Sometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening, always fascinating. Unusually, the best stories are grouped together towards the end. Apart from the delightSometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening, always fascinating. Unusually, the best stories are grouped together towards the end. Apart from the delightful ‘Having a Wonderful Time’, the first two-thirds are a mixture of weaker pieces (‘Zodiac 2000’) and acquired taste (the two longest stories; see below). I wasn’t sold on the book until I hit ‘The Dead Time’, after which every story – ‘The Smile’, ‘Motel Architecture’, ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ – was a hit.
Together, ‘Myths of the Near Future’ and ‘News from the Sun’ clearly form the centrepiece of the book. They’re the most substantial and also, I discovered, the only two stories original to this collection; the others were all first published in magazines. The echoes between them reminded me of Anna Kavan’s Ice and some of her other novels, the way her arrangement of three character archetypes recurs across different novels in different guises. Here Ballard’s central group is of a similar makeup but slightly refracted, there’s the doubling of obsessions with voyeurism, sickness, abandoned Americana – plus the idea of space travel as an aberration that’s thrown humanity so out of joint it's resulted in mass infirmity and madness.
Ballard is a writer I always think I’ve read more than I actually have, and apart from anything else, this was incredibly useful as a snapshot of his short fiction. I can now see connections with both Ballard's peers and contemporaries, and writers I love who were clearly inspired by him (Nina Allan and Joel Lane, to name a couple). ‘The Smile’ would make a great pairing with Daphne du Maurier’s similarly macabre ‘The Doll’, and ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ reminded me so much of Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Terminal Boredom’ (has anyone done an anthology of 20th-century stories that predicted a video-centric society? If not, they should)....more
After loving Great Granny Webster earlier this year, I knew I would have to read more Caroline Blackwood, and this recent reissue provided the perAfter loving Great Granny Webster earlier this year, I knew I would have to read more Caroline Blackwood, and this recent reissue provided the perfect opportunity. The Fate of Mary Rose is something quite different: it’s a pitch-dark crime novel told from the perspective of Rowan Anderson, a self-absorbed, very unhappily married historian. He despises his meek wife, Cressida, and their feeble daughter Mary Rose; he visits them seldom, and reluctantly. He also has a long-term mistress whom he continually belittles. Despite all this, Blackwood takes us so persuasively into Rowan’s perspective that he begins to seem the most reasonable person in this story. Its focus is the preoccupation Cressida develops with the disappearance of a little girl, Maureen, in the village where she and Mary Rose live. This turns into a fevered obsession; then it spreads to the other women in Rowan’s life. He becomes increasingly desperate to be rid of Cressida, leading to a series of dreadful decisions.
It’s easy to see why this book was chosen for reintroduction to a modern audience. Cressida’s disturbing obsession with Maureen, fed by a relentless media focus on the case, seems to prefigure the recent slew of novels about the relationship between true crime and its audiences. It’s also a neat representation of class anxiety, since Maureen lived on a recently-built, much-reviled council estate near Beckham, the otherwise idyllic village where Cressida and Mary Rose live. (I felt the villagers’ hand-wringing over this, the council estate seen as a ‘breeding ground for squalor, disease and crime’, could have come straight out of a novel published today.) The Fate of Mary Rose doesn’t quite have the rapier wit of Great Granny Webster, and there’s a quite different tone, leaning towards melodrama (not a criticism!). The marketing for this edition compares it to Shirley Jackson, which feels accurate to me. Camilla Grudova’s introduction is also great and provides some intriguing context about Blackwood herself....more
As ever with Barbara Vine, I’m struck by how unusual The House of Stairs is in contrast to what we now expect from the genre (the blurb for this editiAs ever with Barbara Vine, I’m struck by how unusual The House of Stairs is in contrast to what we now expect from the genre (the blurb for this edition describes it as ‘an unputdownable crime classic’). I found it extremely meandering but, yes, compelling. I read huge chunks despite finding the characters neither likeable nor interesting. It’s the same kind of anti-thriller as A Fatal Inversion – an ominous bit at the start, then 200 pages of family politics, fussy interiors and listless socialising before anyone even thinks about committing a crime. Yet somehow I was still turning the pages compulsively.
