twentieth century literature

“Well, I woke up Sunday morning/With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt./And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,/So I had one more for dessert.” (Kris Kristofferson)

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I had such a book hangover after Bleak House. I couldn’t settle to anything. A friend of mine who loves a certain 80s singer has a phrase when she hears other warblers: “He’s alright, but he’s not George Michael.” Well, I kept picking up books that were alright, but they weren’t Bleak House. So few books are, I find…

Then I remembered that when Simon did his books of the year round up last year, I’d recognised two were on my TBR pile. Surely books good enough to make the final cut would see me right? Of course they did 😊 Hooray for bloggers and their brilliant recommendations!

Firstly, the novella which made the top of Simon’s list, A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence (1966). This was the second in Laurence’s Manawaka sequence, but thankfully they can all be read as standalones as I’d not read anything by her before. On the strength of this, I’ll definitely be seeking out her writing again.

A Jest of God is an intimate character study of Rachel Cameron, a thirty-four-year-old teacher who lives with her emotionally manipulative mother above the Manitoba funeral business her father ran until he died.

The novel is narrated in the first-person, and Rachel’s mind is an oppressive and tense place to be. She is highly anxious and self-censoring:

“There. I’m doing it again. This must stop. It isn’t good for me. Whenever I find myself thinking in a brooding way, I must simply turn it off and think of something else. God forbid that I should turn into an eccentric. This isn’t just imagination. I’ve seen it happen. Not only teachers, of course, and not only women who haven’t married. Widows can become extremely odd as well, but at least they have the excuse of grief.”

This anxiety and second-guessing is not helped by her mother’s behaviour, which is self-pitying, judgemental and highly manipulative. Rachel recognises this, but is at a loss as to how to extricate herself:

“Her weapons are invisible, and she would never admit even to carrying them, much less putting them to use.”

“All such words cling to the mind like burrs to hair, and I can never seem to brush them away, as I know I should do.”

Rachel’s mother is not an out-and-out baddie though, and Laurence expertly demonstrates the vulnerability and fear that underlies her machinations. Similarly, Rachel does not always behave well. In one particular scene early in the book, she actually behaves despicably and doesn’t make amends despite her instant remorse. She is a complex, contradictory character, wholly believable. Laurence treats her tenderly but unflinchingly; without judgement but also without sentiment.

Rachel could so easily be a stereotype: a lonely single woman, living with her mother. But Laurence side-steps clumsy characterisation, or easy dismissal of Rachel, by delicately exploring the true meaning of the adjective so often attached to unmarried women approaching middle-age: she is desperate. She is absolutely desperate and despairing. She is lonely, and feels trapped in the life she has always known, with no way out. She wants things to be different, but she doesn’t know how. She is deeply, existentially sad.

1966 is a time of societal change, when women like Rachel could feel stifled by convention and also have some sexual freedom. So when Nick, and old schoolfriend appears, there are brief moments of physical connection. But in only seeing things from Rachel’s point view, the reader is able to realise how little intimacy there is. And that is what Rachel needs, more than the sex which Nick offers. Yet she doesn’t know how to achieve this:

“I talk to him, when he is not here, and tell him everything I can think of, everything that has ever happened, and how I feel and for a while it seems to me that I am completely known to him, and then I remember I’ve only talked to him like that when I’m alone. He hasn’t heard and doesn’t know.”

In some of Nick’s reported speech, the reader picks up on things Rachel ignores. She is so bound in her own intense feelings, she can’t really hear the cues Nick gives, over her relentless inner voice.

“He’s thirty-five, not fifteen. His past such gauche public performances. What he worried about Rachel? I’m not worried. I’m perfectly alright. Well, relax, then. I am relaxed. Oh? Shut up. Just shut up.”

A Jest of God is such an accomplished novel that is also so approachable. I found Rachel’s voice got under my skin very quickly and distinctly, and I had to read on. I think it works very well as short novel, longer would have been too oppressive and difficult to sustain I suspect. But at the length it is it remains powerful and impactful, and not as depressing as I’ve made it sound!

Ultimately there is resilience and change for Rachel, even some defiance. And there are brief moments of humour, such as Rachel trying to duck her colleague Calla’s constant invitation to attend Tabernacle with her:

“At least I have postponed it, and perhaps by that time some reasonable excuse will come along, or I’ll be dead.”

A stunning novel: a precise and compassionate character study, clever and humane. I’m so glad to have discovered Margaret Laurence at long last.

“Something must be the matter with my way of viewing things. I have no middle view. Either I fixed on a detail and see it as though it were magnified – a leaf with all its veins perceived, the fine hairs on the back of a man’s hands – or else the world recedes and becomes blurred, artificial, indefinite, an abstract painting of a world.”

