The Winds of Morning – H. L. Davis
This is the third novel I’ve read by Davis, and his strengths are consistent. When his characters talk (and do they talk!), their voices have an earthy vigor. His descriptions of the Northwest of the 1920s, and of the tools men use in their daily work, have an indisputable authenticity. One of those tools are horses, and this book can serve as a primer on equine psychology. Two men are moving a herd to a new location, and there’s a murder mystery hanging over the affair. Amos is the first person narrator, but we learn little of what makes this reticent man act and feel as he does. He’s an observer, and it’s his companion on the trip – an old man named Hendricks – that he observes most closely. Hendricks has made mistakes in his past (undisclosed ones), and as a result has adopted a strict code of conduct; he always sees a choice, even in minor matters, as to what’s the right thing to do. Both men sense that there’s something awry in the world – their personal worlds and the larger one – and they’re trying to find ways to deal with it. Nature, though largely conquered and defiled by man, can still inflict suffering, but a more formidable problem is presented by people. Amos and Hendricks instinctively respond to others with suspicion: most likely they’re deceptive and possibly dangerous. As for women, Amos is deeply cynical, and the love story involving a girl named Calanthe moves in fits and starts. The same can be said for the plot in general. Davis is at ease describing a river crossing, or an incidental conversation, or a landscape, but when it comes to the entanglements of human emotions he becomes grudgingly obscure. Regarding the murder, its never made clear who did what to whom, and why. And though Hendrick’s source of guilt is revealed, it’s handled in an offhand way. As for Amos and Calanthe, Davis can’t, at the end, bring himself to settle for us, in simple terms, if there’s just a possibility of happiness for them.

Under the Net – Iris Murdock
This was included in the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels written in the English language in the 20th Century. I struggled to the halfway point (page 127) just so I could ask, in this review, “Why?” Murdock tries for a lively lark (and the effort is evident) by having the main character run here and there in frantic pursuit of this and that, with a host of eccentric people crowding their way into the loose-ended plot. Even the prose strains for animation: “At that very moment the telephone rang. My heart sprang within me and fell like a bird striking a window pane. I started to my feet. I had not the slightest doubt that the caller was Hugo. I looked at the phone as if it had been a rattlesnake.” (Two animal similes?) Or Jake’s reactions while eavesdropping: “I must hear more, I thought, with my eyes popping out.” “I was seized forthwith by a convulsive desire to laugh, and had to prevent myself by covering my mouth violently.” This book was a mistake – rollicking comedy was not Murdock’s thing. But it’s an amateurish mistake. And can’t mistakes show talent? The main character is no more than a prop; I never for a minute believed in Jake, his actions, his feelings. This book doesn’t belong on any “best” list. So why is it there?

The Revolt of the Angels - Anatole France (French)
Guardian angels, each assigned to a human, abide on earth and are privy to modern (early 20th Century) learning. Through their reading of scientific texts, they conclude that the bible is a conglomeration of falsehoods, and that God is a tyrannical fraud. The author doesn’t seem to be troubled by the contradiction in his premise. He has his rebellious angels express atheistic views, but their very existence – and that of the God they want to overthrow – is confirmation that a spiritual world exists. When they begin plans to wage war on heaven (with the help of a mysterious arsenal of bombs), I felt I was reading a book for kids, and I quit. The points France makes – that the dominance of Christianity brought on much suffering, that it’s rampant with hypocrisy, etc. – were surely not groundbreaking even in 1914. He seems to believe that the pre-Christian pagan worshipers – the Greeks especially – were on the right track; if humans are to worship anything, why not Bacchus and Venus? The aspect of the novel that deals with humans has interesting moments, but the angels are duds, every one of them. Despite how misconceived this undertaking was, I got the impression that the seventy-year-old author was having a fine time expounding his views.

Asymmetry – Lisa Halliday
Under the photo of the young woman on the back cover we’re informed that this debut novel won the Whiting Award, and that Lisa Halliday was born in Medfield, Massachusetts and currently lives in Milan, Italy. The book came to my attention when, in a radio interview, Ms. Halliday talked of her real-life affair with Philip Roth; it took place some sixteen years ago, when she was in her twenties and he was in his seventies. In the first part of Asymmetry, entitled “Folly,” a young woman (Alice) recounts her affair with a much older Famous Author (Ezra Blazer). In the interview Halliday denied that this section was autobiographical. Really? I read the book in order to get the inside scoop on Roth, and surely Halliday (and Simon and Schuster) were aware that others will do the same. The second section, “Madness,” veers off into an entirely different sphere: it deals with the problems in the Middle East and the first person narrator is a Muslim man. This novel (or, rather, two novellas) is a polished, intelligent work, but I constantly found myself questioning what was behind the author’s decisions. This led me to try to sort out, in simple terms, exactly what Halliday did and what she didn’t do. You can find my conclusions at “Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry” at my Tapping on the Wall blog.