At the very beginning there is an irresistibly gripping scene. Narrator Elizabeth is shocked to spot Christabel (aka Bell), a former friend from another life, on the street – shocked because this means Bell has been released from prison – and follows her. For the rest of the book, nothing much actually happens. We flash back to the 1960s, where Cosette, Elizabeth’s wealthy, widowed, childless aunt, sets out to reinvent herself, in part by buying a tall mews house in Notting Hill (then a ‘slummy, shabby, dirty and dangerous area of London’). Nicknamed the House of Stairs, it becomes host to a revolving door of young people, a couple of whom Cosette has affairs with. It’s also where Elizabeth becomes better acquainted with Bell. The big revelation, Bell’s crime, comes very late.
Here is an older example of that plot device, so common in modern thrillers, where a narrator must conceal certain past events within their own thoughts and memories so the author can build up to a reveal. (Reading The House of Stairs I was often reminded of Erin Kelly’s The Poison Tree, for the use of this device as much as the bohemian London house and beguiling villain.) Unsurprisingly, Vine does it remarkably well, ushering us along by way of Elizabeth’s conversational voice, her habit of correcting herself and recognising when emotion is tripping her up.
It’s tempting to see this as an obvious antecedent of 2000’s Grasshopper, which also features a young woman living with a relative and taking up with a charismatic criminal – though for my money the later book is more developed; Clodagh is just a more successfully written protagonist. For all that Elizabeth is our storyteller and relates the events at the House so intimately, we don’t learn much about what makes her tick. Not my favourite Vine then but a pleasing read, thoroughly enjoyable in a non-typical way, a page-turner that doesn’t talk down to the reader....more
(3.5) Beautiful but inscrutable. The blurb says that ‘Even among Fleur Jaeggy’s singular and intricate works, The Water Statues is a shiningly peculia(3.5) Beautiful but inscrutable. The blurb says that ‘Even among Fleur Jaeggy’s singular and intricate works, The Water Statues is a shiningly peculiar book’, which is the perfect way to describe it: if Jaeggy’s style always feels cool, The Water Statues is ice-cold, keeping the reader on the outside of the story, much as its protagonist Beeklam glimpses the lives of others through windows on a walk through Amsterdam. Yet it’s never smug, just uninterested in what you think of it. Occasionally, I couldn’t help but think (affectionately!) that it reads like what might be generated by an AI trained on Jaeggy’s work:
At times, toward evening, the monotony and tedium became almost unbearable, but I was pliant and yielded to what I supposed must be the order of the universe. It was as though smoke had curled his hair, and – thanks to the brutal simplicity that my mute companion was able to spread all around him – even someone who lived in dread of imminent catastrophe stopped thinking about it altogether.
First published in 1980, it’s not hard to see why it hasn’t been translated until now – it’s almost indescribable, though there are some odd, coincidental parallels to recent books: like the title character in Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Beeklam lives in a large, flooded house filled with statues which he names; the story is ‘in part structured as a play’, but a lot of the dialogue comes in the form of detached monologues, which put me in mind of the statements in Olga Ravn’s The Employees.
Jaeggy talks a lot about the void, and this book is like the void as a novella. It gave me a dose of the distant, morbid clarity I expect from her writing, but I would not recommend it to anyone not already familiar with her style.
