Paris In July: Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir

 

I am extremely pleased with myself for finally finishing this book! I bought it more than ten years ago on a visit to the Frick Museum in New York City, when I went to see an exhibit of Dutch masters. Apparently they didn't have anything else in the gift shop and but the pretty cover of this NYRB classic (it's a detail from Garden at the Rue Cortot, Montmartre painted in 1876, below. It's at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh). 

So. I've owned this book forever and I know I've put it on my list of books to read for Paris in July multiple times. I finally cracked it open a couple of weeks ago and though it's not a fast read, I really enjoyed it. I love art and I'm fascinated by the lives of artists. I wouldn't say Renoir is my favorite Impressionist but I really gained a new appreciation of his work from reading this book. 

Originally published in 1958, it's a memoir by filmmaker Jean Renoir, Auguste Renoir's middle son. Jean was wounded during WWI and as he convalesced with his elderly father, who was already crippled with rheumatism, the younger Renoir spent a lot of time talking to his father about the artist's life. The book is a combination of a biography of his father's life and his own recollections growing up in Paris and various other parts of France. The family often spent summers in the countryside in various parts of France, particularly Essoys in Burgundy, where his mother Aline was born, and later in the south of France, near Nice (I was actually lucky enough to visit Nice a few years ago and was sadly unaware that there's a Renoir museum just 20 minutes away in Cagnes-sur-Mer, in his final home. I did get to visit the Chagall Museum and the Matisse Museum, so I really wouldn't complain but I wish I'd known!)

It's quite an interesting memoir about Renoir's life and how became and artist and met up with his fellow Impressionists. He's one of the most prolific of the group, with at least 4000 paintings to his record (and the book includes stories about other paintings that were lost or stolen which just made me aghast. Some were literally used to patch up holes in a leaky roof). 

There are also great stories about the other painters including one about his good friend Gustave Caillebotte, who named Renoir executor of his estate and personal art collection after his death. Apparently it was Caillebotte's wish that the collection be given to the Louvre who didn't want the whole collection and turned 2/3 of it away. The third that they kept was stored away in the Luxembourg Museum. After his widow's death they just went to various heirs and were mostly sold outside France. Well, France's loss is the world's gain, I suppose! 

I feel very fortunate to have been to Philadelphia last year where I saw the biggest single collection of Renoir's works at the Barnes Foundation, a total of 181! Barnes was a huge art collector and began amassing Impressionist works in the 1920s. His entire house was designed to showcase his collection and was eventually left to the city of Philadelphia as a private museum. The collection was eventually moved to a larger space in downtown Philadelphia which resembles the original house with the exact layout of the all the artworks. If you ever get the chance it's absolutely worth visiting! 

I'm also extremely fortunate to live only a short drive away from the Phillips Collection Museum in DC near Dupont Circle. One of the highlights of the collection is Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party. The last time I visited one of the docents told me that Phillips and Barnes were rival collectors. Phillips was annoyed that Barnes had the bigger collection of Renoirs but always bragged that he had the best one. 

Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881.
Renoir's future wife Aline is in the left hand corner with the little dog;
Renoir's friend and fellow Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte is on the lower left leaning back. 

I enjoyed visiting Renoir's world but the book is pretty dense and took a lot longer to finish than I expected -- I am rather behind on Paris in July reading list and also my Big Book Summer Reading Challenge! But this book was on both lists and I'm also counting this as my Classic Nonfiction for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford: An NYRB Classic with a Dark Twist

Detail of "The Shower" by William Herbert Dunton. 
The original is in the American Museum of Western Art in Denver, Colorado

The Mountain Lion is one of several unread NYRB Classics that have been accumulating on my TBR shelves. I've probably owned it for a good ten years and it seemed like a good choice for the TBR Pile Challenge. I try to mix up my reading with different genres and it seemed quite different than my previous read, plus it's short -- a good choice when I'm behind on my annual reading goal already! However, this book was nothing like I expected.

