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The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns

I think Barbara Comyns is something of a neglected genius, her novels are rather odd and this is the second one I have read. The Juniper Tree was based on a fairy tale and wove magic realism into social comment and the macabre.

This novel is written from the point of view of Alice Rowlands, daughter of a Vet living in South London. Her father is brutal and cruel to Alice and her mother. Following her mother’s death he brings a rather brash girlfriend into the house. Alice is effectively a servant. She has few friends but is courted by Henry Peebles (known as Blinkers), who is kind to her. Alice moves to the coast to become housekeeper to Blinkers’ mother. Here she has a brief flirtation with a sailor. Strange things start to happen to Alice; she has to return to London and the oddness continues. To say more would give things away. This isn’t a ghost story; much earlier (written in 1959) it still has an element of magic realism, but could also be described as suburban gothic. Being set at a vets there are also plenty of animals and a rather creepy vivisectionist who visits to collect puppies.

Comyns came up with the idea for this novel from a dream she had whilst staying in a cottage owned by Kim Philby (a friend of her husband’s). In the early 1930s she had been part of the bohemian scene in London, mixi ng with Dylan Thomas, Augustus John and others.

Comyns is a unique writer; some of the grotesque are almost comic and many of the tragic scenes also have a comic element. Although there is fary tale and enchantment here; the theme is really concerning an evil; the treatment of Edwardian daughters and wives going on behind respectable front doors. Alice’s mother is entirely trapped with not a hope of escape and she withers away before Alice’s eyes. Alice is a tragic figure, innocent in a predatory world. The writing is clear and precise and the descriptions are excellent. Her characters are well drawn; even the monstrous ones, like Alice’s father are all too human.

There are some unusual and deft touches; the undertaker arriving to measure Alice’s mother for her coffin whilst she is still alive. The pet monkey sitting in the fireplace wringing its hands, the rug which is the skin of a great dane. Watch out for a replay of the Passion story at the end with Alice as an innocent Christ figure and her father as the evil deity refusing to let the cup pass from her; it’s quite striking.

I do wonder why Comyns isn’t better known. This is a sharp and very unusual analysis of the place of women in society and of violence against women, told in an original way.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting Medieval Women by Eileen Power

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On Beauty by Zadie Smith

I find myself liking Zadie Smith more and more. The blurb about this wasn’t immediately promising; another novel about a middle-aged academic having an affair resulting in a family and personal crisis. However, there is much more going on. Smith herself has acknowledged that it is an Homage to Howard’s End. The author creates a multitude of voices, all interesting in their own right. It is set in a fictional American university town, Wellington (a thinly disguised Harvard).

The novel revolves around the Belsey family; Howard, the white male academic described earlier, his African-American wife Kiki and their three children, Zora, Levi and Jerome. Howard is a left wing (ish) liberal and he has an academic rival, Monty Kipps, a Trinidadian who is rather right wing (whilst writing this I am suddenly reminded of Naipaul who is Trinidadian and was a fan of Thatcher; but the resemblance ends there). Monty’s wife Carlene and Kiki become friends and the two families become entwined in a number of ways. The Belsey children are really well drawn. Smith captures the right level of warmth, hope, youthful verve and irritatingness for three teenage children.

There is a warmth and humanity to all the characters, even Howard and Monty, both hypocrites. The university and academia types are brilliant and capture the machinations of academic life; thankfully there isn’t too much of them and usually the children take centre stage. Smith satirises everyone on all sides of the cultural divides we all inhabit; but without losing the warmth mentioned above. The politics of race and gender are handled here with great humour and Smith maintains a serious moral compass and shows the importance of connections in human relationships. There are some genuinely funny moments; Howard’s reaction to the glee club and his relating of it to his wife for example. There are also moments of great perception; Howard simply does not seem to understand the reactions to his infidelity. As for the second infidelity; it is breath-taking in its timing and inappropriateness. His family around him understand him all too well and let him know.

This is a good comic novel, which has great humanity and is a seriously good read.

9 out of 10

Starting Larry's Party by Carol Shields

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The Tunnel by Dorothy Richardson

This is the fourth in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage series. Coincidentally I am reading another book of the same title by William Gass. This one stands well in comparison and this series gets better and better. We continue to follow the protagonist Miriam as she becomes more independent.

As ever the plot is irrelevant and mostly absent and we see life through Miriam’s eyes. By now Miriam is 21; she has taken a job as a dental assistant with Dr Hancock, a family friend. She also goes into lodgings with Mrs Bailey and makes some new women friends, Jan and Mag and also the consumptive Miss Dear. Miriam also begins to move in more interesting circles with Hypo Wilson and his friends. Hypo Wilson is a very thinly disguised H G Wells (Richardson knew him well). Miriam also falls in love with the bicycle and there are some good descriptions of discovering the freedom that cycling can bring.

Interestingly reviews from Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf were mixed and both made criticisms about structure and order, although the lack of structure didn’t really bother me.

Richardson illustrates the new phenomenon of the single working woman; Miriam hasn’t lived in the family home until marriage, but has set out on her own and relies on her own resources.  Miriam increasingly comes across as an independent thinker; rejecting religion, reading modern texts and not feeling the need to have a man in her life. She opts for an independent creative space despite the problems that raises for herself and others. Miriam is beginning to fall between the world she was brought up in with its traditional expectations of marriage and domesticity and the world of work. Miriam quite consciously is on a journey of rejecting marriage and motherhood in favour of writing and her own space and company.

Miriam becomes more sceptical about men. Her experience with Dr Hancock is illustrative. They seem to have shared interests and attend lectures together and are friendly and informal. Friends of Dr Hancock point out that the relationship might be misinterpreted and he withdraws and becomes very formal. Miriam has a very amusing rant about men and the male gender. As her thoughts move and coalesce she begins to ask a basic question about the role of men and masculinity.

What is also very interesting are the details of everyday life; little descriptive passages that make the novel much more interesting. The bike ride passage is wonderfully written and amusing. Miriam herself grows more interesting and by this time the reader is becoming more attached to her; it’s a great series.

9 out of 10

Starting the fifth book in the series, Interim.