Secondly, after being in Rachel’s head, I looked forward to some comic relief from an author I always enjoy: Margery Sharp. Four Gardens (1935) was number ten in Simon’s list. But this wasn’t as comic as some of her other novels; it had a slightly elegiac tone and the relationships included a certain sadness. But it wasn’t a sad novel overall, and I sunk into Four Gardens with pleasure.

Four Gardens follows the life of Caroline Chase from late teens to middle-age and the titular spaces she finds herself in. The device with gardens isn’t remotely heavy-handed and for a significant section of the novel they barely feature. But Caroline is a gardener, given half a chance, and it is instinctive and natural to her:

“Her step, as she now redescended to the rose garden, was therefore a proper gardeners tread – slow, considerate, with long abstracted pauses for survey and meditation. She also, without thinking, removed her hat and gloves.”

This is her first garden, one she trespasses into, and as she meets her first love there, it has a dreamlike quality. Perhaps this is why her love of gardening is so easily disregarded when she leaves behind youthful folly to marry the determinedly sensible Henry:

“For all these things in themselves – love at first sight, undying devotion, and general aloofness – were very exciting indeed; it was only in connection with Henry that they became so curiously prosaic.”

And so for many years Caroline doesn’t garden at all. She runs a house and she raises her son and daughter in the town where she has always lived. She is the creator of a safe space for her children and an unwavering routine for her staid but affectionate husband.

Despite the love she feels for her family and the tranquillity of her home life, I did find an element of melancholy to Caroline’s domestic arrangements. Her family are near and dear, but there seemed to be very little intimacy: she and Henry rarely communicate about anything beyond practical considerations, and she doesn’t really understand her children at all. She also despises her closest friend in the village, Ellen Watts  – a monstrous and wholly believable creation. Caroline reflects very little though, and so any concerns are quickly subsumed in the relentless demands of domesticity:

“Thinking – the deliberate exercise of the brain – did not come naturally to her.”

But I wouldn’t want to give the impression that Four Gardens is ponderous or heavy-going in any way. It felt quite a realistic presentation of Edwardian contentment, though not without Sharp’s gentle jibes, such as this discussion of wallpaper where Caroline evokes her husband’s approval to counteract her mother’s reservations:

“Mrs Chase was at once silenced. […] It would have seemed perfectly reasonable to her that Caroline, who was in the house all day, should have suited her surroundings to the taste of a man who was out of it.”

I did want Caroline to exert herself in some way, to stake a claim beyond her roles meeting everyone else’s needs. Finally she does it, when she starts growing runner beans during World War I, and realises how much she is nurtured by time with her plants:

“there was usually a quiet space, between twelve and half-past, when the first work of the house was finished and before the children’s dinner became a pressing consideration; and these thirty minutes Caroline began to guard and cherish as a precious treasure.”

The war years are beautifully evoked by Sharp, with all their worry alongside self-serving censorious behaviour of some in the village.  After the war, everything changes. Caroline finds herself mistress of a large house, with a garden she can’t touch unless she wants to incur the wrath of a succession of gardeners:

“The garden was looking well. But it always did look well, and gave her no special pleasure […] It was perfectly designed and perfectly kept, and to Caroline completely uninteresting.”

Meanwhile, her children are vaguely affectionate, patronising strangers. They change the names she loves, Lily becoming Lall and Leonard, Leon. They are academically accomplished and having had money their whole lives, utterly contemptuous of it. These Bright Young Things live by a morality that is absolutely baffling to Caroline, and there is a lovely echo of an earlier scene between Caroline and her mother in a later conversation between Caroline and Lall. The reader can see they are so much more alike than either realises, dramatic irony at its lightest.

I’m not one for biographical readings of novels but something of the tone of Four Gardens – affectionate, gentle, slightly sad –  did make me consider the dates. In Caroline, Sharp is writing about her parents’ generation, so maybe that explains it… or maybe it has nothing to do with it at all, who knows?  

Caroline’s fourth garden finally sees her able to do as she pleases. I couldn’t help feeling she might really surprise her children, and herself 😊 A warm, engaging story of a woman’s outwardly ordinary adult life during great societal change.

To end, Paul Newman adapted A Jest of God as Rachel, Rachel for his directorial debut. This very odd trailer doesn’t make it seem overly appealing:

“There are no ordinary cats.” (Colette)

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Mallika at Literary Potpourri’s wonderful event  Reading the Meow has been running all week, do check out all the great posts prompted by our feline friends! Here is my post just in time…

I’m grateful to Reading the Meow for finally getting me to pick up The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (finished in 1940, published in 1966) which is part of my Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century Reading Challenge and has been languishing in my TBR for years. Although not ostensibly a book about cats, one does feature prominently as these various edition covers will attest:

The reason it had lain unread for so long was because I’m (aptly) a big scaredy-cat. I was really intimidated by this classic of twentieth-century fiction and I thought it would be far too complex and clever for me to understand. Which as it turned out, was broadly correct. I’m sure I didn’t pick up all the allusions and references, even with the notes in the back of my edition to help me (Alma Classics, trans. Hugh Aplin 2020 – I definitely recommend this edition and translation).  However, I still found it very readable and a lot to enjoy, especially regarding Behemoth, the character that meant I was reading it this week particularly.

