Black Narcissus – Rumer Godden

The major strength of this novel is a unique and important one: it explores the erosion of religious faith. It’s not about a loss of faith, but a loss of its dominant role. A group of nuns come to Mopu, in India, high up in the shadow of the Himalayas. They set up a convent school and medical dispensary in an ancient castle. (Previously Brothers had done the same, but had abandoned the project after a year.) Despite her young age Sister Clodagh is the Superior. She gets help from the cynical local English agent, Mr. Dean (who predicts they will leave by the next rains). What causes the slow undermining of the nuns’ commitment to their faith? One factor is the exotic environment, lush and intoxicating. In such a beautiful place austerity and denial of the senses is impossible. And, though it’s assumed by the nuns that the example they set may cause an interest in Christianity (they do no proselytizing), the natives have their own beliefs, and hold firmly to them. So, as the months go by, the nuns, each in their own way, drift away from something which is of vital importance to them. One becomes obsessed with growing beautiful plants, and when she realizes the depth of that obsession, she asks to leave the convent. Sister Clodagh finds herself lapsing more and more into memories of a man she had loved in her youth, but who, she realized, would never commit to her. She also loses self-assurance in her competence; in a way, she is humbled. In developing this scenario, Godden never disrespects Christianity. Nor does she look down upon the natives. She presents a meeting of vastly differing cultures and sensibilities, with no one side right and the other wrong. The prose is excellent, and the characters are well-drawn and believable. The only quibble I have is with the inclusion of a sister who is insane, and becomes sexually fixated on Mr. Dean (who gives her not an iota of encouragement). Sister Ruth provides drama to the novel; but, for me, drama was unnecessary and turns, unfortunately, into melodrama. There was a movie made from the novel, directed by Powell and Pressburger. It’s quite good, and faithful to the source, and the only complaint I had with it was with the insane sister. Despite this glitch, I consider Narcissus to be a valuable book. *

Nocturnes – Kazou Ishiguro

After I read the first two entries in this collection I wondered if stories as lacking in merit as these didn’t disqualify you for the Nobel Prize (obviously not, for Ishiguro was awarded it in 2017, nine years after Nocturnes came out). In the first, “Crooner,” a once-famous singer takes his wife of many years on a return visit to Venice; he hires an itinerant guitarist (who tells the story) to go with him on a gondola as he gives his wife a nighttime serenade under her hotel window. Old love songs they once shared. But it turns out that it’s a goodbye serenade – the crooner is leaving his wife for another woman, and she knows this. The thinking behind this “romantic” gesture is sappy, and the three people involved lack substance (though we hardly spend any time with the wife). Despite the fact that the two men talk a lot about deep feelings, I found their words to be no more than prattle. The second story, “Come Rain or Come Shine,” is remarkable in that it is much, much worse than the first. The characters are ridiculous props, their actions go beyond stupid into the farcical. Sometimes I wondered if I was reading a comedy, or a bit of juvenilia. I was grasping at straws; the mentality that would produce such inanity evaded me. It even brings up the issue of self-respect: was not Ishiguro, at some point, aware that the story was junk and should never see the light of day? Anyway . . . Since I hadn’t yet read half of the book, I skipped to the last story, the shortest. “Cellists” wasn’t a redeeming masterpiece, but it wasn’t an outright bust. It had a glaring narration problem. The unnamed musician telling the story has total knowledge about the main character, a young cellist by the name of Tibor; he knows his thoughts, his words, etc. (How does this happen, Kazou?) And, as far as credibility goes (a problem in the previous two stories), the woman who sees promise in Tibor and gives him intense instruction (in words only) can’t, we find out near the end, play the cello herself. Yet she has a rare gift, an insight into what is right, what a piece should sound like. Well . . . OK, I guess. At any rate, I had now read half the book, so I was done. I did glance through the rave reviews from respected sources on the book’s back cover. It’s still the same old story, folks – the one about the emperor in his new clothes.

The Bellwether Revivals – Benjamin Wood

This ambitious first novel by a young British writer is quite good. It kept me involved for over 400 pages. Oscar, the main character, is both believable and likable, and the secondary players are also strong. The love between Oscar and Iris worked, from its beginning to its deepening. The “ambitious” aspect has to do with the role hope plays in the lives of people who are facing serious medical issues. Can hope (with its counterpart, belief) lead to an improvement – even a complete cure? We’re in faith healing territory here, but Wood makes it a subject worth exploring. After all, the mind is a strong force that can act on the body (think of the physical symptoms depressed people experience). Oscar is a care assistant in a nursing home, and so daily deals with the elderly. Though he considers his job to be of value, why is he engaged in work which often involves dealing with colonoscopy bags? He’s in his early twenties, and is intelligent, but has not found his place in the world. He gets involved with a very wealthy family, the Bellwethers, through Iris, the daughter. He also becomes one of a group of friends, all Cambridge students, all gifted musicians. Iris’s brother, Eden, emerges to play an important role. He believes he has the ability to completely cure any physical malady – even a stage four brain tumor. For me, this over-the-top character weakens the novel. It introduces an element of craziness and danger that I wished it wasn’t there. We get a warning of what is to come in the brief Prelude, where we learn that there are two dead bodies on the Bellwether estate, and a third one, still faintly breathing, by the riverbank. I have a sneaky suspicion that the publisher and editors wanted to inject this element of upcoming violence in order to attract readers. I think Eden existed in the first draft, but in a much less extreme form. A shame. Still, there’s enough good in the novel to make it a promising debut. Whether that beginning was followed by work of substance is an interesting question, one I might pursue.