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W h o r e s for Gloria by William T Vollman

This is my first Vollman; an easy way in I thought because it is short. I should have known better because it raises all sorts of issues and defies neat classification. The novel is a series of vignettes and short chapters. The main protagonist is Jimmy, who is a Vietnam veteran; middle-aged and living in a flophouse, surviving on his regular cheque and spending much time drinking in bars. It is set in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Jimmy is obsessed with Gloria, who seems to be an idealised woman (possibly a prostitute, or maybe not) who he may or may not have known in his past. He pays a variety of prostitutes; some for sex, others for stories, sad and happy. He starts to build a composite picture of Gloria from stories, memories and individual character traits and physical attributes of the women he meets. He even asks for a lock of hair. Gloria is usually almost within reach for Jimmy, but just beyond what he can conceive and bring to reality. Vollman has done his research, at the back of the book is a glossary of terms (necessary) and he interviewed many prostitutes in the Tenderloin area as part of his research. There are notes on these interviews at the back of the book and these make the book more powerful being authentic voices. There is also a price list for the period 1985-88. We follow Jimmy in his encounters with prostitutes, some of whom are transvestites and transgender.  Other characters include the barmaids in various bars, a number of pimps and Code Six, Jimmy’s Vietnam buddy who is even worse off than Jimmy, living in an alley.

This is not a novel in the same genre as American Psycho et al; the difference being that Vollman clearly has great compassion for those who inhabit the world he draws. John Rechy has drawn a comparison with Don Quixote with Gloria as Dulcinea and in an odd sort of way I can understand that.

This is the first of a trilogy and it has been noted that Vollman does seem to focus on prostitution quite a lot. When asked about this he makes a point about it being an intersection between love, sex and money and contends that in terms of our materialistic society prostitutes do openly what the rest of society do covertly and so by looking at them we see ourselves more sharply.

This is in a way a love story; the language is very strong and the descriptions vivid. The women who work as prostitutes are portrayed with understanding and warmth. It is never really clear whether Gloria is real and in some ways Jimmy is also a composite of one of the denizens of the area. It could be a ghost story. It is all the more powerful because of the knowledge that many of the stories Vollman uses are real. Vollman clearly has a strong moral sense. The pimps, although as lost as everyone else, are using the structure and agency society gives them to control the women; backed up of course by physical violence. It is moving and harrowing and very bleak. Vollman leaves open a lot of questions about gender relations and how men and women negotiate relationships. But he does leave the reader with some explanation;

“For we must all build our worlds around us, bravely or dreamily, as long as we can shelter ourselves from the rain, walling ourselves in gorgeously”

9 out of 10

Starting Lady into Fox by David Garnett

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Medieval Women by Eileen Power

 

This would have been Eileen Power’s magnum opus had she lived to complete it. Sadly she died of heart failure at only 51 in 1940. She had been working on a book about medieval women for many years; on the way writing about the wool trade, nunneries and medieval people. Here we have her notes and part finished work on women, put together after her death.

Eileen Power herself is an interesting character, going to Girton College Cambridge on a scholarship and an early supporter of the suffragettes. She taught at Cambridge and the LSE, pushing to include women’s history in the curriculum and to modernise the teaching of medieval and economic and social history. After the First World War Power won a prestigious travel scholarship (the first woman to do so). Not without some opposition. Power wrote of her interview with Sir Cooper Perry, the Vice Chancellor of London University;

“Sir Cooper Perry obviously did not take women’s work very seriously (or perhaps it was me he didn’t take seriously!) One of his obiter dicta was “I have often been amused by women historians; so many of the springs of human action must be hidden from them.” He also suggested that I might defeat the objects of the trust (sic) by subsequently committing matrimony, so I suppose he keeps his wife in purdah: anyway these silly remarks would not be made to male candidates.”

Nevertheless Power got the scholarship and spent time travelling in China and India. She saw the aftermath of the Amritsar massacre, met Ghandi and attended the Nagpur Congress. Power also mixed in bohemian and intellectual circles in London. She was a member of the well-known Gargoyle Club, but resigned because when she was showing Paul Robeson around London, he was refused admittance.

Power was a good historian with a wide range of interests who opened a window on the lives of medieval women. This work has chapters on nunneries, education, noblewomen, working women and the medieval conception of women. There is a great deal to learn from this book and Power explodes some of the myths about medieval women, examining the two main sources of ideas about women; the Church and the Aristocracy. She acknowledges that it is very difficult to gain significant information about the lives of the labouring poor; but Power was one of the early pioneers using paleology and detailed court and church records to glean small amounts of information.

There is interesting reflection on the cult of Mary and the ideas surrounding courtly love. The ideas relating to priories and nunneries being spaces for women are interesting. More interesting was the information about Christine de Pizan (1364-1430), a writer. She was married at 14, had three children and was a widow at 25. She had to support her family (including her mother) and did it by writing. She entered into controversies with male writers about the role of women and wrote books in defence of women and advising women. Simone de Beauvoir commented that de Pizan’s work is “the first time we see a woman take up her pen in defence of her sex". She also collaborated with other women.  Power brings to light parts of history previously overlooked.

8 out of 10

Starting The Love Child by Edith Olivier

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Lady into Fox by David Garnett

 

A very odd little novella. It was written by David Garnett, part of the Bloomsbury scene as a result of his affair with Duncan Grant. It was written in 1922 after they had broken up and was dedicated to Grant. It won the James Tait Black prize and the Hawthornden prize. The woodcuts in the original were by Garnett’s then wife Rachel. Later in life Garnett married Angelica Bell, daughter of Vanessa Bell.

The story is a simple one; a fable or fairy tale. Richard Tebricks marries Silvia Fox and they are happy. One day whilst walking in the woods Mrs Tebricks turns into a fox. After the initial shock (on both sides!) Mr Tebricks continues to look after and care for his wife. He dismisses the servants and shoots the dogs and devotes his time to his wife. Initially little changes, his wife eats the same things, plays cards; he dresses her in altered clothes and it’s all very odd.

Imperceptibly things begin to change. Mrs Tebricks becomes less comfortable with clothing, chases the ducks near the pond, her eating habits begin to change and she begins to look at their pet dove in a hungry way. All of these changes grieve Mr Tebricks who does not comprehend the growing desire to be wild, but he adapts.

As time goes on, nature takes its course and the fox becomes feral and leaves the home. Mr Tebricks descends into depression, curses God and his fate and searches the countryside for his wife. His wife turns up at the door one day and leads him to an earth where she has cubs. He finds a new lease of life playing with the cubs for some months; despite inevitable jealousy about his wife having found a dog fox. Some time is also spent avoiding the local hunts and the ending is inevitable and tragic.

The novella was written only seven years after Kafka’s Metamorphosis. It lends itself to many interpretations. It could be a paean to the enduring power of love; a fable with the moral being that if you love someone you must set them free; a controlled and rather straightjacketed masculinity trying to cope with a wilder untamed femininity; a tale about how convention can restrict and constrain; a warning about how relationships are never static and subject to change in one of the parties that might mean their destruction; don’t hold onto something when you know it is over. And so on. It may, of course, also be reflection on Garnett’s relationship with Duncan Grant.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

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Laughing Torso by Nina Hamnett

 

Nina Hamnett wrote these memoirs in 1932 when she was 42. She was primarily a painter and a painter’s model and was part of the modernist movement; moving between Paris and London from about 1910 to 1925 (with several forays to the south of France and Brittany). She has also been described as avant-garde and bohemian. The memoirs are engaging, rather self-deprecating and frank. Hamnett also manages to be discreet at the same time, not naming some of those closest to her, or just using initials or nationalities.