The Devil arrives in 1930s Moscow as a Professor Woland, along with his entourage: red headed, bizarrely dressed Korovyev; sinister vampiric Azazello; beautiful Hella; and Behemoth, an enormous cat that walks on his hindlegs, talks, drinks vodka and plays chess.

The proceed to wreak havoc for three days in a series of carnivalesque scenes, using the greed and corruption of people against them.  It’s absolute chaos and carnage, but brilliantly Bulgakov shows that the devil doesn’t have to push very hard for all this to occur.

At the start of the novel, Woland predicts the shocking and absurd death of Berlioz, head of Massolit, a literary organisation. Once people hear of his death, this description of a barrage of statements in order to get Berlioz’s apartment is a good example of how Bulgakov balances social realism, satire, the comic and the desperate throughout:

“In them were included entreaties, threats, slanders, denunciations, promises to carry out refurbishment at people’s own expense, references to unbearably crowded conditions and the impossibility of living in the same apartment as villains. Among other things, there was a description, stunning in its artistic power, of the theft of some ravioli, which had been stuffed directly into a jacket pocket, in apartment No.31, two vows to commit suicide and one confession to a secret pregnancy.”

Meanwhile, Margarita, beautiful and unhappily married, is distressed because her lover, The Master, has committed himself to an institution and renounced his writing.

This is interspersed with the story of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua (Jesus), with the two stories echoing one another, and it emerges that this was the novel The Master was writing.

It is through the titular characters that Bulgakov prevents his satire becoming too bitter and alienating. Their devotion to each other and Margarita’s belief in The Master’s work is truly touching.

I don’t really want to say too much more as The Master and Margarita is such a complex, riotous piece of work that I think the more I try and pin it down the more I’ll tie myself in knots! It tackles the biggest of big themes; religion, state oppression, the role of art, love, faith, good and evil, how to live… It is a deeply serious work that isn’t afraid to be comical too.

But as this post is prompted by Behemoth, here is my favourite scene with him, getting ready for Satan’s Grand Ball on Good Friday and trying to distract from the fact that he is losing at chess:

“Standing on his hind legs and covered in dust, the cat was meanwhile bowing in greeting before Margarita. Around the cat’s neck there was now a white dress tie, done up in a bow, and on his chest a ladies mother-of-pearl opera glass on a strap. In addition, the cat’s whiskers were gilt.

‘Now what’s all this?’ exclaimed Woland. ‘Why have you gilded your whiskers? And why the devil do you need a tie if you’ve got no trousers on?’

‘A cat isn’t meant to wear trousers, Messire,’ replied the cat with great dignity. ‘Perhaps you’ll require me to don boots as well? Only in fairy tales is there a puss in boots, Messire. But have you ever seen anyone at a ball without a tie? I don’t intend to find myself in a comical situation and risk being thrown out on my ear! Everyone adorns himself in whatever way he can. Consider what has been said to apply to the opera glasses too, Messire!’

‘But the whiskers?’

‘I don’t understand why,’ retorted the cat drily, ‘When shaving today Azazello and Korovyev could sprinkle themselves with white powder – and in what way it’s better than the gold? I’ve powdered my whiskers, that’s all!’

[…]

‘Oh, the rogue, the rogue,’ said Woland shaking his head, ‘every time he’s in a hopeless position in the game he starts talking to distract you, like the very worst charlatan on the bridge. Sit down immediately and stop this verbal diarrhoea.’

‘I will sit down,’ replied the cat sitting down, ‘but I must object with regards your final point. My speeches are by no means diarrhoea, and you’re so good as to express yourself in the presence of a lady, but a series of soundly packaged syllogisms which would be appreciated on their merits by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella even, who knows, Aristotle himself.’

‘The kings in check,’ said Woland.

‘As you will, as you will,’ responded the cat, and began looking at the board through the opera glass.”

I think overall I probably admire The Master and Margarita more than love it, and I enjoyed Bulgakov’s A Country Doctor’s Notebook more. But there is so much in this extraordinary, unique novel that will stay with me, and I’m sure it will reward repeat readings too.

