The Getting of Wisdom – Henry Handel Richardson
Henry Handel was actually Ethel Florence, and she went to a girls’ school in Melbourne, Australia similar to the one Laura attends in this novel. But, according to Germaine Greer’s Introduction, the author’s career at school was one of multiple successes, whereas Laura blunders from one social disaster to another. Upon this intense, impetuous twelve-year-old newcomer the girls wield their double-barbed cruelties of ridicule and exclusion. Laura isn’t presented in the protective garb of a sympathetic character; she’s replete with flaws and weaknesses, among which self-centeredness and neediness stand out. Her efforts to conform and to impress lead her into her worst transgression. It occurs when she stays for a few days at a minister’s house and returns to tell the girls about her romantic involvement with the handsome, married Mr. Robertson (something that has absolutely no basis in fact). This is libel, but it makes her admired, so she feels impelled to embellish her story with additional “spicy happenings.” She is “as little able as a comic actor to resist pandering to the taste of the public . . .” When her lies are uncovered she becomes even more of a pariah (mainly because the other girls feel duped). Though Laura suffers during her years at the school, there’s a light, comic touch to the way Richardson depicts her experiences. But there’s empathy too – Laura is real and relatable, and I was relieved at the exuberant ending, which shows her with spirit intact. This is a very entertaining book, and an oddly instructive one. Young girls who find themselves in a situation in which they feel like square pegs should read The Getting of Wisdom. I think it would offer them some solace and some hope. *

Concluding – Henry Green
I’ll begin with a spoiler: the missing girl is never found, nor is she accounted for. In fact, none of the issues presented (e.g., will Mr. Rock get to remain in his cottage?) are settled in any way. Green creates people and scenes with a remarkable vibrancy; that was his thing, and there it ended for him. His two successes (Loving and Living) are amorphous mood pieces in which people talk; in those books his weakness at plotting was not a factor. But this novel is made up of multiple dilemmas involving at least a dozen characters. Near the end he continues to pile on new complexities, as if he were unable to curb his imagination. Long before the last page of Concluding I had concluded that nothing would be resolved. Though I felt a bit gypped about Mary (the missing girl), I should have known better than to expect Green to play by the conventional rules of narrative. Even his quirky style of prose is something the reader has to adapt to. He wrote for himself, not for the reader.

The Professor and the Madman – Simon Winchester
If you have an interest in how the Oxford English Dictionary came into existence, this is the book for you. If you have little or no interest you may still find Winchester’s account to be an engrossing read. He focuses on two men: one a scholar in charge of the project, the other a man who, for twenty years, contributed mightily from his cells at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Dr. William Minor, an American surgeon who served in the Civil War (where, possibly, the horrendous events at the Battle of the Wilderness set off his mental decline), was undoubtedly insane. But he was also brilliant – extremely well-read, an accomplished flutist and painter – and when the call for contributions came from Oxford, he leapt to the task. No doubt it gave purpose to his days, a feeling of being a part of a grand enterprise. I felt, in a sense, that the scope of this enterprise (which took seventy years to complete) was driven by the obsessions of all parties involved. The book is short for such a vast topic – a little over two hundred pages – and moves along at a nice clip, mixing scholarship with the sometimes sad, sometimes lurid story of Dr. Minor. The Professor of the title, James Murray, gets much less attention than the Madman, for whom Winchester obviously has a great deal of sympathy. The last word in the OED, which was completed in 1927, was zyxt. In my American Heritage Dictionary (which I’ll stick to, thank you very much) the last entry is xyster. As for the meanings of these words, you can always look them up.

Small Town – Sloan Wilson
What does it say about me that I read all five hundred pages of what is, literary-wise, a mess? I was aware of the book’s many deficiencies, yet I kept going, and was entertained rather than displeased. Or, rather, my displeasure had entertainment value – often I’d think, You don’t mean Wilson is going to go there? Yes, indeed, whenever he moved into love and sex (which he did a lot), he was actually going straight into the flagrantly improbable. His awkward depiction of women – their words and actions – was cringe-worthy, but it was also amusing. So, like an afternoon soap opera addict, I kept reading, carried along on the smooth flow of the prose. As for plot, our hero (a famous photographer) returns to the small town where he grew up and instantaneously falls in love with thirty-year-old Rose. But their bliss of total commitment runs into a snag when, during their first sexual act, she has a heart attack; then, at their wedding reception, another heart attack kills her (I had never believed in her, and so was uninvolved). Her seventeen-year-old sister Ann comes to Ben’s rescue, making sexual advances which he nobly (though wavering at times) resists. Ben, by the way, is forty-five, and his son is the boyfriend of Ann, so there’s a sort of triangle going on. A bunch of other plot lines are introduced as major ones and then allowed to wither and die. They die because Wilson was interested only in Ben Winslow’s emotional travails. Ben is initially forceful and competent, but by the end he’s a hapless soul, clinging to a few hopes. I think this book was very personal to Wilson, and was written with great sincerity. Despite all the sappiness of Small Town, it still manages to impart a sense of loss and longing.