When published the memoirs received a great deal of publicity and caused some scandal. She (and her publishers) were sued by Aleister Crowley for some factual statements about his activities in Sicily. Crowley lost and then tried to bribe the publishers not to reprint the book.

Hamnett lived life to the full during these years and shares some of the flavour of her life. She doesn’t focus a great deal on her private life; affairs with men and women and mixing with artists, musicians and writers on both sides of the channel. She focuses on her grown up life and sketches over her abusive father.

This was written at about the same time as Gertrude Stein’s memoirs of the same period, The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas. Although both have a huge cast of characters, they are very different in that Hamnett is at the fringes of her own story whereas Stein is at the centre. The cast of characters are as you would expect and include Modigliani, Cocteau, Radiguet, Sickert, Nancy Cunard, various Sitwells, Roger Fry, Carrington, most of the Bloomsbury group and many more who were better known then than now.

Nina Hamnett is an engaging narrator who has a great generosity of spirit and the circles she moves in are varied and interesting. She is often short of resources (that’s why she wrote the memoirs), but is resourceful. The sadness of her later life is foreshadowed a little, but her follow up memoirs are more difficult to find. If you are interested in London and Paris bohemian circles in this period this is a must read.

8 out of 10

Starting Women are Different by Flora Nwapa

[librarianstale]

Amazing book reviews...as a primary school librarian it is very nice to read reviews by adults for a change!! 

 

I'm actually putting together my own blog at the moment and hope to include some decent book reviews so I'll be taking up some of your suggestions 

 

Tracey

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Thank you Tracey

 

Larry's Party by Carol Shields

 

This is the first novel by Carol Shields that I have read (I still need to read The Stone Diaries). It is set mainly in Canada and the protagonist is Larry Weller. We follow Larry from about 1976 when he is 26 until 1997. It is thematic and each chapter looks at a different aspect of Larry’s life, through his two marriages, being a father, work, sex and so on. Often we see events at a distance as significant events seem to take place between chapters. The last chapter rounds off the whole with a dinner party.

Shields is writing a man’s life and looking at sections of that life over 20 years and doing a remarkably good job. Shields focuses a good deal on work, the way it can fulfil and its importance. Larry starts off working in a flower shop and moves on to become a maze designer (he got his passion for mazes from his first honeymoon in England, getting lost in Hampton Court Maze). Many of the minor characters are also defined by what they do and there is dignity in work. The whole novel is a little like the mazes that Larry designs with lots of paths and byways but pretty much ending up where you started. As Eliot said; “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time” There is a circularity about the whole

It’s a good story with some interesting reflections on what it is like to be a man. I think Shields is subverting traditional notions of masculinity (some of which probably only exist in men’s minds) and positing multiple masculinities which are more fluid and ambivalent. Larry’s experience is one of anxiety combined with inadequacy. He is certainly not a “master of the universe”. Shields challenges the traditional male notions of aggression, rationality and control; these are dead ends in the maze. Shields is also playing with traditional modes of biography and identity in complex ways. There is a lost and found and doubling back sense that you would find in a maze. There is some repetition and you move from chapter to chapter, but there is a sense of building rather than repeating. One critic has described this as postmodern biographical fiction. Shields plays on a feeling of ordinariness and an unexpected social mobility (it is mostly rich people who want mazes). Larry wonders how he has moved so far from being the son of a working class craftsman. The move has disoriented him and there are tensions between the masculinities he was brought up with and the more middle class ones of his middle age. Usually biography and autobiography consolidate and reinforce the notion of self which has been developed by Western thought (read Western white male thought). Phyllis Rose has argued that biography is a tool by which the dominant society reinforces its values. Shields questions those values quite consciously by providing a protagonist who is unsure, a little muddled and unstable, not a subject of public acclaim. Nina van Gessel argues this is an essentially feminist type of biography.

And on top of all that; Larry is rather likeable.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting The Modern Woman Revisited; Paris between the wars

Edited May 31, 2015 by Books do furnish a room

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Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

 

I’ve read little Waugh apart from Brideshead Revisited, which I loved; Waugh is writing there about the decline of the upper classes and writing about people he knew.

This is a comic novel about Journalism and the newspaper industry and is a very effective satire. Lord Copper, the tyrannical and megalomaniac newspaper boss was said to be based on Lord Northcliffe, but was probably also part Beaverbrook and Hearst. The story is based on Waugh’s experiences working for the Daily Mail as a foreign correspondent covering Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. Ethiopia is changed to the imaginary state of Ishmaelia. Lord Copper owner of the Daily Beast has learnt that something is going on in Ishmaelia. As his best correspondent has recently transferred to the Daily Brute, he is in need of a new one. A certain Mr John Boot, a writer, is recommended. As it happens William Boot writes an obscure countryside column for the paper. He is mistakenly called to London and given the job. Boot is sent to Ishmaelia with large amounts of useless luggage, where he meets lots of other journalists, including Americans and French. They look for communists and fascists and for the promised civil war. Of course little is going on so the journalists make it up. William has adventures, falls briefly in love. William also has his moment when something actually does happen. There is a good cast of supporting characters; many of whom are based on people Waugh knew. The character of William Boot is said to be loosely based on Bill Deedes who had been with Waugh covering the situation in Abyssinia. Deedes was 22 at the time and his newspaper had sent him out with a quarter of a ton of baggage. Deedes spent the next 65 years denying this!

This is a funny and well written novel and was in the Observer list of the one hundred greatest novels of all time. The satire of the newspaper industry still has relevance today and is very pertinent.

However there are problems for me with the whole. This was written in 1938 and one would expect with a robust writer like Waugh some issues with language. That is an understatement; Waugh is anti-Semitic and racist and his approach to other races is execrable. He was a clear believer in hierarchy and very misanthropic. Cyril Connolly referred to him as a permanent adolescent. Christopher Hitchens has argued that Waugh’s many faults, dislikes and contempt for other human beings makes his cruelty funny as a novelist and writer. I remain unconvinced and Orwell (who was an exact contemporary) made a more thoughtful comment in some notes for an unwritten essay on Waugh; Waugh was

“almost as good a novelist as it is possible to be . . . while holding untenable opinions”

Waugh’s satire of tabloid journalism and its complacent corruption is still prescient, but his attitudes and opinions are awful

6 out of 10

Starting Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

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Women are different by Flora Nwapa

This is the second novel I have read by Flora Nwapa; she has a particular writing style, making her point by telling a story. This novel is about a group of Nigerian women who go to secondary school together from 1945; Dora, Agnes, Rose and to a lesser extent Comfort. They are pretty much contemporary with Nwapa and in telling their stories she also tells the story of Nigerian women through the end of the colonial period, to independence in 1960, civil war in 1967-1970 and into the 1970s.