To end, I tried to get my two moggies to pose with the book. With typical cattitude, they flatly refused 😀  So it’s back to 80s pop videos:

“Life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.” (Daphne du Maurier)

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I was disappointed to miss posting for Ali’s annual Daphne du Maurier Reading Week this year, due to the demands of blogging on novellas every day for a month, so once that madness was over I thought I would enjoy a visit to this ever-readable author.

(Also, thank you to everyone who commented on which Big Massive Tome I should pick up after so many novellas. Bleak House was far and away the winner, so I’m embarking on Dickensian legal wrangling next 😊)

Apparently DDM said that Frenchman’s Creek (1941) was the only romantic novel she wrote. This meant I went into it expecting a similar experience to when I read Jamaica Inn, that is: enjoying it but wishing I had read it as a teenager. Now I’m older I’m more inclined towards the psychological darkness of My Cousin Rachel and her frankly terrifying short stories.

However, these expectations were confounded. Frenchman’s Creek can definitely be read as a romance: a young beautiful noblewoman leaves her stifling court life and starts running around the Cornish coast with a sexy French pirate. But I thought there were some much more interesting themes being explored in this novel too.

Dona St Columb is married to the ineffectual Harry, and is part of the indulgent court of Charles II. After a particular prank that she regrets, she leaves London and makes her way to Harry’s country pile in Cornwall.

“The sense of futility had been growing upon her for many months, nagging at her now and again like dormant toothache, but it had taken Friday night to arouse in her that full sense of self-loathing an exasperation, and because of Friday night she was jolting backwards and forwards now in this damnable coach, bound on a ridiculous journey to a house she had seen once in her life and knew nothing about, carrying with her, in anger and irritation, the two surprised children and their reluctant nurse.”

Once there, her pompous neighbour lets her know that dangers lurk amongst the beautiful countryside and coast, in the form of a successful pirate from Brittany.

“‘No lives have been lost as yet, and none of our women have been taken,’ said Godolphin stiffly, ‘but as this fellow is a Frenchman we all realise that it is only a question of time before something dastardly occurs.’”

Throughout the novel anyone expressing xenophobia is shown to be monumentally stupid, which is not always what I expect in novels of this period and it was certainly refreshing.

It isn’t long before Dona crosses paths with the captain of La Mouette, Jean Benoit Aubréy. Undoubtedly his portrait is romantic: he sketches birds, reads poetry, and of course is extremely handsome. Dona finds she has much in common with Jean Benoit, namely the search for an authentic life and personal freedom. As his loyal man William explains:

 “’Approve and disapprove are two words that are not in my vocabulary, my lady. Piracy suits my master, and that is all there is to it. His ship is his Kingdom, he comes and goes as he pleases, and no man can command him. He is a law unto himself.’”

Dona longs for something similar, but it is clearly demonstrated how limited she is due to being a woman. She has to meet the expectations of domestic roles, and also of her class. It is the insistence of her male neighbours that brings Harry to Cornwall, and his mendacious friend Rockingham, who poses a real threat to Dona.

Du Maurier expertly builds the tension as a trap is laid for the pirate, and he takes phenomenal risks to outmanoeuvre his enemies. Frenchman’s Creek is real page-turner, but it is also a believable exploration of a woman’s search for meaning and personal agency in her life. Her romantic partner is fully portrayed but not overly dwelt upon – this is Dona’s story and the romantic relationship is one that brings her back to herself:

“She felt, in a sense, like someone who had fallen under a spell, under some strange enchantment, because this sensation of quietude was foreign to her, who had lived hitherto in a turmoil of sound and movement. And yet at the same time the spell awoke echoes within her that she recognised, as though she had come to a place she had known always, and deeply desired, but had lost, through her own carelessness, or through circumstances, or the blunting of her own perception.”

Du Maurier really is so good at what she does. In Frenchman’s Creek she creates a compelling adventure alongside some lovely evocations of the natural world while highlighting the enduring challenges of the expectations placed on women. Dona’s quest for a life that will enable a fulfilling expression of self remains as relevant and compelling as ever.

“Much will be forgotten then, perhaps, the sound of the tide on the mud flats, the dark sky, the dark water, the shiver of the trees behind us and the shadows they cast before them, and the smell of the young bracken and the moss. Even the things we said will be forgotten, the touch of hands, the warmth, the loveliness, but never the peace that we have given to each other, never the stillness and the silence.”