Aroon St Charles, unfortunate daughter of a declining aristocratic family, is a doubly unreliable narrator. She’s selective in what she chooses to relAroon St Charles, unfortunate daughter of a declining aristocratic family, is a doubly unreliable narrator. She’s selective in what she chooses to relate, and also ignorant of facts that are nevertheless plain to the reader (her brother’s relationship with his ‘best friend’, who poses as Aroon’s suitor to avoid suspicion; her father’s many affairs). As such it’s never really clear how much she actually knows. About Hubert and Richard she is pathetically oblivious, but the opening scene – in which she indirectly murders her mother by contriving to feed her rabbit – positions her as a schemer. What never wavers is the code of ‘good behaviour’, the adherence to mores and etiquette that comes above all else, including, and perhaps especially, happiness. A story that certainly puts the ‘dark’ in ‘darkly comic’; not a happy book but it does makes one glad, at least, not to be a St Charles....more
Reading a summary of Sleepwalking led me to expect a sort of 1980s Bunny: set (at first) on a college campus, it centres on a trio of poetry-and-suiciReading a summary of Sleepwalking led me to expect a sort of 1980s Bunny: set (at first) on a college campus, it centres on a trio of poetry-and-suicide-obsessed friends known as the ‘death girls’, and follows what happens when one of them, Claire, is drawn into a new relationship with quixotic Julian, whose personality is the opposite of this morbid clique. But it soon drifts away from all this – into the life and death of Lucy Ascher, the young poet whom Claire idolises, and a separate plot which follows Claire as she impulsively decides to approach Helen and Ray Ascher (Lucy’s parents) and work as their housekeeper. Each of the major characters is, in some way, ‘sleepwalking’ through life: Lucy is depressed; the Aschers are grieving; Claire is a combination of both, mourning her brother Seth and only finding comfort in Lucy Ascher’s cold, doomy poetry. Despite all this darkness – or maybe deliberately, to balance it out – the story is gentle in such abundance that it starts to border on fantasy. A whimsical and strange, yet also strangely likeable, blend of numbness and warmth....more
The Ice House is an adult novel by Nina Bawden, better known for her kids’ books (at least to me, and a scan of other reviews confirms this seems to bThe Ice House is an adult novel by Nina Bawden, better known for her kids’ books (at least to me, and a scan of other reviews confirms this seems to be the case generally). When children’s authors write adult fiction it’s often pretty dark, but not so here – opening chapter aside, this is a gentle story with a combination of rather depressing central themes (unhappy marriages abound) and light humour. Its main focus is the friendship between two women, Ruth and Daisy. In the short, compelling first part of the book, we meet them as teenagers, and Daisy realises that while Ruth seems to have the upper hand socially, her home life is miserable. But for the rest of the story, they are middle-aged. When Daisy’s husband Luke dies in an accident, various secrets are revealed. Ruth begins to realise she’s been naive not just about what her neighbours get up to, but about her own family too. The ensuing revelations crack open her marriage.
First published in 1983, it feels solidly mid-century despite signs of encroaching modernity; certain details feel like they’re only there to situate the story in the 80s – most obviously, a random subplot about a boy injured during a clash between National Front and anti-fascist protestors. The main plot involves a twist that’s very obvious from the start, but I can forgive that, as we’re seeing things from Ruth’s blinkered perspective. What I most struggled with was the story’s lack of structure. Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in, and little of it is connected to anything else. Side characters (gossipy shopkeeper Molly, randy retiree Simon, Luke’s formidable mother Stella) are introduced and then largely disappear. Ruth has a caustic inner monologue she calls ‘Rude Ruthie’, which I assumed was introduced to foreshadow some shift in her character, but no, this too is dropped. Things just keep happening without any impact.
Maybe none of this would matter if Ruth and Daisy’s marriages, the central concern here, were interesting, but they’re not. The men are shallowly written; Joe is barely a character. I’d rather have read more about the two main characters as girls, about Ruth’s brutal father and the subtle differences between their families’ flavours of middle class, all of which comes across so effectively in the first couple of chapters. This hasn’t made me especially keen to read more Bawden; there is, after all, no shortage of 20th-century novelists who write well about middle-class people in depressing relationships....more
Süskind’s novella chronicles a couple of days in the life of Jonathan Noel, a Parisian security guard whose carefully ordered life begins to fray whenSüskind’s novella chronicles a couple of days in the life of Jonathan Noel, a Parisian security guard whose carefully ordered life begins to fray when he finds a pigeon standing outside his front door. Jonathan, we learn, ‘was not fond of events’. The appearance of the bird tips him over the edge – ‘in no circumstances could he live under the same roof with this pigeon, not a single day, not a single night, not a single hour’ – and this is just the beginning of an escalating series of personal horrors. There’s humour in the story, but it’s also a vivid, effective study of mounting anxiety and emotional insularity. And Jonathan’s paroxysm of internal rage after realising he’s ripped his trousers is the most relatable thing I’ve read in a while.