This is the story of struggle, falling in love, betrayal, loss, corruption, disillusion, hope and the sheer ordinariness of having to make a living. It is an insight into the lives of Nigerian women; this time Nwapa’s setting is not rural but urban and concerns women who have worked hard to gain an education. There is a dilemma because the education was in reality a western one and their main teacher was a white western woman there as a missionary. This creates an inner division and a tension with older traditions. Two of the women reflect towards the end of the book that perhaps their education did not prepare them for the lives they had lead.

The role of the men in this novel is necessarily limited given the subject matter, but most of them are notable for betrayal, disappearing for months and years on end and being generally useless. The role of women in society and community is what Nwapa is really concerned with and how culture and tradition passes from one generation to another. The three women who have children discover these tensions for themselves as their mothers before them did.

What Nwapa emphasizes most of all is the need for women to be economically independent, so that if their marriages or relationships go wrong they are not dependent. Contrast Rose and Comfort in the novel. Rose has followed the mores of the western education, she has not married despite several courtships, but has got her degree and has a very good job. Comfort on the other hand has determined not to get emotionally involved and has gone into relationships for money and not love, leaving when she needs to and living life to the full. Dora is forced into an arranged marriage to a husband who does not love her and Agnes marries her school sweetheart. When it comes to post-colonial nation building and recovery from the civil war Nwapa is pointing towards a society based on feminine/feminist approaches to community rather than the oppressive alternative. The women dissent from society’s norms at one level, but all are in one way or another focussed on the institution of marriage as a means to an end and as the appropriate way (ultimately) to relate to men. That is the starting place, but by the end of the novel you can see a change and one of the characters is able to say that marriage is not the only way.  You can also see this attitude shifting in their children; Nwapa sees change occurring over generations and gradually.

Nwapa creates strong female characters who are courageous, competent, hard-working and independent; they reject oppression and mistreatment in men. They seek men who will collaborate with them and not oppress them and all too often they do not find. Nwapa is a great novelist and so little read in the west.

9 out of 10

Starting Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabel

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Interim by Dorothy Richardson

Interim is the fifth novel in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage series. Much of this instalment revolves around Miriam’s place of residence. Her landlady, Mrs Bailey has changed from running a lodgings to a boarding house. The difference being the provision of food for her boarders. This means social interaction and Miriam has to mix with her fellow inmates. They are a mixed bunch; several Canadian doctors in London to study for the summer, Mr Mendizabal (a Spaniard) and Miss Dear pops up again briefly. There is plenty of social interaction, but nothing really happens, which of course is one of the joys of Richardson. The author has time to explore relationships, interactions and Miriam’s interior life. Because movement is slow and the changes imperceptible, it is easy to miss how little Miriam has changed since the beginning of the series. Miriam is living an independent life and her challenging of the norms of society is a silent and gradual process.

The challenge of keeping going such a detailed and comprehensive analysis and study of one character over such a series of work is quite an achievement, which makes it all the more surprising that Richardson isn’t rated alongside Joyce, Proust and the like.

An interesting aside that is worth considering is the background setting of the novels. London was not just any city; it was the Imperial capital, the hub of Empire. It is easy to forget the impact of the empire on everyday life. Chyrssa Marinou’s article in the Richardson Journal looks at the traces of Imperial influence in her work using Edward Said’s notion of “unembarrassed cultural attention” to the empire. Metropolitan life contained all sorts of people who had travelled, been employed abroad or at home as a result of Empire. It pervaded much of metropolitan life at an almost subconscious level. Richardson uses Kipling three times in The Tunnel (Gunga Din, On the Road to Mandalay and the Ballad of East and West). We forget how much Kipling was part of the cultural landscape; Barrack Room Ballads was published in 1892 and reprinted over fifty times in the next thirty years. It isn’t immediately clear how Richardson/Miriam reacts to empire; the middle classes imbibed it from early childhood. In Interim Miriam has experience of meeting the Canadian doctors who stay at her boarding house. The descriptions of rooms and furniture also add extra weight to the imperceptible influence of empire (the picture of Queen Victoria with her Hindu servants).

Richardson has managed to maintain her very high standards, continuing to make the point that women’s experience and work has validity.

8 out of 10

Starting the next in the series; Deadlock

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The stories and essays of Mina Loy

 

Mina Loy packed a lot into her life and to say it was colourful and interesting would be an understatement. She was involved with modernism, futurism, avant-garde; she wrote poetry, a novel, short stories, essays. Loy had friendships with Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes. Her disillusionment with futurism led to her writing a feminist manifesto in 1914. Her friendships ranged widely across Europe and the US and included Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, Marianne Moore to name but a few. She had a relationship with Arthur Cravan (a Dadaist poet-boxer (I’m not making this up) on the run from conscription). I recently discovered a novel about their relationship and his mysterious disappearance called Shadow Box by Antonia Logue.

This collection is a really mixed bag. There are lots of fragments and parts of essays and stories. There is a score for a ballet (very bizarre), a couple of short plays (the unfinished The Sacred Prostitute which satirises the subjugation of women is very good), brief essays on Stein and Havelock Ellis, essays on censorship, the atom bomb, metaphysics and aesthetics to name but a few; and a whole collection of short stories. There is a good overview of Loy’s thinking over the years. The work from her modernist period is very good and her dissection of D H Lawrence is delicious (“the almost lyrical prose of Women in Love”). I found some of the more philosophical stuff a little tiresome and some of the later material does not have the punch of the early work.

There is none of the poetry here, although Loy writes many of her short stories in a poetic way and she did write a novel which was published posthumously. This collection is a good introduction to Loy and the prose is excellent.

8 out of 10

Starting Afternoon of a Good Woman by Nina Bawden

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The Love Child by Edith Olivier

This is an oddity by another female writer who is little known. It is Olivier’s first novel (1927) and was well received at the time. Olivier was one of ten children, a daughter of a clergyman; she read history at Oxford, but most of her life was spent in Wiltshire. In the First World War she was an officer in the Women’s Land Army. Olivier had a circle of friends in the late 20s and 30s which included Rex Whistler, Siegfried Sassoon, Osbert Sitwell, Brian Howard, Stephen Tennant, David Cecil and Cecil Beaton.

Although socially conservative (she regretted the passing of the “regulated existence” of Victorian Country families, felt that the “domestic education” of women made them more cultured and disliked the pace of modern life) Olivier wrote fiction that was distinctive and odd. She stretches what is meant by reality and often a traditional moral surface is covering something distinctly stranger.