I wanted to end with a trailer for the 1944 film adaptation with Joan Fontaine, but alas I couldn’t find it anywhere. So here is a clip from the 1998 BBC adaptation, which for reasons best known to itself has moved the story to the time of the Glorious Revolution and completely invented a scene. Has anyone seen this version? It doesn’t look very enticing but I do think Tara Fitzgerald is a good actor:

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.27

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The Stepford Wives – Ira Levin (1972) 139 pages

Earlier in the month when I read The War of the Worlds, I mentioned I rarely read sci-fi. If I rarely read sci-fi, I never read horror. So this is definitely the month for going outside my comfort zone and learning to love it 😊

The Stepford Wives is such a well-known classic that I’m assuming everyone knows what the story is. I did, and didn’t diminish the horror or the tension in any way. I will keep this review very brief though, to try and avoid spoilers as far as possible…

The story is told from the point of view of Joanna, a photographer with a young family, who moves to the insular suburb:

“She wished: that they would be happy in Stepford. That Pete and Kim would do well in school, and that she and Walter would find good friends and fulfilment. That he wouldn’t mind the commuting – though the whole idea of moving had been his in the first place. That the lives of all four of them would be enriched, rather than diminished, as she had feared, by leaving the city – the filthy, crowded, crime-ridden, but so alive city.”

It takes Joanna longer than she hoped to settle in to Stepford. None of the women in the town are very sociable, spending endless hours cleaning their homes which they claim leaves them little time for anything else:

“That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing the suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.”

She does make one friend Bobbie, who is determined to leave the area:

“Is that your idea of the ideal community? I went into Norwood to get my hair done for your party; I saw a dozen women who were rushed and sloppy and irritated and alive; I wanted to hug every one of them!”

Meanwhile her husband Walter seems quite content, joining the local Men’s Association with the other local patriarchs who seem determined to keep clearly delineated lines between the sexes.

Slowly the realisation of what is happening in Stepford dawns on Joanna. She is resistant to the gaslighting that surrounds her – but it is already too late?

The Stepford Wives is truly horrifying. Not only because the tension is built so expertly by Ira Levin (the novella form seems particularly suited to this) and not only because of the actual events portrayed. But because – as the blistering introduction by Chuck Palahnuik in my edition makes completely clear – we may all already be living in Stepford…

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.26

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Nights at the Alexandra – William Trevor (1987) 71 pages

Many of you will be aware that Cathy at 746 Books and Kim at Reading Matters are hosting their wonderful A Year with William Trevor reading event throughout 2023.

Earlier this month, Cathy reviewed Trevor’s novella Nights at the Alexandra, and it sounded so completely wonderful I knew I’d have to get to it before the end of May. I did and it was all I anticipated.

It opens with 58 year-old Harry remembering his life as a young adult, just about to leave school, during World War II. The Messingers – she English, he German – have moved to Ireland to avoid the prejudice their relationship would encounter in their countries of birth. She is much younger than her husband, and glamourous.

“I remember that more distinctly than any other moment in my life. She was already in the car when she spoke, and her tone of voice was not one normally employed when making a request. With a gentle imperiousness, she commanded what she wished, and before she drove away she glanced at me once, a smile flickering across her thin features.”

Harry is from a Protestant family, living in a Catholic town. He is expected to follow his father into the timberyard business – something his elder sister has already done by working in the office and which she bitterly resents.

“The family atmosphere was as it always was: my grandmothers silent in their dislike of one another, my brothers sniggering, my mother tired. Annie resentful, my father ebullient after an hour or so in the back bar of Viney’s hotel.”

Harry does not want to follow his father in any way. He is desperate for something else, without knowing what it is. The Messingers – particularly Mrs Messinger – with their large house, cigarettes and tea, affection and childlessness, stories and difference, offer this to Harry.

They offer him further escape when Mr Messinger decides to build the titular cinema in the town, named after his wife. Harry is able to have a job, and refuse the timberyard once and for all.

Nights at the Alexandra has such a subtle and finely-wrought tone. The relationships between the characters are beautifully evoked and in less-skilled hands could have easily descended into cliché. Instead Trevor gives us a story of human lives with all their pain and love, longing and helplessness, that somehow grants his characters some peace too. There are also moments of deadpan humour:

“My father lent his observations weight through his slow delivery of them, his tone suggesting revelations of import yet to come. But invariably this promise remained unfulfilled.”

Now, it could be said Reader, that my tears are not worth very much. I’ve always been a crier anyway, and currently I’m bereaved and pre-menopausal, so it doesn’t take much to set me off. But I wept at the end of Nights at the Alexandra. It was so completely realised, so moving and poetic, unsentimental and sympathetic. Perfection.

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.21

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“I feel I’m only going to write short stories and novellas from now on. Chekhov said, toward the end of his life, “Everything I read strikes me as not short enough.” And I agree.” Martin Amis

A Pelican at Blandings – PG Wodehouse (1969) 192 pages

After the destabilised plots, shifting characterisation and unanswered questions of Untold Night and Day yesterday, a very silly, plot-driven novella today, where everything is tied up neatly at the end.