The Golden Gate – Vikram Seth
To write a novel entirely in verse is a unique and formidable feat, but for me the feat aspect was too apparent. I was constantly aware of Seth trying to find words that would fit into a rhyme. His search leads him from obscurity (“catholicon” and “fissiparity”) to triteness (the beer is “Schlitz” to go with “it’s” and “pits”). At times the poetry imparts a nice airiness, but more often it has a pedantic quality; also, much of the dialogue seems awkward (“Hey, stop that – oh, it’s Phil – hey, hi . . .”/“Hi, John, I just thought I’d drop by.”) The book is set is San Francisco in the 1980s, and the yuppies who populate it are involved in complicated relationships. How complicated? Phil, divorced with a son, is bisexual; he has an affair with Ed; but religious Ed believes that to act on his physical urges is sinful; Phil winds up marrying Ed’s sister, Liz. I found all this a bit much. Besides arguments in favor of love and sexual freedom (and against war and small-mindedness), we get cats, a Café Trieste and a band called Liquid Sheep. Seth is an accomplished wordsmith, and this book obviously took a lot of effort to pull off. For those who find it to be a delight, I wouldn’t claim that their pleasure is unwarranted. It just wasn’t my cup of cappuccino.

The Indian Lawyer – James Welch
Welch is an American Indian who attended reservation schools; he also served on the Montana State Board of Pardons. Since this novel incorporates both the Indian experience and prison life, I expected something forceful and authentic. What I got was neither. Sylvester Yellow Calf is a successful lawyer who’s being urged to run for Congress. But this muted and conflicted man – a shadowy figure even in a novel about him – is a most unlikely politician, so that story line was unconvincing. As was another, introduced in the first chapter. Sylvester is a member of a board of pardons, and he votes against granting parole to Jack Harwood; Harwood then asks his wife to meet Sylvester and get to know everything she can about him; eventually he asks her to sleep with him (which she’s already done, after meeting Sylvester twice, once in his office, another on a dinner date). Patti Ann is no trampy moll; she’s portrayed as a wife who had stayed faithful to her husband during his seven years in prison. Since there’s no spark in the scenes between her and Sylvester, her tumbling into bed with him is just another example of the author’s failure to provide a basis for the actions and feelings of his characters. People plod along dispiritedly, doing things I didn’t believe in, and when Sylvester and Patti Ann start having love pangs, I had enough.

Ask Me Tomorrow – James Gould Cozzens
This is a watershed novel in which the author of Castaway and The Last Adam shows signs of becoming the author who would write Guard of Honor and By Love Possessed. I liked the first two books, I found the last two unreadable; the same can be said for the differing parts of this novel. The opening fifty pages are very good. Francis, while on a train trip in Italy, meets a young woman. He doesn’t find her attractive, he doesn’t even like her as a person. But he’s bored and has had too much to drink; so, after mostly combative chit chat, he makes her a proposition: “I think we should go to bed.” The woman is hurt; she knows she means nothing to him and, precisely because of that, he has treated her as something cheap. What makes this episode psychologically acute is that Francis recognizes every nuance of his bad behavior. I could believe in this person. I could also believe in his interactions with his employer, Mrs. Cunningham, and her son, whom he tutors. But I couldn’t relate to the Francis who’s in love with somebody named Lorna and who attends parties; though his conflicting emotions are dissected, it’s not done with the directness of the opening scene; all that emerges is a lot of people talking a lot. In these sections the influence of Henry James is apparent (even the prose gets denser and more convoluted). Cozzens would choose to follow in the path of the Master, which is a shame.

Pack My Bag – Henry Green
Green wrote this autobiography (at age thirty-three) because he believed he would die in World War II, and he wanted to take stock of his life. He didn’t write the book for me, or for anybody but himself. This can account for the fact that he reveals very little. I found the nine page Introduction by his son to be more enlightening than all of Pack My Bag (especially if you read between the lines). One barrier keeping the reader at a distance is the prose; it’s like an elaborate musical composition full of twists and turns. It’s the same prose used in Loving and Living, but in those novels the way the words were set down seemed to be an integral part of characters who were bursting with vitality. In this book vitality is the very quality that’s absent. When Green recounts his feelings and experiences, he does it a roundabout way that leeches it of immediacy. As for those he interacts with, not one single person – not mother, father, brothers, friends – attains a solid presence. Nor are there fully-developed scenes; just a myriad of truncated impressions. Much of the book concerns his stay at Eton, and I got a sense of life there, but only a vague one. It’s this vagueness that finally caused me to stop making the effort to follow the stylistic gyrations; I finished the last fifty pages in skimming mode. If you write a book as a private indulgence, and it turns out as constricted as this one, it should stay in your bag.