The Boss Dog – M. F. K. Fisher

This short book is subtitled “A Story of Provence.” In the 1950s Fisher spent some time there with her two young daughters. It’s really a series of interconnected scenes in which she relives her stay in what she calls a “serene old town.” The daughters are spirited children with lively, inventive minds, somewhere between the ages of eight and eleven. They are the ones who latch onto a mongrel dog who seems to be the established resident of a café they frequent. He has a big behind and one white ear and another black (which falls over his left eye). The girls immediately perceive this seemingly commonplace creature to be very special, with powers beyond that of the ordinary. He isn’t affectionate, nor does he have winning ways (he couldn’t be bothered). What he does have is a sense of purpose; he’s a business-like dog, with jobs he needs to take care of in Provence. Though he’s a presence in every story, the book is primarily about a mother, her two daughters and a town in France. It’s a nostalgic piece, but never saccharine. It has a gentle charm, and envelopes you in a pleasant, lulling mood. It seems that Fisher (who made her name as a food writer) wrote this little excursion out of a purely personal desire. Near the end of her life Yolla Bolly Press published Boss Dog in a limited edition; Fisher died two years later, at age ninety-two. The edition I read was from Pantheon Books, and they have given it a lovely presentation. So Fisher, her young daughters, and their Boss Dog, live on in Provence.

The Ice Saints – Frank Tuohy
This is a Cold War novel without the espionage. Tuohy is concerned with ordinary people living in Poland in the 1960s, when it was under communist rule. A young English woman, Rose, travels to Biala Gora. Her sister is married to a Polish man, and a deceased aunt has left their teenage son a sizable amount of money. It seems like good news, but in Poland forces conspire to undermine anything that’s good. In this unrelentingly drab and dreary place even a stroll in a park reveals a squirrel with “thin fur and a degenerate face” and trees that show “the amputations of shell fire.” People long subjected to defeat and deprivation are resentful, suspicious, and their self-deprecating humor is a mixture of cynicism and defiance. Rose’s hope is that the son, Tadeusz (for whom she forms an immediate attachment), can escape to England; all he needs is a visa. Yet her plans turn out badly, and at the end the sister tells Rose “Just leave here as soon as possible. That’s all I want now.” Rose is appealing, and her imperfections are the sort that makes her easy to identify with. The prose seems made up of concrete slabs that don’t quite fit flush, but this wasn’t a defect; it conveys the unavoidable disorientation one feels in a foreign world. By keeping things grounded in the realities of everyday life, Tuohy gives us an honest look behind the curtain. In 1964, when this novel was published, it may have been important. Today, it’s still a good read.

An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
In the first sentence the elderly narrator tells the reader “you will not have to walk far.” This personal approach is to be a constant, along with asides (“I believe I was recalling the events of that day last month . . .” or “It is possible, of course, that Mori-san did not use those exact words”). What Ono slowly reveals is the part he played in the nationalism that led to World War II. In his paintings he portrayed the New Japan as a militant force, and he became an adviser to the Committee of Unpatriotic Activities. In 1948 (when events take place) some – especially the young – feel hostile to those who, in their eyes, caused so much misery. Ono can’t remain unaware of such an attitude because his daughter is of marriageable age; in the Japanese culture of the time, suitors hire investigators to check on the backgrounds of prospective mates, and Ono’s past may be an obstacle for Noriko. There are problems with how the story is told. The prose is smooth, unruffled; but people don’t talk that way, so Ono’s voice seems artificial. And then there’s what he tells the reader. For much of the book we don’t know what his “secret” is, even though he’s fully aware of it. To withhold information is a novelistic tactic that the author hangs on his narrator. Still, when we finally understand Ono’s involvement, Ishiguro rejects the simplistic path of presenting us with an unrepentant war criminal or a man wracked by guilt. Instead, Ono perceives that his actions were mistaken and caused harm, but he also knows that he was motivated at the time by sincere belief. We get acceptance instead of catharsis; the book turns out to be about an ordinary man contemplating his life from the perspective of old age. That he’s content at the end didn’t bother me. Others, though, may see it as an example of his callous obliviousness, and they may be right. When Ono’s daughter tells him that the role he played in the war was a minor one, he resists this evaluation. Is his desire to have been of importance a natural human impulse, or something more sinister? This is one of those books that can provoke argument, which is a strength.