The debut novel from Bret Easton Ellis follows a group of wealthy, mostly interchangeable teenagers as they slide laconically between parties and barsThe debut novel from Bret Easton Ellis follows a group of wealthy, mostly interchangeable teenagers as they slide laconically between parties and bars and shopping sprees and bedrooms. It’s a raw version of the voice and themes crystallised in The Rules of Attraction and American Psycho. A series of passages in italics, scattered throughout the book, contain 18-year-old narrator Clay’s reflections on the previous summer; these are particularly amateurish, though there’s something charming in both the unpolished prose and the flashes of surprising vulnerability. If nothing else, Less Than Zero is an interesting cultural artefact, an embodiment of a particular zeitgeist. But it also struck me how much the overall effect reminded me, more than anything, of a bunch of online short stories I’ve read by various Gen Z writers – funny how styles come back around, or maybe the bored detachment of nihilistic teens just always stays the same.
Strangers has a high-concept premise, one that certainly grabbed my attention when I picked it up (this was a charity bookshop find, part of the same Strangers has a high-concept premise, one that certainly grabbed my attention when I picked it up (this was a charity bookshop find, part of the same batch as Cracks). The protagonist's parents died in an accident when he was just 12 years old. One day, he returns to the neighbourhood in which he grew up, and meets them there – unchanged. He is now 47; his parents – and there is no doubt they are his parents – are in their thirties.
It sounds like the starting point for a dark, terrifying descent into mania and doubt, or else a paranoiac thriller. However, Taichi Yamada takes a more subdued approach. The protagonist, Harada, has a quiet life: recently divorced, he rarely socialises and lives in a near-empty building. A secondary plot strand involves his burgeoning relationship with a neighbour, Kei, who shies away from the world because of the scars caused by a severe burn across her chest. Harada's encounters with his parents are disconcertingly ordinary. A note of horror creeps in when others notice Harada physically declining, though he is unable to see the change.
I was initially surprised that Strangers hadn't been made into a film. Upon digging deeper, I found that it has: the adaptation is called The Discarnates and was directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, who is best known for House. I'll have to seek it out at some point; I wonder why it isn't better known, as the concept and structure lend themselves so perfectly to visual interpretation that it's easy to picture a screen version. Which is hardly surprising given Taichi Yamada's background as a film and TV scriptwriter.
I really enjoyed the haunting mood of Strangers. It somehow maintains a calm tone at the same time as feeling quite fast-paced, and the climactic moments are especially great. A psychological ghost story that's both chilling and unexpectedly comforting.
Ian Laidlaw is a professor of politics at a Scottish university. In his own words, he is 'a quiet man, a deliberate man. I think before I speak and I Ian Laidlaw is a professor of politics at a Scottish university. In his own words, he is 'a quiet man, a deliberate man. I think before I speak and I don't speak often.' His staid marriage to a meek woman ended when she met someone else, and he has been alone ever since. His view of himself is shaped almost entirely by one thing: his facial scars. Having been attacked by a dog as a child, he has significant scarring on one side of his face. We only have Ian's word for how bad the damage is, and he certainly wants us to know it's bad: 'repellent', 'vile', 'a monster'. 'Nobody treats a man as disfigured as I am as if he were human.'
The book opens with a seemingly innocuous incident. During a tutorial, one of Ian's students, Alicia Davie, laughs at him. The cause is seemingly his repeated use of the phrase 'quite so'. One might imagine that Ian would see this mockery as another example of his otherness, more evidence that the world sees him as less than human. Instead, he feels unexpectedly delighted. 'She'd made me feel not just good but real.' He becomes obsessed with Alicia, and soon devises a reason to invite her to his flat. This strange entanglement develops into an affair, and the affair turns into a sadomasochistic relationship.