Agatha Bodenham lives a reclusive and sheltered life with her mother. She is 32 when her mother dies and alone in the world. She remembers she had an invisible friend as a child called Clarissa who disappeared when she told her governess about her and was ridiculed. Agatha starts to think about Clarissa again and starts to see her and play games with her. So far, so predictable; a study in loneliness and isolation. The oddness starts when other people start to see Clarissa. Clarissa gradually becomes part of the life of the house and the servants see her all the time. Agatha has to explain her presence. Not only does Clarissa now spend time with Agatha and play games with her; over time she also ages. Clarissa is comfortable with Agatha but much less so with other people and children initially.

Periodically you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself Clarissa is not real. During the book Clarissa moves from about 11 to about 17. Inevitably the real world intrudes in the form of the daughter of a local family and horror of horrors even a young man. The ending is not unexpected, but the whole is not straightforward. I think we are in Turn of the Screw territory here, but this is better because it is so understated. The novel takes a bit of a Gothic turn at times and there is shade of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein here.

The young man in question is called David and he falls in love with Clarissa and he wants to possess Clarissa for himself, which means he becomes Agatha’s rival and both seem to be aware of the situation.  Here things seem to become more complex; it isn’t clear how self-aware Clarissa is, but there ae veiled hints. Clarissa is objectified by both parties, who both want to own her. The objectification is very different; for Agatha, Clarissa is a buffer against loneliness, isolation and possibly madness, something/one which is solely hers. Similarly for David, although his objectification relates to desire and possession. Clarissa herself towards the end of the novel appears more distant from both parties and perhaps the message is that no one can be the possession of another.

The ending is poignant although it doesn’t feel to me like a fairy tale. It was only written a couple of years after the publication of Mrs Dalloway; her name was Clarissa, so there may be a link. Hermione Lee in her introduction (virago edition) suggests other influences are Austen (Agatha being a female version of Mr Woodhouse) and Hawthorne; Clarissa being very similar to Pearl (I can see that). It is a novel that is difficult to categorise and very memorable; worth reading.

9 out of 10

Starting A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene

[Books do furnish a room]

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabel

This novella is in fact a single sentence, which gives it a breathless feel. It is the recollections of a man in his 70s told to a group of young women who are sunbathing. It is a telling of stories, most of them bawdy. They are about the narrator’s profession (shoemaking), his time in the army, but most of all his love life. There are lots of references to the European Renaissance, but if you are expecting references to Da Vinci or Michelangelo you’d be out of luck; it’s a euphemism for sex!

Hrabal has the reputation of being one of the great Czech writers of the twentieth century and he has influenced many who have followed such as Kundera and Havel. Many of his characters are “wise fools” delivering their profundities in story form. One of Hrabel’s favourite occupations was telling tales in his local inn; the book reads like that as well.

There is humour in the tale, but it is repetitive. It did remind me of some of the flights of conversation you get from those with dementia (in the middle stages). A tale from times past (sometimes a fragment) that is disassociated from what came before or after. I think whether you enjoy this book depends on how you feel about the narrator. If you find him irritating (like Holden Caulfield) you will quickly get bored. Admittedly some of it was amusing. The question is do you want to spend time listening to some old bloke telling you about the amorous adventures of his youth. If the answer is no, best to avoid I think!

6 out of 10

Starting Witness Against the Beast by E P Thompson

[Books do furnish a room]

The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris between the wars by Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer

This is an interesting set of essays that looks at women artists/writers/performers in Paris between the wars, exploring the relationship between gender, sexuality and modernity. There are essays on Colette, Romaine Brooks, Radclyffe Hall, Claude Cahun, Lee Miller, Barbette, Djuna Barnes, Tamara de Lempicka, Sonia Delauney, Augusta Savage and several general essays. The general essays include a look at African Americans in Jazz Age Paris, the politics of fashion, sexual identity and photography and the politics of embodiment.

All the essays were fascinating and there were copious notes which have done my to be read list no good at all. The black and white illustrations are excellent. The essays relate modernity to class, race and sexuality in a particular time period when there was a resurgence of experimentation and thought. The end of the war was a watershed and the change from a wartime economy towards a more consumer oriented society produced many interesting trends of thought and creativity. The war had also caused a shift in the perception of women and there were tensions between those who wanted to move forward in new and interesting directions and those who wanted to go back towards more traditional roles. The freedom available in Paris meant it became a melting pot for new ideas.

All of the essays are interesting and well-argued and there is much to provoke thought. I knew very little about the African American sculptor Augusta Savage and her move to Paris where she could have freedom to work (a freedom she could not so easily have in the US). The chapters on identities includes one on Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) and her partner Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe) whose photographic and illustrative work was ground-breaking. Their later story and resistance to the Nazis also piqued my interest and their seminal work “Disavowed Confessions” is one I will look out for. Some of the subjects I was already somewhat familiar with (Djuna Barnes, Romaine Brooks, Colette), others like Sonia Delauney and Tamara de Lempicka I knew very little about. Modernism and modernity and the role of women within it is an underlying thread. There is so much in this book and anyone with an interest in Paris in the 20s, women and modernism, Sexual identity, surrealism, decadence, the history of fashion, the politics of fashion, the politics of embodiment, Jazz and the African American community will find something here.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting House Mother Normal by B S Johnson

[Books do furnish a room]

Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

 

This is one of Isherwood’s Berlin novels; almost an historical novel of the last years of the Weimar Republic and was published in 1935. Isherwood was part of a group of young English writers and poets who found England repressive and sought a form of exile (hi is also partly a novel of exile); the group included Auden and Spender as well. Berlin was the choice for Isherwood, mainly because an elderly relative had warned him against it, saying it was the vilest place since Sodom. Of course for gay men, such as Isherwood and Auden Berlin was much more liberal and less repressed than England.

The two main characters are thinly disguised. The narrator is a young man called William Bradshaw (Isherwood’s middle names) who is travelling to Berlin to be a private tutor. Because Isherwood wanted to put the main focus on Norris, he makes Bradshaw a voyeur who watches what goes on and provides commentary. This makes Bradshaw seem morally neutral (and sexually neutral). Isherwood later thought this might have been a mistake, making it seem as though he was lying about himself. Bradshaw’s moral neutrality also gives the impression that he does not care about what is going on around him.

