The Joy-Ride and After by A. L. Barker (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963)

This novella (the title novella in this book of several) by a British writer was published  by Charles Scribner’s Sons in the US, and The Hogarth Press in the UK, in 1963.  I had never head of A. L. Barker (a woman) . Apparently, she  published quite prolifically throughout the second half of the 20th Century and was highly regarded in literary circles but never had much commercial success.

I found her writing in The Joy Ride to be bracing and vivid, and beautifully controlled and regulated.  Very calm and assured.  Clean, but not antiseptic.  This story, which is set in a provincial mid-century English city, revolves around a struggling automobile garage and the cafe across the street: both cheerless places, as are the people who work at, or visit, them.  Barker creates engaging and complex characters who are all struggling — some compassionately, some ruthlessly — for a better life.  I liked and admired this book, and look forward to reading more A. L. Barker.

The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis (Little, Brown, 2006)

 A smart, quirky book, fun and interesting to read, but ultimately disappointing.

The Thin Place is set  in, and mostly about, the small town of Verennes, which seems to be in northern New York  near the Canadian border.  It describes and follows the lives of many of the inhabitants of this town over perhaps a month-long period in early summer.  In addition to the large cast of human beings, the narrator also inhabits the minds of  many animals, both domestic (dogs and cats) and wild (beavers).   The book does not  seem to have a central character or a plot, and perhaps this is why its parts are greater than the whole. 

Davis is a very smart, odd, and playful writer, and appears to see the world — flora and fauna — from both a scientific and spiritual perspective. This duality of vision gives the book an idiosyncratic complexity I found both admirable and rewarding.   She is able to create original and compelling characters (both human and animal), but seems unwilling, or unable, to create any sort of plot.  The Thin Place ends with a robbery and shooting at a church service where many of the characters are assembled, and this seems an inorganic and unlikely conclusion to a novel that is originally conceived and beautifully composed.

I’ve read and admired Davis’s earlier novel, The Walking Tour, and now look forward to reading more of her novels.

Winter by Christopher Nicholson (Europa, 2016 )

This is a novel about the final years in Thomas Hardy’s life.  It  centers around a theatrical production of Tess of the d’Urbervilles that is being produced by a local amateur company.  Hardy develops a romantic obsession with the leading lady, a beautiful woman named Gertrude Bugler, and promises her she can play the part of Tess at a subsquent production at the Haymarket Theatre in London.  Hardy’s (second) wife, the sickly and woeful Florence, is jealous of her husband’s affection and esteem for Gertrude, and plots to thwart the London production and makes all three of them miserable.

The book is beautifully written and rich in its depiction of character and place (it mostly takes place in the Hardy’s secluded and freezing house in Dorsetshire).  The POV shifts among the three protagonists: Thomas (3rd person) and Florence and Gertrude (both 1st person).  Nicholson handles these shifts in perspective adroitly, but for me this choice emphasized the artificiality of the endeavour and detracted from the books integrity and power.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it very much.

 

Gertrude Bugler

 

 

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

 

A memoir/(auto)biography of the Ephrussis, a wealthy European Jewish family, tracing their history from 1860 to the present time by following a collection of 264 pieces of netsuke, one of their many fabulous possessions.  The collection was originally acquired by Charles  Ephrussis in Paris in the 1880s, and given to his nephew Victor as a wedding present in 1900.  The scene then shifts to Vienna, where the collection remains until Victor’s son, Iggie, takes them to Japan in 1945.  When Iggie dies the netsuke are bequeathed to his nephew, the author, who lives in England.

There are some fascinating passages in this book, and the family’s struggles during the Holocaust are dramatic and disturbing, but the hybrid nature of the book and its narrow focus prevent it from being as affecting and engaging as it might have been.

Back by Henry Green (Hogarth Press, 1964, originally published 1946)

I’ve been trying for a while to read a Henry Green novel.  I read Loving in college and since then have tried and failed to read Doting, Blindness, and one other — perhaps Partygoing.  But I found Back to be the most accessible and charming.

It’s the story of Charley Summers, a young man who is repatriated back to England during WWII after losing a leg and spending several years in a German POW camp.  The novel follows him through his first year back in the civilized world, which is still suffering through the hardships and danger of the War. 

Charlie meets a woman who looks exactly like his dead ex-lover Rose (in fact, she’s Nancy, Rose’s half-sister). Rose  married another man and gave birth to a child who Charley thinks may be his own before dying. Charley is spooked by Nancy’s physical similarity to Rose, but the two stumble convincingly and touchingly into love, and the book ends with their imminent marriage.

The book also follows  Charley as he adjusts to working life as a Production Manager for a company that makes some sort of metal tubing used in the war effort.  He is a damaged yet charming man, mentally and physically slow, and always struggling to keep up and fit in.  Green writes about him, and all the other characters in this book, with empathy and tenderness, and the result is a book about good people struggling through a dark and difficult time that is truly heartwarming.

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003)

I saw this book on my shelf and realized that 13 years have passed since I first read it as a judge for the National Book Awards in 2003 (it won).  I remembered being intrigued, moved, and impressed by it then and decided to revisit it now.  (I also wanted to submerge myself in a good book after a troubling episode in my own life.)

The Great Fire is a brilliant and very unusual book.  It has a unique tone and character that I have found in no other book, although there are echos of The Transit of Venus (also by Hazzard) in its scope and glancing approach to epic narrative development.  But this book is odd — often almost maddeningly odd in a way that always stays true to itself, yet sometimes at the expense of comprehensibility and believability.  It seems to be crafted from some different material than other books: the words and sentences are so carefully and elegantly chosen and composed, giving the book a texture and tone that is both captivating and disconcerting.  It doesn’t seem to be humanly composed; it’s like a book written by a higher power, with a perspective and knowledge different from the ordinary.

This assured brilliance makes for some exhilarating writing, but it also serves to distance the reader a bit from the human warmth at the heart of this book, which is, after all, a love story.  (Does it have a heart?  Yes, I think it does, but it is a somewhat chilly heart.)  Too many of the characters speak (and write — letters are featured throughout the narrative) with the same almost preternaturally articulate brilliance which sometimes seems more Hazzard’s than theirs.

This is a book about a world and a kind of people that no longer exist.  In that way it is a sort of memorial.  One feels Hazzard was uniquely situated at the cusp of different eras and civilizations, and created something here that is almost like a freak or sport of nature, something that only she could make.  The Great Fire is a thrilling and absolutely singular book.