The generational schism between Ian, born before the start of the Second World War, and Alicia, a child of the 1960s, is immense. 'Difference in age,' says Ian, 'is the most significant of inequalities.' The students of the 1980s are 'a new species entirely', 'reared by revolutionaries'. When Ian first sees Alicia's messy student lodgings, his disgust verges on hysterical – 'I felt more than simply upset, I felt sickened'. When Alicia asks where Ian got his scars, he tells her 'Passchendaele', and (in his assessment) she believes him. He is ashamed of his involvement with her, ashamed of her poor manners and bad habits, her ignorance and indolence; but he is also sexually obsessed. There's a lot of sex in this book, yet much of it is described in vague, evasive terms. This makes perfect sense: the priggish Ian would of course find it abhorrent to talk in detail about what he does in bed. It also underscores the more sinister aspects of the novel, obscuring the truth.
For it is clear almost immediately that Ian's narrative is a confession. In the first chapter, he ominously refers to 'what you saw up in my flat', and he is, as occasional asides prove, speaking to a police officer. He takes his time in the telling, the better for Fine to elucidate his character. This is a man who thinks he knows other people, and indeed himself, far better than he truly does. With precious little experience of relationships (of any kind), he fancies himself an expert on human behaviour. In a different story, this naivety might be poignant. Not here, for 'the killjoy' is a truly monstrous creation. Alicia, meanwhile, has no voice in Ian's account, remaining as enigmatic to the reader as she is to him, and subject to his (likely highly inaccurate) assumptions.
As with many such unreliable narratives, the question of what has been left out – and it seems certain much has, since parts of Ian's story make little sense otherwise – chills the blood. I raced through the second half of the book in a rhapsody of terror. I felt like I was driving a car at high speed towards a brick wall.
Many years ago, Fine's YA thriller The Tulip Touch was one of my childhood favourites. I didn't read this book because of that, though; I didn't even know she had written any adult novels until I chanced across a copy of this in a second-hand bookshop. The Tulip Touch entranced 12-year-old me because it was exquisitely horrible, at times quite terrifying (I have often thought that it was instrumental in forming my reading preferences), and The Killjoy had much the same effect on me as an adult. It's an exhilarating, awful story, told in riveting style.
This is the third Barbara Vine book I've read (after Asta’s Book and The Minotaur), and I love the richness of her stories. I've definitely said tThis is the third Barbara Vine book I've read (after Asta’s Book and The Minotaur), and I love the richness of her stories. I've definitely said this about other books, but A Fatal Inversion strikes me as such an old-fashioned mystery – slow-moving, painstakingly detailed. It really made me think about how quickly our (readers' in general) perceptions of genre shift; I struggle to imagine this being published under the banner of 'psychological thriller' or even 'crime' these days; too many scenes that drag and meander, too much about the stuffy lives of upper-middle-class Brits. Yet those were the things I liked most about it.
The plot is of a type that sounds unoriginal now, but doubtless was more of a novelty when A Fatal Inversion was published: the 'group of hedonistic young people inhabiting an old country house' setup. It's the unusually hot summer of 1976, and 19-year-old Adam Verne-Smith has inherited his great-uncle Hilbert's mansion, Wyvis Hall – much to the chagrin of his father, who had been toadying to Hilbert for years in the hope of securing the house. (This is the sort of detail A Fatal Inversion has in spades. There are pages and pages devoted to this family spat, which has nothing much to do with the main plot, but adds fascinating texture to the characters.) On a whim, Adam decides to stay at the Hall over the summer with his friend Rufus. They are eventually joined by a hippyish couple, Shiva and Vivien, and a strange girl named Zosie, whom Adam falls in love/lust with. Ten years later, things are very different: the former friends have sworn never to speak again, and think of the house with horror, guilt and fear.
We have an idea of why, because in the opening scene, the couple now inhabiting Wyvis Hall uncover a human skeleton while burying their dog in what is ostensibly a pet graveyard. We learn early on that the body was a woman's, so the story is necessarily told from Adam, Rufus and Shiva's perspectives; Vine must keep us in the dark about what becomes of Vivien, Zosie and a handful of incidental female characters. This is the weakest aspect of A Fatal Inversion, as the narrative sometimes ties itself in knots trying to explain why none of the men will countenance the idea of contacting [unspecified female character]. Nonetheless, the story overall retains its strange fascination.