The main character, Arthur Norris, is a very thinly veiled Gerald Hamilton. Hamilton was a complex character who at various times was imprisoned for theft, bankruptcy, gross indecency (he was gay) and he was interned during the second world war for being a threat to national security. He ran guns for the IRA, shared a flat with Aleister Crowley, was a communist sympathiser and had his hands in numerous other schemes. Hamilton wrote three volumes of autobiography, all three had different biographical details. He called one volume Mr Norris and I (Isherwood wrote the forward). He was a conman and raconteur with a good deal of charm. Norris in the book is exactly that, charming and endearing but always up to something and keeping many secrets. There are some genuinely comic moments; such as the party Norris and Bradshaw attend. Bradshaw hears Norris screaming in a bedroom and bursts in assuming he is being attacked, only to find him being soundly whipped by a dominatrix called Anni. The various rituals surrounding Norris’s wig and daily toilette are hilarious. There is also a great supporting cast of minor characters who all add something to the whole.

The real star of the book is the underbelly of Berlin in the early 1930s which is marvellously drawn. The various communists and the rather disorganised party machine contrasting with the well run and rather sinister Nazis, who most people seem to think don’t stand a chance of power. This is the tail end of Weimar and a look at the sleazier side of Berlin. It is beautifully written and is a joy to read. The ending outlines the Nazis taking power and the destruction of the communist party.

I read the folio edition with some wonderful illustrations by Beryl Cook.

8 out of 10

Starting The Ladies of Llangollen by Elizabeth Mavor

[Books do furnish a room]

Afternoon of a Good Woman by Nina Bawden

 

From the back cover;

“Penelope has always tried to be a good woman: as wife, mistress, mother and magistrate. But today – the day she has decided to leave her husband – she sits in the Crown Court listening to a short, sad case of indecent exposure and a long, involved incident of theft, and mentally reviews her own convoluted private affairs. And wonders how they would stand up in court.”

The novel takes place over the course of one day in the life of Penelope with lots of flashbacks and internal musings. There is a good twist at the end and a couple of diversions which might fool the unwary. We learn about her childhood and depressive illness that her stepmother Eve suffered from. Her step siblings, Steve and April figure heavily. Penelope has had a relationship with Steve before she married and is now having an affair with him. Then there is her husband Eddie, a successful playwright (for TV) and novelist. He has a first wife who is in an asylum (shades of Jane Eyre), but he is kind and considerate. He does however have some unfortunate bedroom habits; like putting his wife’s lipstick on his face and chasing her round the bedroom with a real hatchet whooping (I’m not even going to try to analyse that!). He is however well off. Penelope does not love him, but has stayed with him and brought up her own rather boring children.

This is well written and focuses on different ways in which relationships are damaging and abusive and poses the question as to whether women are better off alone. One answer is in the ending. There is a parallel theme relating to guilt and judgement and what the difference is between those in the dock during the day and those (including Penelope) who are on the bench. The male characters are a little two dimensional (and weird).

Nina Bawden is a clever writer and this novels explores the psyche of one woman and her relationships with men; and her reasoning as to why she had done what she has done and why she is leaving her husband. Penelope has flaws, Bawden is not interested in creating noble and altruistic characters. This makes the novel all the more convincing. It is also very funny at times, despite dealing with such topics as domestic abuse, mental illness, sexuality, guilt and judgement.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson

[Little Pixie]

I loved Carol Shield`s Larry`s Party; I thought it was beautifully crafted ( especially the bits about his tweed coat ).  

 

I`ve not heard of Dorothy Richardson, and I`m now intrigued - off to look for the first in the Pilgrimage series - thanks for the heads-up ! 

[Books do furnish a room]

Thank you Pixie

 

House Mother Normal by B S Johnson

 

B S Johnson was an experimental English novelist who is too little known and who took his own life when aged only 40. I was drawn to this particular novel first because of its subject matter; a care home for older people. It follows a portion of the day for the residents and the House Mother (or matron) who is in charge of their care. The time period (its length isn’t clear) includes a meal and clearing up, the house song (truly awful) some “work” (including sticking together Christmas crackers and putting stuff in bottles), pass the parcel and dancing; although I’m not convinced dancing is what is being described in some cases as it seems to involve mops and wheelchairs and resembles jousting.

Each of the residents has allotted 21 pages; the events happen at exactly the same point in each narrative so that comparisons can be made. At the very beginning there is a description of each resident’s medical conditions and capabilities, including a score relating to a set of questions meant to assess cognitive abilities. The residents are given their say starting with the younger and more cognitively able and ending with those who have little or no verbal ability (and much of the last two or three resident’s pages are virtually blank). The House Mother has her say last of all and has an extra page.

Johnson himself described what he wanted to do with the novel;

“What I wanted to do was to take an evening in an old people’s home, and see a single set of events through the eyes of not less than eight old people. Due to the various deformities and deficiencies of the inmates, these events would seem to be progressively "abnormal" to the reader. At the end, there would be the viewpoint of the House Mother, an apparently "normal" person, and the events themselves would then be seen to be so bizarre that everything that had come before would seem "normal" by comparison. The idea was to say something about the things we call "normal" and "abnormal" and the technical difficulty was to make the same thing interesting nine times over since that was the number of times the events would have to be described. … Each of the old people was allotted a space of twenty-one pages, and each line on each page represented the same moment in each of the other accounts; this meant an unjustified right-hand margin and led more than one reviewer to imagine the book was in verse. House Mother’s account has an extra page in which she is shown to be

the puppet or concoction of a writer (you

always knew there was a writer behind it all?

Ah, there’s no fooling you readers !)

Nor should there be.”

 

It is described as a “geriatric comedy”, but the comedy is very bleak indeed. There is more of a growing sense of horror as the petty tyranny and brutality gradually come across to the reader. There might be a temptation to say that all the abuse is the invention of the writer; but unfortunately I can assure you that it is not. Whilst there is an oddity in some of the abuse here, most of it is plausible and has been done. It is only necessary to recall the Winterbourne view case (this will be familiar to those in the UK), which was quite recent.

As Johnson says this is a study of what is normal and abnormal, but it is also a study in the use and abuse of power; exercised over the weak and vulnerable. Johnson manages to make the voices of the residents poignant and human as they look back over their lives and loves. He also captures the disconnectedness of cognitive deficit very well. He doesn’t in my opinion quite get advanced dementia right; communication may be very limited, but I don’t believe the mind is as blank as he indicates.

This is a brave and interesting novel. There have been some critics who have noted that this could be seen as a deeply unpleasant book and calling it a comedy is not appropriate. This misses the point; Johnson does try to make the reader laugh with his descriptions of some of the events. However because of the poignancy and humanity of the pen portraits the reader realises what they are laughing at is the abuse and brutalisation of a vulnerable human being. There is also a sense of the writer reminding the reader that this could be where they are headed too and will it be any better then?

9 out of 10

Starting One Way of Love by Gamel Woolsey

[Books do furnish a room]

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

 

This is a brief novella, easily readable in one sitting; well written and lyrical. It is a third person historical tale about the life of Robert Grainier spanning the period from the 1880s to the 1960s with the depression of the 1930s standing out in the background. Grainier is a manual worker who works over the years on the railroads, logging, transporting; but generally earning from the sweat of his brow. Grainier is an ordinary man with hopes and dreams, a decent man who suffers loss and tragedy, but who refuses to let life beat him down completely. Strikingly, he is a kind man with a conscience.

