The publisher and date listed always refer to the edition of the book that I read; illustrations are chosen for the graphic appeal and may not correspond to the edition that is cited. Photographs are always of the author (unless otherwise indicated).
Dusty Answer, first published in 1927, is Lehmann’s first novel, and it is an impressive debut. It’s a novel about a young girl’s difficult passage into adulthood, and examines in nuanced detail her emotional, romantic, and sexual maturation.
Judith Earle is the only child of wealthy and distant parents, raised in a beautiful house full of beautiful things on a river not far from London. Five cousins spend summers and holidays in their grandmother’s house next door: the brothers Julian and Charlie, and Roddy, Martin, and Mariella. Judith is enchanted by them all, but her favorite is the charming and cavalier Roddy, who she loves despite his sometimes flirtatious indifference and his ardent devotion to his best friend Tony.
Judith is sheltered and inexperienced but smart and somewhat ruthless. At Cambridge she enjoys a passionate romantic friendship with the popular and charismatic Jennifer, and she is crushed when Jennifer abandons her for an Geraldine, an older, wiser, and more cosmopolitan woman. Yet Judith brilliantly concludes her academic career and returns home to find the cousins once again in the residence next door. She pursues Roddy and is seduced and abandoned by him. Shocked and wounded by his callous selfishness, she agrees to marry Martin, the dull but kind cousin who has always doggedly loved her. She realizes instantly that this is a horrible mistake, and cruelly extricates herself, only to succumb to Julian’s pursuit of her. He proposes she should become his mistress, as neither of them (he claims) are well-suited for marriage. But before they can put this plan into action, Martin dies in a yachting accident, a tragedy that puts the kibosh on Julian’s and Judith’s liaison. In the final pages Judith reconnects with Jennifer and arranges to meet her back at Cambridge, at “their table” in “their” teashop. Jennifer stands her up, but not before Judith observes Roddy and Tony pass by outside the teashop, obviously happy and in love with each other. So Judith once again returns alone to the house on the river (her father has died and her mother is living in Paris) and in the ruins of her adolescent romances, all misguided or doomed, begins to imagine a new adult life for herself — a sadder but wiser girl.
On the back cover of the HBJ Harvest paperback edition of this book (which features one of the ugliest and most poorly-designed jackets imaginable) the copy states that Dusty Answer is a “sensitive treatment of homosexuality,” a bold statement that really doesn’t correspond with the book’s atmosphere, for the same-sex relationships that these characters have are not overtly homosexual; they are perfect examples of the passionate friendships that were once allowed, though perhaps discouraged, between boys and boys and girls and girls in British public schools. Judith’s relationship with Jennifer and Roddy’s with Tony may or may not be sexual, but they are passionate, romantic, loving, and publicly evident. While Jennifer may be a lesbian, as her relationship with Geraldine suggests, Judith’s infatuation with her is seemingly an adolescent fancy, as it coincides with her infatuation with Roddy. This cloudiness and ambiguity is interesting, and perhaps preferable to today’s clear-cut and exhaustively defined gender roles and sexual orientations, for it leaves room for shadows and nuances, as well as, of course, wounding misunderstandings.
This was Gissing’s final novel, written when he was dying and published in 1905, two years after his death (at 46) in 1903.
Will Warburton, a young man from a good but modest family, runs a sugar exporting company with his friend and business partner Godfrey Sherwood, but when a better business opportunity comes along he invests all of his, and his family’s (his mother’s and sister’s) fortune in it, only to lose everything when Sherwood embezzles the funds and gambles them all away.
Will is forced to start work as a grocer and loses all his social respectability and class status. He is scorned by those who once would have respected and welcomed him, and is considered “common” and unworthy of all that was previously his social due. He works hard and honestly at his new trade and treats people with kindness and generosity, and is (somewhat unbelievably) able to keep his reduced circumstances a secret from his mother and sister and close friends, but is disheartened and exhausted by living a false life. He loses a woman he thinks he loves when his true identity is revealed, and finds himself in love with a better woman who loves him for who he is rather than what he does.