The characters are an awful lot; even the nicest of them are no more than vaguely likeable. Most are either downright obnoxious (the men) or annoying (the women). And yet the way Vine writes them is so persuasive that I wanted them to get away with it! The scenes of that summer at Wyvis Hall – dubbed 'Ecalpemos' ('someplace' in reverse) by Adam – are peculiar and hazy, befitting the status this short period of time holds in the characters' minds. Vine depicts the power of memories with stunning precision: there are several fantastic moments in which a scene is suddenly interrupted, the perspective snaps back to reality, and we realise that what we have been reading is an individual's recollection, not objective fact.
It often seems like nothing much is happening in A Fatal Inversion, or things are moving too slowly, or the story is looping back on itself. The writing is so good, though, that I was happy to go along with whatever it was describing, even if it (seemingly) did nothing to advance the plot. This slow-burn approach also makes it all the more effective when a twist or revelation does come. The ending is delightfully satisfying, too, with a little sting in its tail.
'Never mind,' I told myself, 'it's only a nightmare.' But then I remembered that I'd never gone to bed that night, and so it couldn't possibly be a ni'Never mind,' I told myself, 'it's only a nightmare.' But then I remembered that I'd never gone to bed that night, and so it couldn't possibly be a nightmare.
Knowing nothing at all about Leonora Carrington’s writing, I came to this with no preconceptions. I found a set of playful and weird folk tales that often made me smile at some strange mental image.
'White Rabbits' is a vivid and bloody piece of horror that makes a perfect opening. The narrator is drawn into the weird world of her opposite neighbour, who keeps a pack of carnivorous rabbits.
In 'Uncle Sam Carrington', a little girl sets off in search of an unconventional way to solve the problem of her embarrassing aunt and uncle. On her journey she meets fighting vegetables, a talking horse and a pair of witches.
'The Debutante' is the memorable tale of a spoiled debutante who, tired of attending balls thrown in her honour, sends a hyena in her place. You can probably guess how well that turns out.
'The Oval Lady' is like a bizarre dream – or, indeed, one of Carrington's paintings come to life. The same might be said of 'The Seventh Horse', and these two stories come the closest to feeling like Carrington is writing nonsense for the sake of it. There are still striking images and lines to be found in them, however.
'My Flannel Knickers' has a brilliant beginning: 'Thousands of people know my flannel knickers, and though I know this may seem flirtatious, it is not. I am a saint.' It's a dark fable about vanity and social ambition.
'The Skeleton's Holiday' was originally published as part of a collaborative novel, The Man Who Lost His Skeleton, with a group of other surrealist artists. Written in 1939, it is considerably older than the other stories collected here, all of which were first published in 1988. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense in isolation (though I'm willing to bet it doesn't make much more sense in context).
A solid three stars for me. If the concept – a humanoid lizard-like creature escapes from a research institute, is taken in by a bored housewife, and A solid three stars for me. If the concept – a humanoid lizard-like creature escapes from a research institute, is taken in by a bored housewife, and they begin an affair – is outlandish, the approach is pedestrian as can be. That's not to say the writing is without merit: it's efficient and clear and oddly convincing. However, Dorothy's deadening marriage and suburban neighbourhood seem so old-fashioned it's difficult to believe this wasn't written two or three decades earlier than 1982. The most intriguing thing about the whole story – Dorothy 'hearing things on the programmes that couldn't possibly be real' – is never mentioned again once 'Larry' appears.
(I was originally going to read the further tales included in the volume Mrs Caliban and Other Stories, but the first of them, 'I See a Long Journey', almost sent me to sleep.)