Living - Henry Green
In my review of Green’s Loving I wrote, regarding the prose, “I don’t think Green tried; he was transcribing onto the page the way he thought.” This novel, written sixteen years before Loving, shows that it took effort to develop his style; Living is not as polished a work as the later book. The stretches in which nebulous states are described don’t quite come off, nor does the dropping of articles (“This girl Lily Gates went shopping with basket and by fruiterer’s she met Mrs. Eames who stood to watch potatoes on trestle table there”). What is present in both books is an ability to use dialogue so successfully that characters attain a palpability. Another quality that was fully developed – a quality that was Green’s gift – was his empathy. It’s interesting that though he was born into a wealthy family, he chose to focus on the working class. I think he felt (without a trace of condescension) that they were closer to life’s vital essence. In Living there are many characters, many voices, and for a long while the novel doesn’t settle on any particular individual; it seems to wander about. Which was fine in that we get a sense of diversity. But gradually most of the attention is given to Mr Craigan and Lily Gates. Mr Craigan is elderly; his being sacked from the foundry because of age marks the beginning of his decline. To work – something he had done for fifty-seven years, since he was eight – was an essential part of his being. Lily Gates is a young woman who feels an inchoate need to live, which to her means to care for a child of her own and to keep house for a man she loves. We have two intertwined lives at opposite stages; it’s the intertwining that presents a conflict for both. In a sudden and wondrous ending it’s clear that life must have its way. *

Too Much Happiness - Alice Munro
I was glad that Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize. Over the decades she’s been a chronicler of life whose work often rose to the level of four star excellence. But in this collection, which came out in 2009, only three stories can be called good; most of the others were fair, some were bad. How could Munro write something as awkward and foolish as “Wenlock Edge”? “Child’s Play” is another mistake; it’s revealed on the last pages that a murder had been committed, but instead of having force – something which Munro was uniquely capable of – this ending seemed contrived and lame. As for the title story, I read only five pages; it had too many characters, too many locations, too much research cluttering things up; and by the time I got to it I had lost faith. Munro, who was in her late seventies when Happiness came out, recently announced that she had given up writing. Could she be aware of a decline in her abilities? It’s hard to relinquish something that has been an integral part of your life for so long, but what’s the alternative? To just go through the motions? The last story I read by Munro (before the ones in this collection) was a stunner called “Silence.” That, and a dozen others like it, are what I’ll remember her for.

Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott
An oddity, a diversion. In the beginning Abbott describes how life is structured in the world of Flatland, where people exist without the dimension of height. They are two-dimensional shapes: Lines, Triangles, Squares (which is what the narrator is), Hexagons, etc. Their status in society is defined by the number and the degree of pointedness of their angles. Polygonals, which can hardly be distinguished from circles, are the highest class. All Lines are female; they’re stupid, very emotional and dangerous (the sharp point of their lines can inflict a mortal wound when they start thrashing about). Abbott is making a humorous commentary on class discrimination, the status of women in Victorian England, and – since the punishments for nonconformity in Flatland are extremely harsh – he depicts a brutish totalitarian state. In the second part of the book (which I found less engaging), the narrator discovers, to his amazement, a three-dimensional world like ours, and he contemplates the possibility of there being even more dimensions. Abbott’s message is that we need to keep our minds open to possibilities; what we know, based on our perceptions and what we’re taught, may not be the whole story. This book itself was flat – eighty pages long – which was about the right size.

Loving - Henry Green

What strikes one immediately is the quirky rhythm of the prose. I don’t think it can be replicated, for to do so a writer would have to try. I don’t think Green tried; he was transcribing onto the page the way he thought. He wasn’t showing off, nor was he trying to be difficult. Reading him is difficult only if you’re inattentive. If you’re alert you get into the flow, and once there you’re able to savor the humor and pathos. About 70% of the novel is dialogue – brilliant dialogue in which the many diverse personalities reveal their essential natures. As for plot, Green’s subject matter is the mundane (he wrote that “simply everything has supreme importance, if it happens”). The setting is an Irish castle during World War II. We follow the maneuvering among servants and masters (though the servants, being more colorful, are given by far the most space). Throughout Loving there’s an awareness of how conflicted a matter love is. This is most evident in the last words: “ . . . they were married and lived happily ever after.” Those words are an unabashed rejection of the truth; Green knew that life couldn’t be wrapped up with a pretty bow. But he also knew life’s many-faceted richness, and in capturing that richness he produced one of those rare works that makes you see the world in a fresh new way. *