Memories of a Catholic Childhood – Mary McCarthy

I first read “Yonder Peasant, Who Is He?” in Cast a Cold Eye, McCarthy’s 1950 short story collection. It reappears as the lead-off story in these memories (which came out seven years later). In it she dissects the mentality that allowed her paternal grandparents to be blithely indifferent to the miserable existence she and her brothers endured after their parents’ death. “Dissects” is the correct word: emotions are presented in a detached, analytical way, and sometimes with a wry humor. This is true even in the next piece, in which she describes the nature of their misery at the hands of the brutish uncle they were sent to live with. Uncle Myers is the only person in the book who comes across as evil. McCarthy isn’t a condemner; she sees people as too complex to be categorized as good or bad. The stories follow her life chronologically; when her well-to-do maternal grandfather takes her to live in Seattle she begins to live in privileged circumstances. She attends school at a Sacred Heart convent; though Catholicism is an influence, early on she becomes a non-believer. My favorite piece in the collection is the final one, “Ask Me No Questions,” in which McCarthy finally tackles (after the woman’s death) her supremely vain maternal grandmother. The smooth and precise prose never flags, but when we move into McCarthy’s mid-teens I got the sense that she was at a loss for material. Actually, these memories are meager; without the supplement of italicized addendum (which I skimmed) the book would come to less than two hundred pages. I can’t say that I grew fond of Mary, but I don’t believe she was asking that of me. Respect for her intelligence would mean more to her, and that I can grant her.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard – Anatole France (French)

This novel takes the form of a diary of a man in his seventies (and moves into his eighties). Sylvestre Bonnard is a bachelor whose house is filled with books – he lives in a “City of Books.” He has an elderly housekeeper and a cat named Hamilcar, to whom he talks. He is, actually, talking to the reader throughout the novel – a sense of intimacy is established on the first page and never wanes. My acquaintanceship with this unique individual was a most enjoyable one. The novel has a sentimental strain that may be old-fashioned, but it’s appropriate to the character of Bonnard; there are soft-hearted people like him. The first part of the book is devoted to a search for a precious manuscript, but that subject is dropped entirely. The story then concerns itself with the young daughter of a deceased woman whom Bonnard loved in his youth (a love that was unrequited; she married another). Paris is a big city, and how likely would it be for him to cross paths with someone he didn’t even know existed? But I found these “faults” to be irrelevant; the voice dominating the novel kept me out of a fault-finding mood. Jeanne is in need of  help; she’s staying at a school where she’s a charity case and has been relegated to the status and duties of a servant. Bonnard – who has led a sheltered a life among his books – sees for the first time a manifestation of evil in the person of the headmistress. She informs Bonnard that Jeanne must be trained in the struggle of life, and is to learn that she can’t just amuse herself and do what she pleases. His response: “One comes into this world to enjoy what is beautiful and what is good, and to do what one pleases, when the things one wants to do are noble, intelligent and generous.” He rescues Jeanne, and to provide for her dowry he decides to sell his book collection; the books gave him pleasure, but they have no real value. (His “crime” is robbing Jeanne by secreting some volumes aside from the sale.) As for his age and his solitary existence, it’s not in his nature to complain or to harbor regrets about what he doesn’t have. He accepts, and does so with benevolence and humor. The simple act of acceptance is shown to have its rightful place as one of the keys to contentment. Bonnard has reached the age when he has observations to make about Life (such as the one quoted above), and I found wisdom from a man who professes to have no wisdom. That Anatole France was thirty-eight when he created his “old-book man” is remarkable, as is the fact that this was his first novel. Years ago I read his Penguin Island and thought it a wonder, yet I didn’t pursue other works by him. I succumbed to the fact that France (even though he won the Nobel Prize) is out of vogue. Who even talks of this contemporary of Flaubert? Sylvestre Bonnard might say, with a shrug and a smile, thus are the vagaries of fame.

