Troilus and Cressida. I found this an intriguing choice by Manning. One of Shakespeare’s less well-known plays, it is tonally deeply odd. A tragedy but filled with unpleasant characters, a comedy but in bad taste a lot of the time. Harriet observes that everyone seems to be playing themselves. Yaki is commended for his portrayal of Pandarus, but Pandarus is a pimp. The play ends with that character wishing venereal disease on the audience – yuck. I love Shakespeare but Troilus and Cressida tests that assertion more than any other of his works.

It is a play about the Trojan war, so in a way it shows again how young and naïve so many of the characters are, play-acting while a very real war grows ever-more threatening. It also adds to the general sense of uncertainty, with very little to secure your knowledge or hope upon.

“Guy came hurrying in behind them. […] His size gave her an illusion of security — for it was, she was coming to believe, no more than an illusion. He was one of those harbours that prove to be too shallow: there was no getting into it. For him, personal relationships were incidental. His fulfilment came from the outside world.”

This volume ends in June 1940, and so as readers we know that these characters still have so much conflict to live through.

I’ve only scratched the surface of The Great Fortune, but this post is already far too long! It took me a while to get back into this novel, before something clicked and I whizzed through the remainder. I’m really looking forward to carrying on the story with The Spoilt City.  

In 1987, the BBC made both trilogies into a seven-part series, which seems a lot to squeeze in. I think I might give it a try, once I’ve finished reading them all…

If anyone would like to join us for this buddy read, please do! We’ll be posting in The Spoilt City in August and Friends and Heroes in October.