There is also a sense of the pioneering spirit and the proximity and wilderness; a sense of great space. This, I think is what taps into a particularly American sensitivity; you don’t get the same feel on this small island. It is also a novella about masculinity; there are very few female characters. At a surface level it is about building things, making stuff and machines and machinery. For some reason I never really myself got that supposedly masculine feel for building, taking apart or putting back together. I don’t have a shed or “man-cave”; give me a book lined room every time. The wilderness doesn’t appeal (where are the bookshops and libraries?) and machinery is purely functional. I have a car to get from A to B, not for any other reason and being in charge of a roaring great hulk of machinery has never really appealed to my aesthetic sense. That side of the novel doesn’t appeal, but the prose is wonderfully lyrical and the landscape is a character in its own right.

There is a good deal of American myth in this; the odd ghost, a feral child, half-dog half wolf pets, frontier tales and Grainier himself almost becomes mythical as a woodsman himself towards his end. I was reminded of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, “Bound for Glory”. I think there is also a longer novel here trying to get out.

8 out of 10

Starting Sexual Anarchy; Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle

[Books do furnish a room]

A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene

 

Greene writes books which require thought, because he puts his own struggles with faith and philosophy into his novels. The principal character is Querry, a famous architect who is disillusioned with his work, his faith, relationships and life in general. He travels to the Congo, to a leper colony deep in the interior and run by a Catholic monastic order. Here he makes himself useful and even safes the life of one particular resident, by rescuing him when lost at night. Querry has travelled to what he perceives to be the end of the world; bur he is still recognised, by the monks who are quite worldly (apart from one brother) and by a local plantation owner Ryker, who is very strictly religious. An English journalist arrives (there’s no escape from the press!!) and chain of events is set off which ends in tragedy. Greene sets up philosophical discussions between Querry and the mission doctor, Dr Colin, who is an atheist and is the most sympathetic character in the whole book.

Greene did go to a leper colony in what was then the Congo (Yonda to be precise) to stay for a while. There is a fascinating article about his stay by the doctor there, Michel Lechat; in the London Review of Books. The issue I have been avoiding up till now is Conrad and Heart of Darkness. The journey downriver that Querry takes is the same one made in heart of darkness (indeed the same one Greene made and also Conrad in 1890). Greene was reading Conrad on his journey. There are links between the journeys in both books, the centrality of the rivers and the quest for salvation/redemption. Although Greene works much harder to make the reader like Querry than Conrad does Kurtz. Then the question arises as to whether Chinua Achebe’s objection to Heart of Darkness is pertinent to Greene as well: ‘Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind.’ I think it does. Greene’s choice of location for his novel was a little anachronistic even when he wrote it and he was considering I think a Schweitzer type of approach to faith. Conrad’s novel is more politically motivated and contains a great deal more metaphor. Greene is more concerned with the “human soul” and I think he does as Achebe suggests, use Africa as a prop for the discussion.

Orwell’s criticism of an early Greene novel, The Heart of the Matter; that it could have taken place in Surrey rather than Sierra Leone holds for this novel too. It could really have taken place anywhere. The time when the novel is set was just before independence and there was a great deal going on politically (The Poisonwood Bible is set at the same time). None of this finds its way into the novel.

There is a good deal of melodrama and farce about the tale. One senses Greene identifies somewhat with Querry and there may be some self-justification going on; especially in relation with Greene’s relationships with women. Nevertheless Greene can certainly write and the novel reads very easily. This however makes the shortcomings more frustrating. The religious and philosophical discussions are interesting, but I enjoyed The Power and the Glory more.

6 out of 10

Starting Double Drink Story: My Life with Dylan Thomas by Caitlin Thomas

[Books do furnish a room]

The Ladies of Llangollen by Elizabeth Mavor

 

The Blurb from the back of the book: “Lady Eleanor Butler was 29 when she first met Sarah Ponsonby, a sensitive retiring girl of 13. Ten years later the two ladies eloped. Amid scenes of scandal and havoc they settled in an idyllic cottage in Llangollen where their unorthodox relationship blossomed, and their generous, civilised way of living became a legend.” They lived together for over 50 years and were only parted by death.

The story of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby has long been one that has fascinated and Elizabeth Mavor has done a good job of cutting through all the myths and telling their story in a competent and scholarly way. Both women were members of the Anglo-Irish upper class. Both were women and therefore not going to inherit and so a good marriage was what was expected of them. Eleanor was bookish and was interested in literature and language (much to the annoyance of her family) and as she was 39 in 1778 and was now unlikely to marry her family planned to place her in a convent. Sarah was 16 years younger and had been friends with Eleanor for ten years; they lived only two miles apart. Sarah was orphaned and living with her guardian Sir William Fownes and his family. Sir William’s wife was ailing and he saw Sarah as a ready-made replacement and Sarah was suffering from his unwanted intentions. Both had good reason to want to be somewhere else. They hatched a plan to live together in England and dressed in men’s clothing they set out for Waterford and the ferry. They were captured and endured a period of detention by their families. Eleanor escaped again and was hidden in Sarah’s bedroom for ten days. Eventually and reluctantly the families gave way and the two women left Ireland and settled in Llangollen in Wales in a cottage called Plas Newydd. Here they lived for over 50 years.

The story of their elopement and their new way of life became well known. They developed their cottage and their garden, kept a very detailed journal, corresponded voluminously, studied literature and languages and very rarely spent time away from their retreat (two nights in 17 years according to Mavor). Their fame spread and their list of visitors is impressive: Wordsworth, Southey, Byron, Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington (a longstanding friend), Josiah Wedgwood, Lady Caroline Lamb, Dr Johnson, various assorted members of the royal family and several continental princes and princesses. Their fame has continued and they influenced the suffragettes; one suffragette, Mary Gordon wrote a biography of them based on the new psychotherapeutic ideas. Colette wrote about them in Ces Plaisirs in 1932 and Simone de Beauvoir mentions them in The Second Sex.

Inevitably people have speculated about their relationship; they shared a bedroom and a bed; their relationship was private and its nature is not really known. There was a tradition of romantic friendships between women in the eighteenth century with novels like Millennium Hall by Sarah Scott portrayed a feminine utopia. This sort of literature was almost certainly known to both women. They referred to each other as My Beloved (shortened to My B) or my Better Half and often entwined their signatures. They created scandal in some circles, but were accepted by most. They were rather traditional in their political views, quite conservative, worried by the French Revolution and the spread of radicalism (and Methodism, which also worried them).