Transparent Things – Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov’s novels can be divided into three categories. Two of the categories are similar in that both have believable characters involved in an intelligible plot; what separates them is that some succeed in telling a good story and some don’t. Generally speaking, the simpler the plot, the more successful the story. The third category consists of works that are unintelligible. Though Lolita has its difficulties, it’s certainly not impenetrable. After that novel, Nabokov was finally freed of money worries and he no longer seemed to care about the reader (and so we get Ada). Transparent Things belongs in the third category; it delves into arcane matters in a prose that often seems like a verbal labyrinth. The characters that occasionally emerge from these encumbrances are unreal and act with a perverse randomness. For all his vast intelligence, why couldn’t Nabokov perceive how boring and foolish this is? At any rate, my long association with him ends here, on this down note: I’ve now read (or attempted to read) all of his novels. I wish I had taken his final two in chronological order. Look at the Harlequins! (the last to be published in his lifetime) would have been a much more fitting goodbye to an author who gave me so much pleasure.

Found, Lost, Found – J. B. Priestley

Priestley was a hugely productive writer – I counted thirty novels in the list of his works, and there were equally long numbers of plays, essays, autobiographies and criticism. This novella was published when he was in his eighties, but it has the feel of something done by a young man. I have a hunch it was a discarded manuscript that the elderly writer discovered in a drawer and found pleasing. Premise: Tom drinks a lot of gin (why he chooses to float through life in a perpetual state of inebriation is not made clear); he and Kate meet and soon (too soon) fall in love. She leaves London for an undisclosed location, challenging Tom to find her; she wants to test his commitment to their relationship. The episodes involved in his search make up the bulk of the novel. They’re played as comic set pieces; trouble is, they’re not funny. I became awfully annoyed with Tom the inventive wit (he likes to make up names for himself such as J. Carlton Mistletoe and Theodore A. Buscastle). So I skipped to the end: he finds her. But the larger question for me is why I’m having such a hard time finding a good book to read. I only review those that I get halfway through, so you don’t know about all the ones (sometimes six in a row) I can’t tolerate for that long. Even having to write about this bit of fluff has put me in a bad mood.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Forester had a considerable gift for narrative. He could move a novel along, engross the reader. How is this done? By writing clearly and simply, being able to recognize what’s interesting and leaving out boring filler; and, most important, by having a story to tell and characters that are engaging. Easy? Hardly. What raises this novel above a mere page-turner is that it shows the development of a unique individual. In the beginning Horatio Hornblower comes aboard ship, an unsure boy of sixteen. But in the first chapter he makes a drastic decision that he’ll stick to with iron resolve. I found this a bit hard to accept until I realized that this boy is unlike others. At the end of the book he’s a strong, confident man who will go far in his naval career – I fully believed in him and his abilities. Forester also describes the tremendous demands made on men who go to sea, especially those in command; it’s a hard, often brutal life. However, I won’t be following Horatio from Midshipman to Admiral; despite the virtues of this first installment in the series, the subject matter (nautical matters, naval warfare) holds little interest for me. Which is an added tribute to Forester’s writing, because I thoroughly enjoyed this opening salvo.

The Blush - Elizabeth Taylor
These are “nothing” stories (except for “The Letter-Writers,” which confirms that Taylor is capable of excellent work). When you finish a “nothing” story you wonder why you spent time reading something so insubstantial and why the author spent time writing it. Taylor may have been trying to capture the small but significant moment. But the significance wasn’t there, so the story was merely small. However, I don’t want to seem dismissive of the author of Angel and Mrs. Palfrey of the Claremont. She’s just not at her best in this collection.

The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald has a sketchy style. She puts down on paper only the bare minimum needed to tell her story, and she moves from scene to scene without much fuss. A sketchy style can work if the author selects what’s meaningful; that which matters can then emerge. But little emerged for me, and not even the main character mattered. I only read half of this slim novella.

Penguin Island - Anatole France (French)
This isn’t a novel. It’s a unique and imaginatively conceived study of the progress of man, starting from his primitive beginnings. The word “progress” is meant ironically. Irony, cynicism, wit – all are used with remarkable skill. The author has assembled a miscellany that’s made whole by an insight into human weaknesses (and thus the weaknesses of society). France had no hope that things would change, man being what he is. Time has proved him to be right. He wrote Penguin Island in 1908; this date is striking because what he describes applies directly to our world today. There’s no point in trying to explain the book’s structure or content; it defies explanation. It is what it is: a monument to clear-sightedness. It should be read by all thinking people. *