PG Wodehouse needs no introduction and while I would say A Pelican at Blandings is not him on top form, spending a few hours with a middling Wodehouse is still an absolute joy and time well spent.

Poor Lord Emsworth just wants to be left alone with his pig, the Empress. She has refused a potato which is causing her doting owner a great deal of distress. Unfortunately people always seem to be insisting on joining him at Blandings Castle.

“She left the room, and Lord Emsworth sank back in his chair looking like the good old man in some melodrama of Victorian days whose mortgage the villain has just foreclosed. He felt none of the gentle glow he was accustomed to feel when one of his sisters removed herself from his presence.”

Lady Constance is back at Blandings Castle with a woman named Vanessa Polk in tow. What’s more, she has invited horrible Lord Alaric and his niece Linda Gilpin to stay there too. She has plans to marry Vanessa to Alaric. Lord Emsworth decides this is a bridge too far, and this is before he knows Alaric has invited Wilbur Trout to stay. He calls on his aptly named brother Galahad, the Pelican Club member of the title, to rescue him.

Galahad wastes no time in telling Constance what he thinks of avaricious Alaric:

“’Are you telling me that that human walrus has fallen in love at first sight with Vanessa Polk?’

‘Alaric is not a human walrus.’

‘You criticise my use of the word human?’

Lady Constance swallowed twice, and was thus able to overcome a momentary urge to hit her brother over the head with the glass vase containing gladioli. It is one of the tragedies of advancing age that the simple reactions of childhood have to be curbed.”

Meanwhile one of Galahad’s numerous godsons, bestowed on him by Pelican Club members, Johnny Halliday, is in love with Linda Gilpin but they are currently estranged.

There are also some shenanigans with a plan to steal a picture:

“It’s a thing that must be done at dead of night, the deader the better. We must arrange a rendezvous. Where can we meet? Not in the ruined chapel, because there isn’t a ruined chapel.”

Lacking a Jeeves (although I’m very fond of the butler Beach), thank goodness Lord Emsworth has Galahad! Will he stop Constance’s terrible matchmaking, sort out the picture theft, reunite his godson with his betrothed, and bring some peace to his benighted brother’s life?

Of course he will.

“’Clarence has an amazing story to relate. Relate your amazing story, Clarence.’

‘Er,’ said Lord Emsworth.

‘That’s not all there is of it.’ Gally assured the Duke. ‘There’s a lot more, and the dramatic interest mounts steadily as it goes on.’”

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.9

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The Hotel – Elizabeth Bowen (1927) 175 pages

The Hotel ticks a lot of boxes for me: interwar setting, repressed Brits abroad, characters thrown together through transient living arrangements, and of course novella length. My concern was that it’s Elizabeth Bowen’s debut novel and her prose can be pretty impenetrable at the best of times, let alone when she’s still honing her craft. However that proved unfounded as I found this an easier read by Bowen standards – I really enjoyed it.

The titular institution is located on the Italian riviera and is filled with genteel Brits, mainly women. The novel opens with the fallout from a row between two perfect examples of such: the companions Miss Pym and Miss Fitzgerald. The former ends up walking to tennis courts with Mrs Kerr, quite a coup as Mrs Kerr holds all the power among the hotel residents. The reasons for her occupying this elevated position are never quite clear, but her absolute self-assurance and manipulativeness surely contribute.

Mrs Kerr is looking for Sydney Warren, a beautiful, studious young woman whose family are worried about her. Sydney has come away with her cousin Tessa Bellamy, who has a vague malady:  

“She was distressed by any suggestion of impermanence; she was a lonely woman. One had to have Something in one’s life. She lay on a velvet sofa in her bedroom with the head pulled round away from the window and wished that she were religious woman and that it would be time for lunch and that Sydney would soon come in.”

The start of the novel is full of these pithy sketches of the residents. I especially enjoyed the elderly sisters-in-law Mrs and Miss Pinkerton:

“They were more closely allied to one another in the memory of Edward’s than they had either of them been to Edward himself…. Cherished little animosities reinforced their ties to one another; Rosina maintained to herself implacably that if she had been Edward’s wife she would have borne him children; Louisa was aware enough of this to be a little markedly generous to Rosina, who was not in a position to refuse anything that might be offered.”

They are hugely affronted by the arrival of an Anglican clergyman, James Milton, who unwittingly uses their reserved bathroom. Bowen is a brilliant observer of the manners and social customs of the hotel, treating it all with a wry affection:

“Beyond, down the long perspective to the foot of the stairs, one could see visitors take form with blank faces, then compose themselves for an entrance. Some who thought punctuality rather suburban would gaze into the unfilled immensity of the room for a moment, then vanish repelled. Others would advance swimmingly and talk from table to table across the emptiness, familiarly, like a party of pioneers. Men came in without their wives and did not always look up when these entered. Women appearing before their husbands remained alert, gazed into an opposite space resentfully, and ate with an air of temporising off the tips of their forks.”