Published in 1947 but set about 20 years earlier, it is the story of a young brother and sister living in California, Ralph and Molly Fawcett. The book begins when Ralph, aged ten and Molly, eight, are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their Grandfather Kenyon, the stepfather of their widowed mother (so, technically, their step-grandfather). They live with their mother and two older sisters in a walnut grove in suburban Los Angeles, and their Grandfather's visit is the highlight of the year. Grandpa Kenyon is quite a character, a world traveler who owns various properties including a ranch in Colorado, managed by his son Claude, their mother's half-brother. 

Ralph in particular is stifled growing up among a lot of females, but ostensibly for their health, Ralph and Molly begin to spend extended trips on the ranch with Claude. Ralph's world changes as he leaves his repressed childhood in California to a heavenly freedom in Colorado, where he learns to ride and shoot and fish. 

The original 1947 cover.
I love the illustration, like a reverse woodblock print. 

This seems like it could be a wonderful and ideal way to spend summers, but it's not ideal for Molly, who is precious, awkward, and bookish. It also takes a rather darker turn as they begin to grow older. What at first appears idyllic is actually not. Jean Stafford is masterful at describing life, both on the ranch and in California, but she doesn't leave out any details, including butchering animals and a really grotesque incident of self-harm. The characters are really well-drawn, but none of them are particularly likable; however, I absolutely had to keep reading to the ending which left me gobsmacked and very unsettled. My edition had a forward by Stafford with a major spoiler so I should have seen it coming -- I was still rather shocked but if you want to be completely surprised, I'd skip it.

Having read the forward, I had an overwhelming sense of dread. It actually reminded me a bit of the film The Power of the Dog, -- not so much the plot, but they're both Westerns set in the 1920s with dark undertones. I actually saw it the theater a few months ago and it's a great movie but it made me deeply uncomfortable because I knew something dreadful was going to happen. If that is the type of story that puts you off, I would probably not read The Mountain Lion. I gave it four stars on Goodreads (there is some racism besides the disturbing parts) but I don't think I would read it again. 

From the 1983 edition. This cover is SO 1980s!

Jean Stafford won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for her Collected Short Stories, and a couple of other novels. I'm not sure if they're as dark as The Mountain Lion but her writing is very good and at some point after I've recovered from this one I might look for them later.

This is my fifth book for the TBR Pile Challenge.

Temptation by Janos Szekely

The cover artwork is a detail from The Morphinist by Janos Vazary (1930)

I'm trying really hard to refrain from buying books, but inevitably birthdays and other gift-giving holidays occur, so what can one do? My most recent bookish gift was Temptation by Janos Szekely, an NYRB reprint of a 1946 novel newly translated from the Hungarian. Normally new-to-me books get shoved to the bottom of the TBR pile, where they sit, contributing to my unread-book guilt. But I'd signed up for the European Reading Challenge and this one fit the bill perfectly. I read the first few pages and was instantly hooked. 

This is the story of Bela R., a young Hungarian peasant boy born into rural poverty in 1913, after his sixteen-year-old mother Anna has a one-night stand with a charismatic sailor during a church festival. At the end of the night the charming sailor disappears, leaving her alone to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. After little Bela is born, Anna goes to the city to work as a wet nurse, and later a maid, leaving him in the care of Rozi, a former prostitute who now runs a sort of foster home for illegitimate children. It's a tough upbringing because Rozi basically hands out food and favors to the kids based on how much their mothers can pay, and Anna is always struggling, so Bela is always hungry, for food as well as love and affection -- Bela is literally young, scrappy and hungry.

Bela grows up as a tough kid, but he's smart and longs to go to school. Rozi refuses, forcing him to stay home and work until Bela realizes she's breaking the law. The village schoolmaster sees that Bela is smart and gives him a lot of tough love. Eventually, Bela rejoins his mother in Budapest at the age of fourteen, where they live in a tenement shared with a prostitute, barely making ends meet. Here's a wonderful quote describing the first meal his mother cooks for him after they're finally reunited:

I started sweating, I ate so hard. My God what a szekelygulyas that was! Pools of soured cream floated on top, the soft tenderloin melted in my mouth, and the cabbage -- Lord, what cabbage! You could tell my mother had cooked it that morning, or perhaps even the night before, because only when you cook it twice can cabbage be that good. I was moved: for the rich, food only goes to their stomachs, but for the poor-- it goes to their hearts.

There are a lot of food descriptions in this book, which I always love. (Obviously, food's pretty important when you don't get enough of it.) Anna gets Bela a job as a bellboy in a fancy downtown hotel on the Danube. The first year or so he doesn't even make any money, as they work for tips only and he normally works in the elevator. Eventually, a chance encounter with a rich woman's dog changes his life, and he becomes the designated dog-walker and works his way up the ladder -- and into her bed. Bela also meets Patsy, a rich Hungarian-American girl vacationing in Budapest, and longs to leave Hungary and move to New York.

Love this cover from the British edition

Meanwhile, Bela's family is always on the verge of bankruptcy, staving off hunger and the greedy Hausmeister, the building superintendent who's constantly threatening the tenants with eviction. Bela is also struggling with his conscience about the favors he receives from his wealthy lover while he sees the poverty surrounding him. There are few options for the thousands of poor workers faced with unemployment in the late 1920s, and it's obvious to the reader how fascism begins to take hold, and the inevitable rise of the Nazi party. 

Here, peace was always more dangerous than war, because the bomb has yet to be invented that can do as much damage as poverty itself.

I loved this book. It's nearly 700 pages long and I raced through it in less than a week. I can't compare this to the original Hungarian, so I don't know if it's Szekely's original style or the translation, but I found this really easy to read, almost as if I was sitting in pub with Bela and he was telling me his life story. I found myself breathlessly awaiting the next page, laughing and crying with Bela, outraged at the injustices he faced and feeling his despair as he didn't know how to take care of his mother and find their next meal and pay the rent. I was aghast at the struggles he faced, and I only wish the story were longer. It ends when he's seventeen and I wish I knew what happened to him next. Bela's character was so real to me. According to Wikipedia this is a semi-autobiographical novel, though Szekely was born in 1901. He did leave Budapest as a young man and ended up as a screenwriter in Berlin, then moved to Hollywood in 1934, where he was eventually won for an Oscar for the 1940 film Arise, My Love. Sadly, Szekely only wrote two novels, and this is the only one translated into English. Temptation was also adapted into a Hungarian film in 1977, but I don't think it's available on DVD. 

I also loved reading about his life in Budapest. I was lucky enough to travel there for a long weekend a couple of years ago, but I never got around to posting any photos. This review is pretty long already, so hopefully I'll add some next week. Temptation is definitely one of my top reads this year and now I'm inspired to read more Hungarian fiction. Bloggers, do you have any recommendations? I still have We Were Counted by Miklos Banffy (checked out from the library more than three months ago, still unread); and I've also heard great things about Magda Szabo, several of her books are reprinted by NYRB Classics and are available as ebooks from my library.

I'm counting this as my Classic in Translation for the Back to the Classics Challenge and for my Hungarian selection for the European Reading Challenge.  It also counts toward the Big Book Summer Challenge. 

Skylark by Dezso Kostolanyi

I'm a big fan of NYRB Classics -- they are really attractive and I'm always a fan of re-discovered classics. Skylark by Deszo Kostolanyi is one that had been on my to-read list for several years, and I was determined to read it this year because it dovetailed perfectly with the European Reading Challenge. 

Written in 1924 but set just before the turn of the century, Skylark is the story of a family living in a small Austro-Hungarian town called Sarszeg (inspired by Kostolanyi's own hometown of Szabadka, in which is now present-day Serbia). It's a dead-end place where not much happens. The Akos family consists of a husband and wife, Akos and Antonia, and their 35-year old spinster daughter, nicknamed Skylark. Akos is in his late fifties and is retired, spending much of his time researching ancient lineages and family histories. Skylark does most of the cooking and housework, and basically life revolves around her. Life is dull and routine, but one week in late summer 1899, Skylark takes the train to visit family for a week, and Akos and Antonia are left on their own.

This is another one of those book in which not much happens -- and yet, everything happens. Without Skylark, Akos and Antonia do things they haven't done in years. They eat out in restaurants and attend a performance in the theater, which never happens when Skylark is around, since she her cooking is better than any restaurant meal. Akos visits his gentleman's club, drinks, smokes cigars, and plays cards with his cronies -- before, Skylark wouldn't have approved.  Antonia plays the piano, which has barely been touched in years, since Skylark never really took to playing.

This description makes it sound like Skylark is some kind of tyrant, but I don't think she is. Kostolanyi is up-front about the fact that Skylark is a spinster because she's unattractive, which is why she's never married. While she's away from her parents, all three of them face some painful truths about themselves and their relationship, and I really found it rather sad, especially because that was an era when women had so few choices. Skylark is educated and hardworking, and in another time, she could have had a career -- even 15 years later, she could have been a nurse and served during WWI.

The publisher described this book as magical but I just found it really sad.

I'm counting this as my Hungarian read for the European Reading Challenge.

The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

After a recent viewing of The Grand Budapest Hotel (which I LOVED -- who knew Ralph Fiennes was hilarious?) I was searching the internet for background of the movie.  I was delighted to read that director Wes Anderson was inspired by the novels of Stefan Zweig.  I had an unread copy of The Post-Office Girl on my TBR shelves, so it seemed serendipitous, so I put it in my carry-on bag for my recent European vacation (OK, Austria is not the same as Italy, but I just wasn't in the mood for I, Claudius.)

I've not always had good luck with NYRB Classics -- sometimes I love them, and last year, I bought two that I disliked so much, I returned them the same day I bought them.  But The Post-Office Girl is a real keeper.

The story begins with the eponymous post-office girl, Christine, a young twentysomething girl whose youth is being wasted in a tiny Austrian town after the Great War.  She's eking out a pretty miserable existence, caring for her ailing mother and just scraping by, since her father lost his entire business during the war years.  Her dull life takes an exciting turn when, out of the blue, she receives a telegraph transmission at the post office that is actually for her, which has never happened before.  Apparently, she has an aunt who ran off to America years before.  She's now visiting Europe with her wealthy husband, and wants to reconnect with the family.  Christine's mother is too ill, so instead, Christine uses some vacation time to visit her in an Alpine resort town, and her life is changed forever.

At first, this is like an amazing Cinderella story.  Christine blossoms in the mountain air, her aunt buys her clothes and gives her a makeover, and she's swept up in to the hotel society.  But naturally, it's all too good to be true, and after a series of misunderstandings, Christine's aunt drops her and she's plunged back into her dismal everyday world, stunned.  Now that she's experienced a taste of the good life, nothing in her tiny provincial time will ever satisfy her.

In the second portion of the book, Christine tries to change her life, and meets a disillusioned war veteran who is bitter and just as dissatisfied as she is.  Without giving away any more of the story, I'll just say that the story took a turn that I didn't expect at all.  

I loved this book.  Christine and the other characters were so real, and I thought it was a really interesting portrait of life between the wars for regular people.  Most of the inter-war books I've read have been English, and life probably turned out very differently for other Europeans in that time period.

My one complaint about this book is that it ends abruptly -- it seemed so unfinished, like there was a third portion that was missing.  After reading it, I found out that the novel was published posthumously, in 1982.  Stefan Zweig was a very famous writer during the 1920s and 1930s.  During World War II, he was exiled by the Nazis, and eventually settled in Brazil.  Like Christine, he became disillusioned and depressed, and he and his second wife committed suicide in 1942.  I'm not sure if the novel ends that way deliberately.

Anyway, I loved this book and now I'm intrigued and want to read more of the works of Stefan Zweig.  I'm counting this as my Classic by an Author That's New To Me for the Back to the Classics Challenge.   (I was thinking about counting as my Classic in Translation, but I will probably read a Zola novel for that one).

Has anyone else read anything by Stefan Zweig?  Which of his books should I read next?  And who loved The Grand Budapest Hotel as much as I did?

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

Short stories collections are really hard to write about.  Many people dislike short stories; my theory is that most people, once they get invested in characters and settings, want the stories to continue.  To me, a short story is a just a moment captured in time with these characters, an introduction.  Sometimes as a reader I want more.  

Edith Wharton is one of those rare writers that was equally good at writing both short stories and full-length novels.  Some of her novels are among my favorites; as are some of her short stories.  This collection, published by NYRB Classics, features twenty stories that are all set in New York, or includes characters that are New Yorkers.  

Some of her stories are sad, some are extremely funny.  Many of them are deliciously ironic, and she was especially good at ghost stories.  This collection includes all of these, and are selected from those published at beginning of her career to works published near the end.  It begins with "Mrs. Manstey's View," her very first published short story, and ends with "Roman Fever," from her last short story collection.  

"Roman Fever" is possibly Wharton's most famous short story and one of my personal favorites.  This was one in the collection I had actually read before, but I never get tired of it.  It's the story of two New York society ladies who meet unexpectedly while in Rome with their grown daughters.  They sit on the terrace of restaurant, admiring the view, and the reader learns the history of their complicated relationship.  The ending is deliciously ironic, and I'll say no more.  It's quite short so if you have a few minutes do click on the link and read it -- tell me in the comments if you liked it, but don't give the ending away!!

My other favorites in the collection are mostly ironic or funny.  They include "Expiation," an amusing tale about writers in the same family; "Diagnosis," about a wealthy man who has recently discovered the truth about his illness; and "The Pomegranate Seed," which is one of the ghost stories.   The only one I really didn't care for was "The Long Run," which, as the name implies, seemed to go on forever. 

Unfortunately, this collection does not include "Xingu," my other favorite of her stories, about a pretentious group of women who attend a "Lunch Club" to become more cultured.  I reread the story today before I finished this posting, and I suppose it wasn't included because it really doesn't have a New York connection.  It's still really funny though, and definitely worth reading.  Many of Wharton's works are available free online through Project Gutenberg, so you can just click on the links and start reading if you're curious.  They're really worth trying, even if you're not willing to tackle a 450 page book with twenty stories in it.  

This book counts toward my Back to the Classics Challenge and is one of the alternate reads for my TBR Pile Challenge. 

My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley

So, the other day, I had just finished Nella Last's War, which was kind of a tough read for me.  I was looking through my bookshelves for something that would be different, not too heavy, and preferably something that would fulfill one of my challenges.  Something short would be ideal.  So I was looking through my shelf with NYRB classics (mostly unread) when I happened to gaze upon My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley.  Aha!  Just the thing -- short, nonfiction, and I could count it as my "classic featuring an animal" in the Back to the Classics Challenge.  Plus it was an NYRB that had been sitting on the shelves for over a year, since I went to New York and visited the amazing Strand Bookstore.  It sounded perfect.

However, This book was not what I expected, to say the least.  J. R. Ackerley was an excellent writer, and from the publisher's description, I expected it to be a lovely memoir of a man and his beloved dog.  I am an enormous dog lover, so I was looking forward of anecdotes and funny stories about the dog Tulip -- perhaps stories of things the dog did and shouldn't have done, things she shouldn't have eaten, people they met on walks, that sort of thing.

Well.  It started out a bit like that, with a chapter about the world's nicest lady veterinarian (this was first published in the 1950s, so I expected it to be a product of its times), but then the book progressed into a very detailed description of Tulip's bodily functions.  The second chapter is entitled, "Liquids and Solids" so I really don't need to explain much more.

The remainder of the book, which is not very long, continues with more doggy bodily functions -- specifically, reproduction.  In great detail.  More than 100 pages about Tulip reproducing, or attempting to; that is, finding the proper mate for Tulip, how it all works, how difficult it is for things to happen naturally -- I'm not going to go into further detail, but let me just say it was waaaay too much information.  Seriously, I was beginning to think I was reading 50 Shades of Greyhounds. (Okay, Tulip is German Shepherd, but you get the idea.) I did finish the book to see how it ended, but I really did not need to know the intimate details of Tulip's sex life.  There.  I've said it.

Honestly, it seemed like Ackerley was obsessed with Tulip's sex life.  At the very end of the book, it occurred to me that maybe he wanted Tulip to be fulfilled in a way that he wasn't.  Ackerley was openly gay, living in mid-century Great Britain, and the Sexual Offenses Act which de-criminalized homosexuality iwasn't passed until 1967, the year Ackerely died.  Please believe me, I'm not criticizing Ackerley personally or his love for Tulip, but this book just wasn't what I expected.  It makes me wonder why the publisher's descriptions of the book are so vague.

Ackerley wrote several other memoirs, all available as NYRB Classics, but I'm not sure after My Dog Tulip that I'm particularly interested in reading any of them.  Hindoo Holiday sounds intriguing but I'm a bit put off by Ackerley at the moment.  Has anyone else read anything by Ackerley?  What did you think?

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

I'm very happy to have finished this book.  Not only is it a book off my own TBR shelves, it's also an NYRB Classic (of which I have a healthy stack, all unread) but I've seen it all around the blogosphere and it seems to be universally liked.  I did like it but it really wasn't what I expected at all.

The Fountain Overflows was described by someone as Jane Austen-ish, but I personally wouldn't make that comparison at all.  In a nutshell, it's the story of the Aubreys, a family living in genteel poverty in London around the turn of the century, told in the first person by Rose, one of the four children.  Their father, Mr. Piers Aubrey, is a brilliant writer, but he has trouble holding down jobs and managing the family's money; specifically, he has a weakness for the stock market and the family is forced to make a lot of sacrifices.  Their mother was once a brilliant pianist who gave up her career when she got married, and she's doing her best to train her children to be musicians as well.  Unfortunately only two of her children seem to have inherited her musical ability and the necessary discipline.  The oldest daughter, Cordelia, is convinced she's a talented violinist, but the rest of the family believe she's really a hack with no artistry, and they're always sneering at her.

There's really no plot to speak of in this book, it's basically the story of Rose's childhood, told in little vignettes about various incidents in her life.  Some of them are kind of mysterious or a little creepy -- there are a poltergeist, a possibly abusive husband, an accused murderess in the supporting cast -- but most of it is a little sad.  Their mother is obsessed with making them into good musicians, their father is brilliant but hopelessly irresponsible.  It's sort of like I Capture the Castle, which I love, and like the father in that book, I just want to shake him and tell him to snap out of it and take care of his family.

It is an entertaining story, though I did find it a rather dense read.  It's about 400 pages, yet in my edition, an NYRB classic, the margins are very narrow and the print is fairly small.  It's 17 chapters but they took awhile.  It was published in 1956, but the style of writing made it seem older, and I guess that made it a slower read as well.  It seemed to have been written around the turn of the century, not just set in that era.  I guess this would be a good candidate for the Slow Books Manifesto.

Anyway, here's a sample:

"Papa was always happy when he was engaged in certain activities.  Of these the one which gave him greatest pleasure was his lifelong wrestling match with money.  He was infatuated with it though he could not get on good terms with it.  He felt towards is as a man of his type might have felt towards a gipsy mistress, he loved it and hated it, he wanted hugely to possess it and then drove it away, so that he nearly perished of his need for it.  But he knew almost as great joy if he were conducting a campaign  against some social injustice, particularly if it were the rights of property that had been dealt with unjustly."


Maybe it's just me, but that seems much more like a Victorian novel or maybe Edwardian.  The writing was very good and I liked the characters, but it isn't a book I could rush through.  But I'm happy to have read it and look forward to reading West's The Return of the Soldier, which is another of my Classics Club selections.  This book also counts toward my TBR Pile Challenge, so I'm happy about that too.  

