the sun in scorpio

The Sun in Scorpio by Margery Sharp (Little, Brown and Company, 1965)

An odd, unsatisfying, and I think unsuccessful novel by this quirky writer whose other books I have enjoyed and admired.  This one begins on the “Island next door to Malta,” which is never named, where a faded and failed British couple are raising their three young children in a backwater outpost of the Empire in 1913.  The middle child, Cathy, is a difficult and rather charmless creature who loves the heat of the Mediterranean  sun.  The outbreak of the Great War forces the family to return to genteel poverty in a London suburb, and the novel follows Cathy through the next 30 years, through the end of World War II.  She spends her adult life working as a governess and companion to Elspeth and her mother Lady Jean, but remains oddly distant and mysterious to all who encounter her, including the reader.  The novel progresses in brief, shallow vignettes and moments that are written with a sometimes enchanting and sometimes baffling eccentricity.  It always feels as if it’s running on vapors, and peters out instead of ends. 

A curious book — a miss for both the writer and the reader, I’d say.