Ever find yourself entirely unable to describe or explain something you enjoyed reading/watching/consuming? The Trick is to Keep Breathing fits right Ever find yourself entirely unable to describe or explain something you enjoyed reading/watching/consuming? The Trick is to Keep Breathing fits right into that category. Maybe some novels are just not meant to be reviewed. Stories are sometimes most memorable for the ways they make you feel. Charting the breakdown of a young teacher (the ironically-monikered Joy) in the wake of her partner's death, it dabbles in formal experimentation – a review quoted on the cover of my 1997 paperback copy describes it as 'Tristram Shandy as rewritten by Sylvia Plath'. There's a surprising lightness to it, and this weird self-contained mood I've come across before in 80s and 90s fiction – maybe it's something to do with Joy's life being so recognisable in many ways, except for the absence of the internet and mobile phones, the world feeling smaller then, communities being more tangible then? Or it might be the in-a-bubble sensation of existing inside Joy's head, the drifting numbness of grief and depression. Sometimes it has the air of a particularly twisted fairytale. I can't tell you how I felt or feel about it in the end. Galloway is a magnificent chronicler of mental deterioration.
Oh, poor Kitty Maule. I don't know how on earth I came to read an Anita Brookner novel with the expectation that there might really be a happy ending,Oh, poor Kitty Maule. I don't know how on earth I came to read an Anita Brookner novel with the expectation that there might really be a happy ending, but Providence manipulates the reader's emotions so effectively that I read much of it with my heart in my mouth, hoping against hope for an at least mildly positive outcome. The final third unfolds with an almost unbearable sense of high-wire tension that rivals the finest thrillers.
Like Ruth in A Start in Life, one might say of Kitty that her 'life has been ruined by literature'. Like Frances in Look At Me, she makes horrified judgements of others that reflect her own fears far more than the reality of these people's lives. Some of the blurbs for Providence refer to it as a romantic comedy, but romantic tragedy is more like it – Kitty and her beloved both believe in divine providence of a sort, but unbeknownst to Kitty she is on a very different path to the carelessly handsome and popular Maurice Bishop.
And the infuriating Miss Fairchild! How perfectly she seems to embody that odd word 'limpid' – both its true meaning of beautiful clarity and its inevitable negative associations and somewhat ugly sound.
As with all Brookner's writing, certain passages leapt out at me with an emotional vividity that made me think 'nobody writes like this anymore' – yet her novels aren't particularly old (this one's from 1982) and I can't really think of anyone, from any era, who writes quite like Brookner.
p59: 'I do not want to be trustworthy, and safe, and discreet. I do not want to be the one who understands and sympathizes and soothes. I do not want to be reliable... I want to be totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful. I want to be part of a real family. I want my father to be there and to shoot things. I do not want my grandmother to tell me what to wear. I want to wear jeans and old sweaters belonging to my brother whom of course I do not have.'
p66: 'Kitty felt a sort of irritated languor, very different from her usual state of calm if timid determination. Although she looked on Caroline's activities sternly, she wondered with genuine humility if she could ever be such a woman, delighting in her own appearance, devoting much time and effort to embellishing it, regarding her small outing as a genuine point of reference in the day, fascinated by her ultimate fate and waiting for others to bring it about. Kitty had frequently felt that she lacked some essential feminine quality, that this resided in the folklore passed on by women who possessed a knowledge that she was forced to supplement by reading books.'
p72: 'I must grow up, she thought. I must stop being so humble. I can make decisions and initiate actions like anyone else. I am not stupid. I am not poor. If I want to do something I do not have to wait for permission. I am old enough to make up my own mind. My mother was a widow at eighteen. My father was a corpse at twenty-one. I am wasting time. I shall waste no more.'
p88: 'Oh, I am misbegotten, she thought. I am not anywhere at home. I believe in nothing. I am truly in an existentialist world. There are no valid prophecies.'
A weirdly hypnotic tragicomedy of the banal; I can easily imagine it as a stage play – perhaps it might pass for something by Coward or Wilde. The plaA weirdly hypnotic tragicomedy of the banal; I can easily imagine it as a stage play – perhaps it might pass for something by Coward or Wilde. The players are Ruth, a naive and bookish young woman; her parents, spoilt actress Helen and feckless bookseller George; and Mrs Cutler, the Weiss family's waspish, chainsmoking housekeeper.