8 out of 10

Starting Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden by Penelope Shuttle

[Books do furnish a room]

One Way of Love by Gamel Woolsey

 

Sonnet by Gamel Woolsey

When I am dead and laid at last to rest,

Let them not bury me in holy ground –

To lie the shipwrecked sailor cast ashore –

But give the corpse to fire, to flood, to air,

The elements that may the flesh transform

To soar with birds, to float where fishes are,

To rise in smoke, shine in a leaping flame –

To be in freedom lost in nothingness,

Not garnered in the grave, hoarded by death.

What is remembrance that we crave for it?

Let me be nothing then, not face nor name;

As on the seagull wings where bright seas pour,

As air that quickens at the opened door:

When I am dead, let me be nothing more.

Gamel Woolsey was an American poet and novelist who most people will never have heard of and her story is poignant. She was born in South Carolina in 1895. Following family bereavements she moved to New York hoping to be an actress or writer. Her first poem was published in 1922. She met and married Rex Hunter, a journalist from New Zealand in 1923. One Way of Love is an account of their marriage and separation. In 1927 she met John Cowper Powys whilst living in Greenwich Village and through him, his brother Llewelyn and his wife Alyse Gregory (another interesting character). Gamel had an intense affair with Llewelyn and remained lifelong friends with Alyse Gregory. Woolsey moved to England in the late 1920s and met Gerald Brenan with whom she spent the rest of her life, mostly in Spain. Brenan was part of Bloomsbury.

This is Woolsey’s first novel and it is rather good; written in the early 30s, it was ready to be published in 1932. She had showed the draft to Brennan who professed to be impressed by it. David Garnett and Frances Partridge both thought it was wonderful and the publisher Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish. However th prosecution of The Well of Loneliness had made people cautious and at the last minute Gollancz halted the publication because of the novel’s sexual explicitness. The print run was destroyed and Woolsey kept a couple of copies for herself. It was not published in her lifetime. On her death Brenan sent a copy to the British Museum explaining the background and pretty much saying it had no literary merit; entirely untrue and very much a betrayal. Virago (bless them) published in 1987, over 50 years after the first intended publication.

The novel is not explicit in the way that modern audiences would understand the word. There is a consideration of female arousal and orgasm which would have unusual at that time, but it is more an analysis of the emotions and experience rather than a physical description. Woolsey tries to analyze what both parties are feeling at the time and how male and female approaches can be on an entirely different wavelength.

The main character Mariana is clearly based on Woolsey herself and much of the novel focuses on her marriage to Alan; her feelings of loneliness and apartness, even in a relationship, the boredom and drudgery and the bullying. It isn’t a one sided description and Woolsey carefully describes the positives and negatives; but the reader is left in no doubt that we can never really know the core of another, in essence we are alone. After leaving Alan, Mariana has two brief affairs towards the end of the book. One is with Jack Holworth and this is clearly Llewelyn Powys. Their physical descriptions are very similar and Holworth was the name of the nearest village to Llewelyn’s home in Dorset. When I realized this I began to wonder if the cancellation of publication was really accidental. Jack Holworth in his first sexual encounter with Mariana, rapes her. She doesn’t physically fight him, but she is unwilling and unhappy. He is entirely wrapped up in his own urges and his own perception of her and does not see her unwillingness and the fact that she might not be consenting does not cross his mind. Even more powerfully and explosively;

“Mariana attracts you so much because she is decently grown up, has even been married so that your desires are possible and lawful, and yet you can think of her as a child who could be raped – without really hurting her.”

Woolsey analyses the thoughts of all the men Mariana has relationships with, the otherness of them and their thoughts about her. Alan is interested in the idea of being in love, but his ideal of what Mariana should be is not matched by her reality. Mariana ends the book alone and her thoughts are summed up;

“Happy — I will never be happy with anyone … In all our crazy, twisted, besotted heads there's nothing with which to make people happy. I am as bad as the rest. I am only different in knowing it. They are complacently self-satisfied in the thought that they can make anyone happy — they are sure that they are good, that they are successful. How stupid we are! And how can we help being so? Each one of us is a small bit of animated consciousness enclosed in a bone case, separated by air and space from its fellows with no way of knowing what goes on in any other mind”

Mariana is pessimistic about the ability of men to meet her needs while hoping to meet one that will. This is a work of brutal honesty, which at its heart is about loneliness; there is a lyrical quality about it, which you would expect from a poet. It is remarkably good, especially for a first novel. The sonnet I began with has a prescience as Woolsey was written out of Llewelyn Powys’s autobiography; her first novel was almost lost and only rescued by the good offices of Virago Press. Her second volume of poetry was rejected by T S Eliot and as she became older Woolsey retreated increasingly into the past as her literary ambitions were thwarted (although she did write an account of the civil war in Spain as it affected her village).

Some lines of her poetry sum it up;

“Oh, must we always live

with the fixed past?

Is there no future

in which we can alter the sunken day”

Gamel Woolsey was destined to be defined by the men around her when she should have been an author in her own right and judging by this novel, would have gone on to write a great deal more.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott

[Books do furnish a room]

Double Drink Story; my life with Dylan Thomas by Caitlin Thomas

 

This is Cailin Thomas’s account of her life with Dylan Thomas, written many years after his death and after she had given up alcohol. This is really an account of their lives with alcohol. Neither of them come across as likeable and one’s sympathies are inevitably with their children. This isn’t a traditional biographical account, but focuses rather on Caitlin’s feelings about and reactions to Dylan; which were powerful and unpredictable.

The myth of Dylan Thomas is exploded, in terms of how he was to live with. Drink, particularly beer was dominant. He was a raconteur and utterly charming of course. He was also constitutionally incapable of fidelity and totally selfish. There is a lengthy analysis on the effect of drink and its impact on the pair of them. This account is much more impressionistic than Thomas’s previous accounts of her life and not published until after her death. There is a madness and desperation to it which reminds one of books like Leaving Las Vegas; only this isn’t fiction.

Her son to her second husband has edited this and she wrote with his help; he draws similarities with Sylvia Plath. She tried to commit suicide several times and her life in Dylan’s shadow meant that her own talents were neglected. She has been portrayed as drunken (that part is true), irresponsible in relation to her children, unloving and unfaithful to Dylan in her turn. The book illustrates that her attempts at infidelity were a total disaster. She was expected to look after her famous husband and put up with his moods and infidelities and they were certainly violent towards each other. Alcoholism does not lead to good parenting. The real problem is that Dylan was at the same time much more and much less than she expected.

It is a searingly honest account of the effects of alcohol, madness and genius; written by a survivor. The brief account of Caitlin’s childhood are charming and such a contrast with the madness that came after.

7 out of 10

 

Starting Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge