The Folks That Live on the Hill – Kingsley Amis
To devote the first chapter to a character who will make only a few brief appearances for the rest of the novel raises questions. To construct sentences in which some integral part is left out, so that you can’t follow the meaning, makes one wonder (example: “If there could ever have been truly said to be more of something where something came from, the two at present conversing had run across it”). Adding to my questioning and wondering was a disjointed plot and a cast of oddballs who are barely functioning (or, in the case of Fiona, aren’t functioning at all). Yet when the prose wasn’t making me feel dumb (which wasn’t that often) it was lively, and after I accepted the idiosyncratic characters I found their predicaments to be interesting and often funny. Harry Caldecote emerges as the linchpin of the novel. Harry is cynical about people, and he would deny that kindness motivates him in helping others. Those who come to him needing something – money, a place to stay, a bit of advice – annoy and sometimes anger him, but he gives aid out of a sense of responsibility (which he feels is misguided). Harry is elderly, retired, twice-divorced, presently living with his widowed sister, yet he’s not a sad figure. He and his sister share a quiet, unobtrusive love, and he still finds life enjoyable. One of his pleasures is alcohol – he’s seldom without a drink in his hand, though he’s never drunk – and another is a sharp mind which enables him to view (and navigate safely through) the shambles around him. Amis ends things on fairytale note. He grants all the major characters what they wish for – even pitiful, degraded Fiona has regained her senses – and people who had been depicted throughout in a negative way are treated with kindly insight. After presenting much of the dark side of life, the sixty-six year old author chose to let in the light.

The Lost City of the Monkey God – Douglas Preston
This true story of a search for a pre-Columbian “White City” in the midst of the Honduran rain forest didn’t provide the thrills its lurid title led me to expect. There’s too much background material; we’re past the hundred page mark before Preston sets foot on land. And when we’re at the site, it’s a letdown. The members of the expedition find evidence of what was once a large and flourishing civilization, but it’s been so over-run by vegetation that only experts can determine that anything had been there. In other words, it’s not exactly like breaking into King Tut’s tomb. Artifacts are found – pottery and statues – but the photographs provided show only three objects (why so few?). There had been a great deal of build-up about the dangers to be met in the rainforest, but Preston isn’t able to make the hardships he experiences have much impact. After he departs, he goes into theories as to what role this civilization played in the larger picture of Mesoamerican cultures, and I began skipping chapters. I resumed reading – this time with great interest – when I came to a chapter entitled “White Leprosy.” Back home the members of the expedition (including Preston) start coming down with disturbing symptoms. It turns out that they have leishmaniasis. Humans contract this disease when bitten by a blood-sucking insect that carries the leishmania parasite. Once the parasite is in the human body, the results can be horrific; also, it has developed methods of survival that make treatment very difficult. Preston’s life-or-death adventure doesn’t take place in the jungle, but at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. That said, he doesn’t make his experience of having the disease come alive. As a writer he lacks the ability to create drama; he’s good at explaining factual material, and I think he should stick to writing essays of that sort. As for leishmaniasis, I was surprised that this disease, which I had never heard of, is both ancient and prevalent throughout the world. But it’s mostly the poor that contract it. Because of this, it hasn’t received much attention (or allocation of funds for study). Preston ends with a warning: he presents the factors that could result in leishmaniasis becoming a pandemic.

The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot – Angus Wilson
I agree with what Dorothy Parker had to say of Wilson in an Esquire review (back when that magazine cared about literature): “His is a ruthless knowledge of this woman. Uncanny, you might call it.” When the story opens Meg Eliot is content with her life. After two decades of marriage she’s still in love with her husband and is loved by him; they have enough money to live a comfortable life; she has friends, she does social work. Besides contentment, she feels competent and purposeful. Then Bill is killed. In grief and despair she looks to “the dreadful, dead years ahead.” Though she recovers a shaky equilibrium, there will always be an emptiness. And there are jolts: her financial situation isn’t good; she’ll have to give up her house, she’ll have to get a job. As Meg tries to come up with practical solutions to her new circumstances – and to deal with bouts of loneliness and depression – I found her struggle to be moving. But it’s here that Wilson leaves Meg and switches to another point-of-view, that of her brother David. He will occupy half the book, and I just wasn’t interested in him and his problems. He’s very cerebral, and one has to follow his deep analyses of states of mind; I felt I was reading Henry James (something that was present in the Meg section, but not in so laborious a form). We return to the immediacy of being in Meg’s mind – and the vitality returns to the novel – but again we leave her, never to return. She remains a character, but only in her words and actions as filtered through the perspective of David (whose generosity provides her with too simple a way out of her troubles). On the last page all we get of Meg is a brief excerpt of a letter she writes to David. To abandon the woman he had a “ruthless knowledge of” is a major mistake by Wilson. I wonder if Dorothy Parker, in her full review, hit on this flaw.