Will Warburton is a novel about class and its effect on social relationships and romance in English society at the turn of the previous century. Will is a wonderfully sympathetic and admirable character: honest, brave, generous to a fault, good-humored, faithful, and hard-working, and the characters that surround him are varied and all vividly evoked, and I enjoyed reading this novel very much. Gissing has an engagingly straightforward style that is a pleasure to read.
The Reef by Edith Wharton (Everyman’s Library, Knopf)
I enjoyed reading this (perhaps) minor novel of Wharton’s, first published in 1912. It’s a novel of compact and limited scope, focussing on four characters who become connected in a complex menage a quartre.
George Darrow, an American diplomat stationed in England, is reunited with Anna Leath. They loved each other in their youth, but Anna married a boring half-French, half-American man who conveniently died before boring her to death with his collection of snuff boxes. Anna returns to France where she lives with her daughter and mother-in-law, an imperious American who married a French nobleman. Darrow journeys to France to visit Anna but she abruptly and inexplicably cancels their rendezvous, and he takes up with Sophie Viner, a charismatic and charming young woman he meets on the ferry who is fleeing to Paris to pursue a life on the stage after losing her job as a private secretary and companion to an odious English woman. Sophie and George spend a week together in Paris, and charm each other. George’s interest is mostly avuncular, but they do end up sleeping together, before parting for what they believe will be for good.
But through a twist of fate (or narrative contrivance), Sophie gets hired as Anna’s daughter’s governess and becomes engaged to Anna’s step-son, Owen. When George arrives at Anna’s chateau to ask her to marry him, he encounters Sophie and a crisis ensues. George and Anna weather the storm, but Sophie and Owen do not.
Like Ethan Frome, this seemed more like a chamber piece — the cast is few and the scope is small. But within these confines the book succeeds as an interesting and engaging novel that adroitly examines the lingering effects of romance past — effects that linger more indelibly (and damagingly) for women than for men.
Jan Morris’s recent death prompted me to buy a copy of this book, which has always interested me but that I have never read. It’s a memoir about her life as a transexual man, and the gender correction surgery she finally had in her 40s.
Morris writes engagingly and openly about her conundrum, but this is a short book that covers a lot of time and place, so that the treatment often seems glancing and somewhat superficial. Nevertheless, an interesting book by a talented but somehow distant writer.
I enjoyed reading this book very much, although my opinion of it sank lower and lower as I read more and more. It’s not a terrible book by any means — just not very well-written and melodramatically conceived and executed. But it is a good, engaging story with a large collection of vivid and colorful characters. So a good read on a purely narrative level. I can understand why Deeping was a popular author in his time (this book belonged to my grandmother, who also had a few other Deepings in her library).
Kitty is the story of the risky courtship and troubled marriage of two young English people of slightly but irrevocably different classes. Kitty is 24 — small, pretty, charming. She lives with her mother and sister above the tobacco shop they own and successfully run in London. Her mother, “Mrs Sarah,” was married to a doctor but has been widowed for quite some time, and is wealthy and independent, merry and life-loving. She is proud of her two beautiful and sensible daughters.
Alex is the only son of Mrs St. George, a widowed upper-class woman who has a house in both the town and the country. She is a hateful person: cold, mean, humorless, and vindictive. When Alex meets Kitty a few days before he is to be sent to fight in France (it’s 1918) and falls in love with her, he marries her without telling his mother, because he knows she will not approve. He’s right — she doesn’t, and when she learns of her son’s marriage she tries everything possible to destroy it. She hires a lawyer and personal investigator and lying, tells her son (who’s still in France) that she has proof that Kitty is a prostitute and that the tobacco shop is really a brothel. Alex receives this news the day before he is wounded in battle. He suffers both paraplegia and amnesia and returns to England and his mother’s powerful and unyielding clutch. Mrs St. George foibles any attempt Alex and Kitty make to communicate or reunite, and Kitty, despairing, decides she must establish a home to which she can bring and care for her paralyzed, addled-brained husband.