To Have and Have Not - Ernest Hemingway
This book was depressing. Partly because of its content, partly due to the fact that everybody involved (including the author) had to know how bad it was. Maybe, if an editor had insisted on changes – that Hemingway take out the spite and make it a much shorter hard-boiled crime novel – it might have worked. It starts out pretty well, with Harry Morgan as the first person narrator. There’s far too much tough guy talk, but the voice is good, the action sequences move, and Hemingway’s knowledge of boats, fishing and Cuba adds authenticity. But Harry is a grim, oppressive presence, and I felt nothing but aversion for him. The back cover of the edition I have calls him an “honest man.” Honest? He agrees to smuggle some “Chinks” to Florida, but when he gets the dough he kills Mr. Sing by breaking his neck (“I bent the whole thing back until she cracked”); the Chinks get dumped back in Cuba. As for the above-mentioned spite, for long stretches Hemingway has other narrators take over; some are writers, and the only possible reason for their inclusion is to show how contemptible they are. So we swing from brutish Harry to Richard and Helen Gordon bickering: “I’m through with you and I’m through with love. Your kind of picknose love. You writer.” Eighty pages from the end I couldn’t bear to continue, though – having seen the movie and read the back cover (which claims that Harry will become involved “in a strange and unlikely love affair”) – I skimmed what was left, waiting in vain for Lauren Bacall to appear. Harry’s a family guy, but he exchanges about a half dozen words with his daughters, and his wife is merely a stooge whose purpose is to rhapsodize about what a man Harry is. He’s more of a man than other men, even after he loses an arm in a shootout and is left with a stub that’s “like a flipper on a loggerhead.” This grungy, sullen, blood and booze-saturated mess isn’t just a minor novel by a Nobel Prize winner; it’s a failure of character. The prose is careless, and the stream of consciousness sequences lumber along like Frankenstein’s monster: “You just get dead like most people are most of the time. I guess that’s how it is all right. I guess that’s just what happens to you. Well, I’ve got a good start. I’ve got a good start if that’s what you have to do. I guess that’s what you have to do all right. I guess that’s it. I guess that’s what it comes to.”

The Cunning of History - Richard L. Rubenstein
Rubenstein presents the Holocaust in a new light. He doesn’t consider it an aberrant outburst of rabid hatred. Rather, it grew out of already developed trends in western civilization. The titles of two chapters are “Bureaucratic Domination” and “The Modernization of Slavery”; both bureaucracies and slavery have long been with us. A bureaucracy is unfeeling and efficient. The slavery introduced at Auschwitz was, due to the almost inexhaustible supply of labor, a work-to-the-death affair. Before these two elements could become operative, the victims had to be made non-citizens; Rubenstein stresses that the Nazis violated no laws, for the victims had been stripped of legal rights. There’s much in this book that’s informative and thought-provoking (such as the fact that major German firms set up factories in death camps to capitalize on the slave labor). Rubenstein is pessimistic about man and his future. We want to believe that “It can’t happen here.” But if it happened elsewhere, he argues, why are we immune, given the right pressures, a persuasive leader with a plan of action, and a large segment of the population willing to let him carry out a Final Solution to a problem?

A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
This was Ishiguro’s first novel. Despite its smooth prose and interesting characters, it’s misconceived. An author has to play fair with the reader. Ishiguro gives us misleading information and omits crucial facts that would detract from his purpose. At the end, when the elements need a believable resolution, all that emerges is a false narrator. False narrators can be used effectively, but the reader must at least have a growing suspicion of what’s going on – and why. Otherwise it’s not the narrator who’s being untruthful, but the author. This book turned out to be no more than a wild-goose chase.

Anna of the Five Towns - Arnold Bennett
Anna is intelligent and has a will of her own, but she can’t stand up to more forceful personalities – most notably, her father. His miserliness extends beyond the desire for wealth; he’s emotionally tight-fisted. He doesn’t love Anna; he’s never felt love for anybody and never will, nor will he feel the absence of love in his life. In this portrayal Bennett showed how well he understood the power of selfishness. As the plot unfolds Anna tries to let her compassionate nature prevail, but she’s drawn into being part of someone’s destruction. Another force working on her is her future husband; he’s a decent man, but his commanding nature and self-assurance make him vaguely akin to her father. Though under the sway of dominant figures, Anna is drawn to the weak and helpless. Here lies the only misstep Bennett makes: the closing revelation that Anna loved the pitiable Willie doesn’t ring true. Fittingly, this story of destruction takes place in an industrial landscape devastated by man’s devouring pursuit of money.