The Confidential Agent – Graham Greene
This is what Greene termed “an entertainment” (as opposed to his “serious” work), so one could expect that he would let up a bit on the gloom and doom. No such luck. Though he put a lot of effort into the prose, the scenes and the characterizations, the plot involves espionage, and here he’s unforgivably sloppy. H. – the confidential agent – is sent to London by his government (which is at war with rebels) to work out a deal for a critical supply of coal. Why they selected such a ninny is, for starters, baffling. H. has very important papers that authorize him to carry out his mission; for sixty pages he’s been guarding these papers with his life. When he leaves for a meeting at the house of the coal supplier, he “put the papers in the breast-pocket of his jacket and wore his overcoat fastened up to the neck. No pickpocket, he was certain, could get at them.” He enters the house, a servant asks “Coat, sir?” and he “let the manservant take his overcoat.” Later, when asked to show his papers, he finds that they’re missing; the servant had lifted them in that briefly described exchange. This feat of legerdemain is preposterous. Also preposterous is a scene in which H. breaks into a vacant apartment; before the police come knocking, he disguises himself (his most notable feature is his “heavy mustache”) by smearing shaving cream over his face. The only razor he finds is a small woman’s, and he goes to the door with that in his hand; the policeman comments on it: “Funny sort of razor you use.” H. says it’s his sister’s, the bobby leaves, and then we have, as with the papers, another magical disappearance: “He cleared the soap away from his mouth: no mustache.” That’s it? With a lady’s razor and with no preliminary clipping with scissors? I may seem to be nitpicking, but it’s incumbent for a writer working in this genre to make things plausible. And it wasn’t just incidentals that are problematic: so are all the villains that pop out of the woodwork. I stopped reading when H. is supposed to change from “The Hunted” (in the first section) to “The Hunter.” I spent a dozen pages with this now-dangerous man, and he was still dithering about.

Late Call – Angus Wilson
You’d think that an author who was knighted for his services to literature would do a better job of structuring a novel. The question of where things are headed arises in the prologue. It needed a revelatory force to warrant its length and intricacy, but when I finally realized who and what it was about it amounted to a mere over-indulgence in narration. Wilson can write well – his disconnected forays, if taken in ten page stretches, were lively enough to keep me reading. Also, in some of those stretches I connected with the main character. Sylvia Calvert is an elderly woman who retires from managing hotels and goes to live with her son and his three grown children; accompanying her is her unruly husband. What undermines Sylvia’s credibility are her inexplicable shifts in mood and attitude; in a space of twenty pages she goes from the depths of depression (immersed in “stunning misery” and “panic horror”) to being upbeat and competent. Such unsubstantiated flip-flopping (and it occurs with other characters) can only originate in the author’s wandering inclinations. Sylvia should be the focus, but Wilson shovels extraneous material into the maw of this novel like a crazed stoker. Secondary characters pop up like jack-in-the-boxes, do something outrageous or semi-insane, and then disappear. There’s a long section in which a mysterious old hunchbacked woman tells her life story to Sylvia (who, like me, is clueless as to its significance). Side-issues abound, such as her son’s efforts to save the town’s Meadow from development; her grandson is flagrantly homosexual (which nobody seems to notice) and one wonders when or if that will be an issue. Finally I concluded that my question of “Where are things going?” doesn’t apply to this haphazard book. At the close Wilson does make an effort to bring some order to the clutter. Sylvia, on one of her walks, saves a little girl’s life and is adopted by a family that immerses her in love; this plot contrivance belonged in a fairy tale. After weathering a series of crises, on the last page a chipper Sylvia contemplates a bright future of independence. A happy ending, unearned. Final note on Late Call: the author tried hard to avoid tags (“Sylvia said”); but, since the many voices aren’t that distinct, it’s often unclear who’s talking. Just another aspect adding to my annoyance.

The Precipice – Ivan Goncharov (Russian)
According to the notes on the back cover, Goncharov (the author of Oblomov) labored over twenty years on The Precipice, and the negative reception it got so embittered him that he never wrote another novel. I’m afraid this review will further his embitterment. The only major character I related to was the aunt, and this was because I admired her diligent concern with the business of running Boris’s estate. When she tries to involve him in his affairs he bluntly refuses; he has no interest in practicalities or material goods (though he lives in high style and never does a lick of work). He thinks of himself as an Artist, and though he has talent as a painter, composer and writer, it’s clear that he’ll never produce anything of substance. Mark, a social outlaw who quotes Proudhon and whose cynicism is all-embracing, refers to Boris as “half a man.” Then there’s the beautiful and mysterious Vera, who Boris falls hopelessly in love with at first sight. She steadfastly refuses to give him a grain of encouragement; all she asks is that he leave her alone. Spying and prying Boris suspects that she has a secret lover. The point at which I quit reading came when her lover’s identity is disclosed: it’s Mark. Of course it’s Mark! She certainly wouldn’t pick someone reasonable to fall in love with. In the first minutes of their encounter she accuses him of being wolfish, malicious and callous. He finds her words amusing. So did I. If he’s all these things, what attracts her to him? The overwrought depiction of tumultuous passions make this novel as dated as a “Perils of Pauline” movie (in which, come to think of it, precipices often plays a role).