And so with the help of her formidable mother, Kitty buys an inn/shop/boatyard on the Thames outside of London and sets about restoring it and creating a tea and dance hall for weekend trippers. She finally manages to cleverly kidnap Alex and settle him in their new home, where, despite, regaining his identity and memory, he becomes terribly depressed because he feels useless. Kitty gives him a stiff talking-to and tells him to buck up, and he learns that although he is unable to walk, he is capable of many tasks (including interior decorating). Together Kitty and Alex make a success of their establishment. Kitty decides that a shock to his system may restore her husband’s mobility so she capsizes a punt and pretends to be drowning, whereupon Alex leaps out of his wheelchair and rescues her. Mrs St. George is summoned to come and behold the miracle that Kitty has performed, but her enmity has caused her to wither and her health to fail. She arrives and is reunited with her restored son, but is it too late to make amends?
The Young Have Secrets by James Courage (Jonathan Cape, 1954)
This book, set in New Zealand, is about a young boy, Walter, who has been sent by his wealthy parents, who own a sheep “station” to Christchurch to attend a small private school and board with the family of the headmaster. This man, Mr. Garnett, has three daughters and one son, and a curmudgeonly and hypochondriacal wife. One of the daughters is married to an architect from Scotland, who secretly loves another of the daughters, and is secretly loved by the third daughter. The (gay?) son is a lighthouse keeper; he comes for a visit but isn’t integral to the story. The young Walter becomes embroiled in the sisters’ complex and ultimately tragic menage by becoming a confidant to all three them, who find him a sympathetic listener and are emboldened by his innocence to share secrets.
So this is a book about the loss of innocence, and despite the vividly rendered settings and characters, it feels somewhat formulaic and familiar. A subplot involves Walter’s friend, Jimmy Nelson, whose mother is a goodnatured and gossipy washerwoman and whose father is a Maori who raped Mrs. Nelson (although she claims she enjoyed it).
James Courage is an excellent writer; he creates a believable and engaging world with sympathetic, distinct characters. Although there are some lovely moments and scenes in the book, the familiarity of the plot and the rather oblique ending (Walter placidly returns to his parents’ house) prevent it from distinguishing itself in a memorable way.
Boy is the story of Arthur Fearon, a 15-year-old boy who lives with his impoverished parents in Liverpool. They take him out of school, where he is happy and flourishing (he wants to continue his studies and become a chemist) and send him to work on the docks along with his father. The work he is given there is miserable — hard, dirty — and Arthur cannot face a future working in those inhuman conditions, so he stows away on a freight ship bound for Alexandria, hiding in the coal bunker. He is discovered there, unconscious, after three days and given a job as a seaman cleaning the ship and acting as a servant to his superiors, several of whom try to take advantage of him and all of whom treat him badly, except for two, including the Captain, who inspires him to work hard and rise up the ranks, which Fearon attempts to do. But all his hard work is either ridiculed or ignored by the crew, who continue to taunt and abuse him.
In Alexandria his is taken by another sailor to a brothel where he contracts syphilis. Back on the ship, as it makes its way toward Salonika, the boy is told that he is incurable and should jump overboard and kill himself. But before he can do this he is smothered in his bed by the Captain, who “placed his greatcoat over the face of Fearon and laid all his weight upon it.”
The book is engaging and Arthur is a sympathetic character but none of the other characters — with the exception of the parents and the Captain — are distinctly developed. The scenes on the ship are vividly rendered, but there is a certain amount of obfuscation about sexual matters that leaves the contemporary reader wondering what, exactly, has happened. Would an attractive boy really be able to fend off the advances of able-bodied seamen?
An interesting but somewhat murky book with an unsatisfying ending.
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm (Knopf, 1994)
This is a brilliant and fascinating book that attempts to untangle the webs of controversy and conflict surrounding the many biographies of Sylvia Plath, which uses Anne Steveson’s biography, Bitter Fame, as a focal point. That biography, which was guided, controlled, and perhaps even co-written by Olwyn Hughes, Ted’s sister and agent for the Plath estate (Ted is the executor) reverses the perspective of earlier biographies by being sympathetic to Ted and critical of Plath. For this reason it was condemned upon publication and Stevenson was considered a literary pariah.