Romantic relationships are treated with a great deal of scepticism in the novel: the pretty Lawrence sisters look to make pragmatic marriages; Mrs Lee-Mitterson panders to her ridiculous self-centred husband; it’s mentioned more than once how incompatible men and women are. It wouldn’t be a stretch at all to take a queer theory reading to many of the relationships in The Hotel, and it could also be read as demonstrating the value and endurance of platonic friendship.

The early character sketches and scene setting of The Hotel were completely wonderful, but for me the novella didn’t quite live up to this initial promise.  I was drawn into the various relationships and shifting allegiances, and the disarray caused by the arrival of Mrs Kerr’s much anticipated, determinedly aloof son Ronald was very enjoyable.  I think what stopped me unreservedly loving this was that I did find the characters ultimately quite distancing – Sydney Warren is meant to be reserved and a bit cold but I felt this distance as a reader too.

But still there was so much to enjoy and I found it a real treat.

“Notwithstanding the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon she had been enjoying Jude the Obscure.”

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.8

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August is a Wicked Month  – Edna O’Brien (1965) 

Many, many years ago, decades even, when I was a sixth-former (that’s Year 12, kids) my English teacher gave out a list of suggested reading for A levels. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t finish it entirely (although just in case that seems worryingly off-brand, I should say my name still went round to the teachers on a list as the pupil who borrowed most library books that year) and I can remember the few that escaped me. One was August is a Wicked Month, and having read it now I’m a bit surprised it was on a sixth-form reading list. Because it is explicit. But it’s also very realistic so maybe my teachers thought it was responsible reading 😀

Ellen is in her late twenties and her ex-husband has taken their son camping. Ellen is not good at being alone and managing feelings:

‘I’ll just be,’ she said. A rare thing for her, racked as she was with anxiety, wondering always what would happen next, if an affair would be eternal, or if she loved her son over much, or if the wheels of a car they sat in would fly off and leave them half dead on the roadside.

So she decides to go to the south of France for sun and anonymous sex:

“She had been brought up to believe in punishment; sin in a field and the long awful spell in the Magdalen laundry scrubbing it out, down on her knees getting cleansed. She longed to be free and young and naked with all the men in the world making love to her, all at once. Was that why he ran?”

Written in 1965, this is not a tale of the joys of sexual liberation and freedom. Despite the setting, the tale is not glamorous. Ellen falls in with a crowd that includes a film star, but its all lonely and sad and isolating. She may as well have stayed away,

“She wanted to go home, not to London to the pipes of light but home to the race to which she belonged: and then she shivered uncontrollably, knowing that their thoughts were no longer hers. She had vanished back into childhood and the dark springs of her terrors.”

Everything Ellen does seems a misstep but not comically so. Her confused interactions with people, failed flirtations and disappointing sex just serve to highlight the inadequacy of human communication and the tendency to look for solace in precisely the wrong places.

This was the first Edna O’Brien I’ve read and I thought her writing was wonderful. She has a way of building images in a way that is so startling and disconcerting, but recognisable:

“Yellow all around, the lemons in the trees like lobes of light, the odd lit bulb, and his face yellow like parchment, from age. His blue eyes were not dead but were something worse. They had the sick look of eyes that will wounded and for whom death would be a relief.”

She can also be incredibly spiky and unforgiving:

“Her hands were long and white and soft. Hands into which cream and money had been poured and unlike the face they were able to be beautiful without showing the umbrage of the unloved.”

The only misstep for me was an event towards the end that seemed unnecessarily dramatic and as if there wasn’t enough faith in Ellen’s story as it stood to carry the novella. But a minor quibble overall – I’ll definitely be seeking out the Country Girls trilogy after this.

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.6

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The White Bird Passes  – Jessie Kesson (1958) 159 pages

Last year I read a short story by Jessie Kesson and I was so impressed I really wanted to try more of her work. Luckily I saw her novella The White Bird Passes in my local charity shop and swooped in. I wasn’t disappointed.

Eight year-old Janie lives with her mother in Our Lady’s Lane, aptly named because this side street is full of matriarchs, including Poll Pyke, Battleaxe and The Duchess. They live in absolute poverty, hand to mouth, and yet the story isn’t depressing because Janie isn’t depressed. She loves living where she lives.

The novella is based on Jessie Kesson’s early life and it is beautifully balanced portrayal. It doesn’t shy away from the realities (suicide, sex work, disease and infestations) but these sit alongside love, humour, enjoyment.