The Temptation of Eileen Hughes – Brian Moore
The tension this thriller generates comes not from violence but from psychological forces in opposition. Eileen is a naive young woman who accepts favors, gifts and all-expense-paid trips from her employer and his wife. On an excursion to London she learns what’s behind the generosity: Bernard McAuley reveals his fanatical (though entirely platonic) love for her. Her rejection of him sets off a struggle of wills. While the workings of Bernard’s mind are very odd, they’re also convincing. I believed in his obsession and his sometimes frantic efforts to hold onto someone who wants no part of him. When he says “I will always love you,” these words are both sincere and creepy. His need makes him a pitiable figure; this wealthy, powerful man repeatedly demeans himself in front of Eileen. Despite the temptations (mainly money) dangled before her, Eileen’s determination to shake free never wanes, and as a result she grows into a stronger person. Mona, Bernard’s wife, turns out to be a calculating woman who, in exchange for a life of luxury, acts as an enabler for her husband. There’s a stretch when the book gets mired in plot contrivances (including an ill-conceived scene in which Eileen has her first sexual experience), but in the closing pages Moore rights the ship. Particularly effective is Eileen’s last encounter with Bernard; their meeting needed to have resonance, and it does. There’s a lesson embedded in this short novel: To be under someone else’s power is bad, but so is having power over another person.

The Wayfarer - Natsume Soseki (Japanese)
I have high regard for three Soseki novels – and then this. The plot makes no sense. Do the characters and events in the first section, “Friend,” exist simply to be dropped? Increasingly the book concerns Ichiro, the narrator’s brother; at first the issue is Ichiro’s unhappy marriage (with his wife playing a major role), but the marriage (and the wife) are dropped too. Supposedly Ichiro’s problem is very, very deep, and involves existential matters. What’s the meaning of life? – that type of thing. Ichiro is supposedly brilliant and as a result he’s unable to live simply, unquestioningly, happily. The book ends (the last section is entitled “Anguish,” and it was, for me) with a long letter which supposedly sheds light on the enigmatic and tortured Ichiro. I’m overusing “supposedly,” right? I didn’t buy any of it. Ichiro is an ugly-tempered, self-centered bore. He wasn’t worth my time. But he was worth Soseki’s time. Why? Could he be the author’s alter ego? I don’t know. But I do know that a major peril in writing about oneself is that you reveal yourself without even knowing it.

The Vicar of Bullhampton - Anthony Trollope
This novel is earthy (who could be more down-to-earth than the miller?). I believe that common people, rendered honestly and without condescension, are of great interest; so did Trollope. The novel’s central issue is “The Woman Question,”and it’s presented through two very different characters. Mary Lowther’s dilemma has to do with whether she should marry a man she doesn’t love. He’s an excellent match and various forces push her towards the marriage. Her struggle in making this decision is depicted with all the doubts and conflicts she feels. Then there’s the miller’s daughter, Carrie Brattle, who’s a “fallen woman.” Her predicament is hard for a modern reader to comprehend. Because of one misstep this unmarried girl becomes an outcast from society; even her father disowns her. I had a problem with how Trollope handled both women. Mary is given an easy way out: she meets a man who stirs real love in her. Okay, but why the Perils of Pauline-type obstacles thrown in her way (and then conveniently removed)? We’re constantly left hanging with the question of “What happens next?” (wait for the next installment to find out). As for Carrie, she clearly had Trollope’s sympathy, and he shows the hypocrisy and insensitivity of the so-called upstanding, moral people who find her soiled beyond redemption. But his portrayal of her is so flat! She’s often referred to as “poor Carrie” and she’s little more than an abjectly sad victim. Still, these problems don’t sink the ship. There’s much about the novel that makes it a success. It’s emotionally rich, engrossing and written in a smooth, reader-friendly style. Trollope shows compassion for all his many characters, even the deeply flawed. The eponymous Vicar is someone of importance: a good man who diligently tries to do the right thing. His efforts sometimes fail to achieve their goals; but he, like all the people of Bullhampton, is merely human.

Hemlock and After - Angus Wilson
I had mixed feelings as I was reading this; admiration was offset by fault-finding. Wilson is intelligent (he makes sure you know it) and his prose is graceful and inventive (though its intricacies serve mainly to impress). Then there were the people he assembles. The book is under 150 pages, but it has a list – one I had to constantly refer to – of twenty-five characters. Many are homosexual; almost all, of whatever sexual persuasion, are distasteful. Some only indulge in backbiting, but one woman is outrageously evil. Wilson has a cultured taste for the kinky, and he displays a cynicism that’s downright acidic. Kinkiness and cynicism can be entertaining – they are entertaining as presented here –but they can turn rancid. Perhaps Wilson realized this was happening to his wicked brew, because near the end he tries to impart a higher purpose to the proceedings; I was unconvinced by the sudden emphasis on self-revelation and compassion. Hemlock is a poison, and this book has a poisonous heart. Though Angus Wilson is surely an artist, is he a person whose work I want to spend more time with?