Malcolm interviews all the parties involved (except Ted): Stevenson, Olwyn Hughes, the previous biographers and memorists, and in sifting through all this material brilliantly reveals the perils and pitfalls of writing a biography, questioning the purpose and worth of what she concludes is an impossible, inherently flawed, and foul genre.
The book moves circuitously through its material, following tangents so assiduously that the main track is frequently and lengthily abandoned. Reading the book is like swirling around in a big pot of flavorful stew that is constantly being stirred. This sacrifice of clarity (and chronology) may frustrate a reader, who longs for the mess to be cleaned up rather than enhanced, but ultimately it feels like the best form for a book about the impossibility of objectivity to take.
Malcolm has a tendency to offer some of her opinions and interpretations as facts, although she is up front about his biases and sympathies. The Hughes siblings seems to want to have their cake and eat it too, and I wished Malcolm had looked harder and more critically at their hypocrisy along with everyone else’s.
They Wouldn’t Stop Talking by John Pollock (Anthony Blond, 1964)
Because I so enjoyed reading Pollock’s The Grass Beneath the Wire (see below), I bought his two other novels, and read this one first.
It’s October, which means the season is over and everyone has left the Italian island of x. But the narrator, a young, alcoholic, gigilo-ish man and his friend and keeper, an older woman named Helen, remain on the island staying in the only hotel that hasn’t closed, eating and drinking (lots) on credit because they don’t have the money to go anywhere else (Helen is expecting a large sum of money but its arrival is delayed). They befriend Gustavo, a Swedish man who is developing holiday properties on the island, and Barbara, his German secretary. A wealthy American couple arrive at the hotel and provide some diversion and amusement, but as the weeks and months pass, our narrator begins hearing a multitude of voices talking to him, and plotting on behalf of “The Avenger,” the leader of the organization to which they all belong, to capture him and torture him to punish him for some crimes or behaviors that aren’t specified.
So the book becomes a psychological thriller. It is intermittently amusing — the voices can be quite funny as they squabble and plot, but because the narrator is rather a cypher and the paranoiac plot rather familiar, the book is only distinguished by Pollock’s acid and amusing writing, resulting in a book that just barely sustains its short length.
I read this book many years ago, in college, I believe, and remember I didn’t quite know what to make of it. Well, reading it again 40 years later hasn’t changed my response — I still find it somewhat maddening and inscrutable.
Loving is set in a castle in Ireland during WWII, and mostly concerns the servants, all English (except for Paddy, the almost sub-human “lamp” man) who are employed by Mrs. Tarrant, of Anglo-Irish gentry. She lives in the castle with her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Jack. Mrs. Tarrant’s son Jack is in the army but spends quite a bit of time on leave in London or at home in Ireland.
The main character is Raunce, who ascends to being the butler at the beginning of the book, when Eldon, the ancient former butler, dies. Raunce is a scoundrel — dishonest and ambitious, but quite charming despite his deficient character. He is in love with Edith, one of the two maids (the other is Kate) who toil under the watchful eye of the sanctimonious housekeeper, the lonely spinster Miss Agatha Burch. There’s also an alcoholic and paranoid cook, Mrs. Welch, and two kitchen maids, Alice and Jane, a very young footman named Albert, and Miss Swift, the nanny, who spends most of the book on her deathbed.
Green, as always, depends almost entirely on dialogue to tell his story, and he brilliantly captures the disparate voices of all these people, both above and below stairs. He has a pitiless eye for detail and presents his characters like specimens on a microscope slide. This makes for a smart and amusing read, but the narrative remove and lack of sympathy for all the characters leaves the reader with a bitter taste. And the end of the book seems truly perverse: Raunce’s health fails; he seems to be dying. Green brings us to a place of tenderness and pathos, and then punishes us with a final sentence that bullies us for caring.