Dr Ruth Weiss is first introduced to us as a forty-year-old academic (and spinster), but the majority of the story is about her adolescence and early adulthood. From a young age, Ruth, neglected by her self-involved parents, loses herself in books. Romance obsesses yet eludes her: there is one evening with Richard, a young man who is widely considered beautiful but has 'an ulcer' which necessitates the cooking of exceptionally bland dishes. So disastrous is this evening that Ruth is compelled to move out of her flat. With her sole romantic prospect extinguished, Ruth goes to Paris and stays in the miserable servants' quarters of an elderly couple, friends of her parents. Throughout, Ruth, a devotee of Balzac, wrestles with the ideas of vice and virtue. As in Brookner's Look At Me, the time period is indistinct, with some details that feel incredibly dated and others alarmingly modern.
Ruth is the protagonist, but – and this I didn't expect – we learn a lot about the interior lives of the others too. George has an affair with a motherly employee, in whose flat (to her mounting frustration) he installs expensive contraptions he has bought himself from department stores: record player, sun lamp, portable grill, Teasmade. Helen becomes a recluse and wastes away, mourning the loss of her career, looks and social influence. Mrs Cutler resolves to marry again late in life, doing so via a 'marriage bureau'. Brookner has a gift for precise, startling description: the furniture Ruth's grandmother brings over from Berlin, 'in dark woods which looked as though they had absorbed the blood of horses'; the late scene in which the remarried Mrs Cutler appears at the Weiss home, resplendently vulgar in 'a fun fur coat and high-heeled boots'.
The solitudinous world that Brookner's heroines inhabit is so seductive to me, even when I understand it is not intended to be so. Or perhaps it's simply that she makes home and family life look so hellish that it's difficult not to see wandering the streets alone as an idyllic respite. Poor Ruth gets little more than an ironic final sentence as compensation for her depressing 'start in life', one which sadly brings her back where she began.
That opening sentence, of course: 'Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.'
p8: 'Her appearance and character were exactly half-way between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; she was scrupulous, passionate, thoughtful, and given to self-analysis, but her colleagues thought her merely scrupulous, noting her neatness with approval, and assuming that her absent and slightly haggard expression denoted a tricky passage in Balzac. In fact she was extreme in her expectations and although those expectations had never been fulfilled she had learnt nothing.'
p16: 'Their great strength, had she but known it, was that they were able to voice every passing anxiety. This process, which sounded like a litany of hardship, was in fact an alleviation of disappointment. The child registered only their disappointment, and felt apologetic about her presence which somehow marred the hectic honeymoon presence which they sought to prolong.'
p22: 'Adolescence? It was hardly an adolescence as other girls knew it, waking up to their temporary but so exhilarating power over men. No slow smiles, no experimental flaunting, no assumed mystery for Ruth. She was in no hurry to enter the adult world, knowing in advance, and she was not wrong, that she was badly equipped for being there. In any event it seemed unattractive and nothing to do with her.'
p23: 'Tell me, Ruth,' she said, as they emerged from the bus at the other end of their journey. 'Do you understand everything you read? Does it ever worry you?' 'Yes,' said Ruth, to both questions.'
p75: 'An urge to stay all day in the divine air of late September was like a physical quickening of her blood. Almost, she was happy. Or perhaps she recognised that this was how happiness felt. All one needed was a pretext. If there were no pretext, one needed an analogue. But Ruth, walking endlessly, was content to experience the unlooked for exhilaration, to hope, to beg, that one day, some day, she might find a reason for feeling as she did, buoyant, serene, anaesthetised against everyday hurts. She imagined, wrongly, that being in love was like this. With love comes seriousness, loss of autonomy, responsibility without power.'
p94: 'A great desire for change came over Ruth and a great uncertainty as to how this might be brought about. For she knew, obscurely, that she had capacities as yet untried but that they might be for ever walled up unless her circumstances changed.'
p99: 'She perceived that most tales of morality were wrong, that even Charles Dickens was wrong, and that the world is not won by virtue. Eternal life, perhaps – but who knows about that? Not the world.'
p131: 'She sat down on the edge of the bath, trembling. Could this still happen? Could this abortive, unfinished business disturb her so profoundly? Would she always react the same way to those who did not want her, trying ever more hopelessly to please, while others, better disposed, went off unregarded?'...more