A Bird in the House - Margaret Laurence

This can be read as a novel, but all the chapters were first published as stories. This presents a problem when they’re put together because there’s a repetition of facts that have already been established, and the chronology isn’t consistent (the father dies, but in episodes that follow his death he’s alive). Despite that speed bump, Laurence accomplishes something very basic but at the heart of fiction: we get to know Vanessa as she grows from child to young woman, and we get to know those closest to her. Though virtues are appreciated and flaws accepted, there’s one person Vanessa struggles to come to terms with. Grandfather Connor’s cruelty is especially appalling because he’s incapable of seeing how harmful his words and actions are (in Laurence’s The Stone Angel such a man irrevocably damages his daughter). When, as a young woman, Vanessa views him in his casket she thinks: “I was not sorry that he was dead. I was only surprised. Perhaps I had really imagined that he was immortal. Perhaps he even was immortal, in ways which it would take me half a lifetime to comprehend.” In some stories/chapters Laurence looks beyond herself and her family. “The Loons,” “Horses of the Night” and “The Half-Husky” are insightful studies of outsiders who do not (or cannot) reveal their inner selves to anyone. During Vanessa’s years in Manawaka she learns that the world isn’t a benevolent place, nor can one expect fairness. That said, there’s much to live for, if you’re strong enough to fight for it. *

Sappho - Alphonse Daudet (French)

“Come, look at me. I like the colour of your eyes. What’s your name?” So the novel opens, with Fanny Legrand (who had posed for a statue of Sappho and was known in some circles by that name) approaching a much younger man. This encounter takes place at a masquerade ball held at the studio of a rich Parisian. Fanny spends the night with Jean, and so begins their five year affair. This is no gauzy romance about life in bohemian Paris of the 1800s. Courtesans are not glamorized, a la Dumas’s Camille; Daudet portrays them as nothing more than depraved whores. Fanny, however, is not of their ilk. She has a vulgar side and her past is littered with a long string of lovers, but she has retained a core of decency. Her decency makes her formidable; she can’t be easily dismissed. A clue to what the author is up to is found in his dedication: “For my sons when they are twenty.” What he gives his sons is a withering cautionary tale about the ensnarements of passionate love. I can’t embark on a description of the plot – it’s too full of emotional twists and turns – but all can be summed up in that first night, when Jean brings Fanny to his hotel. His room is on the fourth floor, and he takes her in his arms “with the lovely fierce energy of youth” and carries her up the stairs. The second flight “was longer, less delightful.” When he finally staggers to the fourth floor Fanny had become “some heavy and dreadful thing that was stifling him.” She says, “So soon?” and he thinks, “At last!” Yet he’s never able to come to “At last” in reality. As I followed the course of their relationship I reached the point where even the word “love” had become suspect. Yet the confusion and conflict I felt accurately depict Jean’s state of mind. This is not a novel which offers the reader solace; we can understand Fanny and Jean, but we can’t sympathize with them. They’re both right, they’re both wrong, they both deserve what they get. *

Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
A mood of mystery and sadness infuses this novel. By means of flashbacks the author takes us with Claudia through her whole life, and we’re with her at the end of it, in a hospital room, looking at the lights and shadows through the window. The romance at the emotional heart of the story is done well. Lively writes beautiful prose; one is aware of that, and she demands your concentration, but this evocative book flows with grace. *

McKay’s Bees - Thomas McMahon
I liked the businesslike approach, assertive and clear; I liked the diverse characters, I liked the premise of the story. Then it turned stagnant. The characters and the situation were not developed. Instead the author began concentrating more and more on factual material, as if he were writing a text.

The Drinker - Hans Fallada (German)
Proletarian prose, in which Fallada has a character take a drink and quickly descend into a hell of self-destructive alcoholism. Actually, the man is crazy – that’s the only way to account for his deterioration. Drink isn’t the issue. I read that Fallada doesn’t revise; he should have. There’s some vigor to this, but it was unreasonable and melodramatic and sloppy, and I couldn’t finish it. I thought his What Now, Little Man? was very good, but I read that long ago, and now I’m suspicious.

Cast a Cold Eye - Mary McCarthy
These are social dissections, not stories. People are caricatures of a type and exist only to make the author’s points. The observations are often accurate, fresh and amusing, but not vital to me. The prose, too, was difficult; it slowed down this reader, who was already slowing down. The only story that had real life was “Yonder Peasant, Who Is He?”, but in it there was a real character: Poor little Mary McCarthy herself. This one, in which the author’s eye is not cold, was terrific.

Blindness - Henry Green
Written when Green was in his teens, this is a remarkable work for the first half. The author has control over a variety of devices – a journal, letters, interior monologues. Then the book turns to the love interest, first exploring, for a long chapter, a girl’s day, then showing the girl and John together – and the whole thing breaks down. The language becomes stilted (purposely, I think; an authorial effect that doesn’t work), the emotions dubious (how did John get to be the person we are presented with?). All authenticity vanished, and I stopped reading. Green suddenly seemed like the teenager he was.