“The Green was as much part of the Lane as the communal pump in the causeway. If you weren’t in the Lane you were ‘down at the Green’. There is no third alternative. Even if there had been, you would have been out of your mind to have chosen it in preference to the Green.

The summer through, the Greens chair-o-planes, whirling high, blistered with colour and blared with music. The Devil’s Own Din was how the sedate residents of Hill Terrace described it in protest to the Lord Provost and the Town Council, but to the Laners who were the true lovers of the Green it was music.”

It authentically captures characters and dialogue, without ever descending into caricature. At no point is there any authorial judgement on the way the characters are living, it is simply as it is.

“Janie never had to beg for her own needs. There were better ways of satisfying them. The surest way to get a penny was to scour the football grounds for empty beer bottles and sell them back to the beer shops at half rate. A fair bargain, since the bottles hadn’t belonged to you in the first place. More remunerating but less infallible, was to stand outside The Hole in the Wall on Saturday night, bump into the first drunk man you saw, weep loudly, pretending he had bumped into you. That was usually a sure threepence forced into your palm. Sometimes it was sixpence if the man was drunk enough. For her other needs, Janie confined herself to the dustbins in High Street.”

Janie’s mother Liza comes from a reasonably well-off family who view her as a disgrace. When Liza takes her for a visit, we get a glimpse of a life away from urban poverty.

“Janie wondered at her mother’s easy intimacy with this country; her quick recognition of the flowers in the woodworkers’ gardens, with names unheard of in the Lane; Snow in Summer, Dead Man’s Bells, Love in a Mist, Thyme, yellow St. John’s wort, pink star bramble-blossom. ‘There’s going to be a good crop of brambles the year.’ Liza cast an experienced eye over them. ‘We’ll need to come for a day in autumn for the bramble picking.’ They wouldn’t of course. But Janie had learned to enjoy the prospect more than the reality.”

Eventually the Cruelty Man catches up with Janie and enacts the local opinion that “the bairn would be better in a home.”

This part of the story is not given the same consideration by Kesson. Again, there is no judgement. You can see why Janie was taken away and how it can be both the right and wrong decision. But the state orphanage is not Kesson’s consideration in The White Bird Passes. The story belongs to the Lane and the women of the Lane, especially to Janie and Liza.

“But Liza had been beautiful, Janie remembered. Almost like Shelley said. Her beauty made the bright world dim. Not quite the same though. All the other women of the Lane had been grey. Prisoners clamped firmly into the dour pattern of its walls and cobblestones. But Liza had always leapt burnished, out of her surroundings. And in the leaping had made the dim world bright.”

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.5

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The Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair (1922) 184 pages

I am very fond of Victorian novels. Those huge, sprawling tales of domestic realism suit me very well in the right mood. However, the heroines do have a tendency towards pious self-sacrificing virgins, whose superhuman goodness is rewarded in the end by a rich husband and/or massive legacy. So even while they profess a dedication to heavenly rewards, they can do so from the comfort of being hugely loaded in the earthly realm, alongside a hottie in a big white shirt (which admittedly does sound pretty appealing).

It is this premise that May Sinclair takes issue with in The Life and Death of Harriett Frean.

Early in the novel there is an example of how the child Harriett behaves in the way expected of little Victorian girls, and as a result does not get her needs met. The only reward is a sense of self-satisfaction:

“Being naughty was just that. Doing ugly things. Being good was being beautiful like Mamma. She wanted to be like her mother. Sitting up there and being good felt delicious.”

Sinclair shows how this conditioning is reinforced through insidious guilt-trips:

“Understand, Hatty, nothing is forbidden. We don’t forbid, because we trust you to do what we wish. To behave beautifully…”

And so Harriett grows up idolising her parents and never questioning whether this mode of behaviour is more about convenience for others than actually what is right.

Harriett’s biggest sacrifice is refusing to enter a relationship with the man engaged to her friend. It is this she consistently returns to, through a life that never truly sees or allows for others. Sinclair shows the vanity and self-centredness wrapped up in supposed self-effacement:

“When she thought of Robin and how she had given him up, she felt a thrill of pleasure in her beautiful behaviour, and a thrill of pride in remembering that he had loved her more than Priscilla.”

The Life and Death of Harriet Frean explores how this type of behaviour – inauthentic, fundamentally dishonest – can lead to unhappiness in big and small ways, from never having cutlets served how you prefer to destitution for some. But Harriett never really learns, sticking stubbornly to her frame of reference even as life repeatedly demonstrates the inadequacy of doing so and the damage that can be done.

For me the novella remained just the right side of didactic, but I think had it been longer it may have drifted into preachiness. As it was, it remained an interesting counterpoint to all those fictional Victorian heroines who may not have found things quite so clear-cut in real life.