A Small Stack of NYRB Classics

Since reading and loving The Slaves of Solitude this past week, I was motivated to take a look at all the other NYRB Classics I have hanging around my shelves.  A few months ago I wanted to participate in an NYRB Reading Week, but sadly I just didn't have time.  However, Thomas from My Porch posted a striking photo from his collection that inspired me to take this:

The photo is a little fuzzy, so here's the list from top to bottom:  

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Westcott

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

Stoner by John Williams

The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier

My stack isn't nearly as impressive as Thomas', but there's still plenty to choose from -- so far, I've only finished one from the stack, Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier.  I have a vacation coming up in a couple of weeks, and I'm already thinking about which books to pack in my carry-on.  Right now I'm leaning towards The Summer Book and The Dud Avocado.  Any suggestions?  Which of these would be best for a vacation read? 

The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton

It seems like it's been forever since I posted a book review -- okay, only ten days.  I have just felt really uninspired lately.  I suppose reading two massive Victorian books back to back was a bad idea -- what was I thinking, tackling Dombey and Son right before I was supposed to read Daniel Deronda for a book group discussion??  Crazy!  (And no surprise -- Daniel Deronda is still unfinished).

Something shorter was just the thing.  My choice was The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton, which came highly recommended by Simon at Stuck in a Book.  And what a great choice!  This is one of those books that make me glad to be a blogger -- it's one of those books of which I would like to buy multiple copies, so I can hand them out to friends (or random strangers) and say "Read this -- right now!!"

Here's the setup:  It's set in England in 1944, in Thames Lockdon, a London suburb, and the action is centered around the residents of a boarding house called the Rosamund Tea Rooms.  The main character is Miss Roach, a 39-year-old spinster, formerly a schoolmistress, who is still working at a publishing company in London since she was bombed out of her home.  Due to the housing crisis, she's forced to live in this rundown boardinghouse with some depressing people.

The most notorious of her fellow residents is Mr. Thwaites, a nasty, bullying retiree of about sixty.  Miss Roach is assigned a seat in the dining room at the same table as Mr. Thwaites, who manages to take the most innocent conversation and turn it into something unpleasant.  Unfortunately, Miss Roach is his favorite target, and either due to politeness or reticence, nobody ever seems to stand up to Mr. Thwaites and put him in his place.

Miss Roach hopes that things will turn around after she suggests the Rosamund Tea Rooms to her acquaintance Vicki Kugelmann, a German emigre with a lot of spunk.  She hopes that Miss Kugelmann's presence will change the dynamic of the boarding house.  And it does, but unfortunately not for the better, of course.  Everything goes absolutely wrong, and it began to get even more interesting.

This book reminds me a bit of Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, though it has a more melancholy undertone.  It's full of wry observations like Pym, but also a little like Jane Austen.  I'm also finding it almost satirical in parts.  Here's a passage describing the detestable Mr. Thwaites, who simply lives to bully the other residents at the boarding house:


". . . Mr. Thwaites had on fine mornings no one to boom at in the Rosamond Tea Rooms, and spent much of the time writing embittered letters in the Lounge.  These, after he had put on his overcoat and cap, he took round to the Post Office and posted in the most acid way.  He passed pillar-boxes on the way, but did not trust them, as not going to the root of the matter.


After this he would return to the Rosamund Tea Rooms, where he would prowl restlessly, and whence he would, perhaps, make one or two rapid, tigerish excursions into the town, to make an enquiry, to buy something, or to change a book -- invariably tying the assistants into knots, and, in the ironical pose of a stupid man, saying he was so sorry, no doubt it was his fault, entirely."

Mr. Thwaites is one of the most memorable characters I've read about this year.  For literary villains, he's right up there with Harold Skimpole from Bleak House or Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice -- not evil, but someone you'd just love to throttle.  From the moment this character was introduced, I could not wait for him to get his comeuppance.  He was rather a Dickensian character now that I think about it.

This is another of those great books in which technically, not much happens.  However, it's a great character study, and I loved the dynamics of the people involved.  These people are trapped in their circumstances by the war -- they can't find new homes, they can hardly go out at night because of the blackout, and supplies are short, except for what seems an endless supply of alcohol.  Unhappy people and drinking seems like a recipe for trouble.  I could not put the book down because I was so intrigued at how everything would play out -- which it did, in a highly satisfying manner.