The Fire-Dwellers - Margaret Laurence
Laurence immerses us in Stacey MacAindra. In addition to what she does, says, thinks and fantasizes, we also get scenes from her past. She’s thirty-nine years old, married with four children (oldest fourteen, youngest three). Emotionally, she’s conflicted; almost every feeling she has coexists with one in direct opposition. Though she loves her children, they’re a drain on her. Though she loves her husband, she wishes he would communicate with her. But when Mac says, “Just leave me alone,” both the reader and Stacey understand why: she’s exhausting to deal with. She even exhausts herself, and only her sense of humor saves her. Adding to her discontent is the fact that age is taking its toll – Stacey doesn’t like what she sees in the mirror. To say that she’s going through a midlife crisis wouldn’t do justice to this lively and ambitious psychological study. Unfortunately, Laurence goes astray near the end. Possibly she felt (with some justification; the book is too long) that she was getting repetitive and that she needed to add some dramatic events. But the ones she comes up with are poor choices. The novel is like a print on “Antiques Roadshow” whose value is diminished significantly by a tear along one side. The tear in Fire-Dwellers has to do with two male characters. The Stacey I know would have nothing to do with the aggressively vulgar Buckle. As for Luke Venturi, this young man should have been relegated to one of Stacey’s more sappy fantasies (from which she would recover with a laugh: “Get a grip, doll”). Luke’s name for her is “merwoman” – and I cringed. As for the sex scenes – more cringing. The novel recovers when it returns to the trivialities and turmoil of daily life, and Laurence closes on the right note. Lying in bed next to Mac, Stacey makes a inventory of the house and finds that everyone is asleep and all is quiet. She thinks, “Temporarily, they are all more or less okay.”

Theresa - Arthur Schnitzler (German)
In this novel, which is subtitled “The Chronicle of a Woman’s Life,” Schnitzler gives us a portrayal that begins when Theresa is sixteen and ends in her early death. Though attractive and intelligent, her life becomes a series of unsatisfying governess/tutoring jobs, financial difficulties, and love affairs that turn out badly. Theresa will never marry, but she will have one child. With the onset of middle age hope fades and disillusionment sets in; she prays that “passion might never again disturb the quiet current of her life and torment her innermost being.” Yet, except for brief interludes, the current of her life is never quiet, nor is her innermost being at peace. What begins to dominate her thoughts is the world’s indifference; she feels acutely that she is of no importance to anyone. And this is true – she doesn’t matter. As a key event in this chronicle, she shouldn’t have had the illegitimate child. But what she lacked was foresight and calculation, and that is no crime. Though not a paragon of virtue, Theresa isn’t a bad person, nor does she ever act maliciously. I began to ask myself what was lacking in her. Why is her life such a struggle? Did it all unfold from the fact that she was born to parents who were unable to love her (as she would be unable to love her own son)? At one point Theresa considers herself of another species from those to whom happiness is granted. Others seem to instinctively know how to preserve themselves and take what they desire, while her efforts to be coldly resourceful are destined to fail. Of her entire existence she decides that “she had not come into this world to be happy.” Perhaps that’s the final summing up. Though this book is a grueling experience, Schnitzler’s unique achievement is to make Theresa matter to the reader; on these pages she is of importance. Her last dreams, from which she awakens feeling an “unfulfillable tenderness and the apprehension of endless solitude,” are moving. What more can an author do?

Time and Time Again - James Hilton
The dominant figure in Charles Anderson’s life – and in the book – is his father. Havelock’s eccentricities are a manifestation of his disregard for others – he will do what he damn well pleases – and his charm is merely a vain display of his brilliant tail feathers. Charles sees the truth about this selfish and destructive man, but it’s not in his nature to condemn him. The son is the opposite of the father; his reserve and sense of propriety earn him the nickname of “Stuffy.” But he’s not reserved in his romance with Lily; Hilton captures the passion of first love beautifully. Since Lily is working class and so beneath the Anderson level in British society, Havelock swoops down to end the affair. This is a life-changing event, for Charles and Lily had planned to move to France, where he would pursue his painting. (Hmm . . . A youthful pipe dream?) Instead Charles becomes a diplomat, and the woman he eventually marries is eminently suited to aid him in that role. Though it’s a happy union, it seems that they are mainly a compatible team. Except for the drama of the bombing of London, the book begins to slow down in the post-Lily second half. It unravels in the concluding section, in which Charles, at age fifty-two, tries to connect with his son. Charles comes across as fussy and foolish, the son is nondescript, and the defection of a Russian spy is a dull sideshow. Hilton has Charles start up a relationship with a much younger woman, but there’s not enough going on between the two to make it credible. The prose never weakens – it’s exceptionally smooth and inviting – but what does weaken is Hilton’s resolve to explore Charles’s dilemma. Feelings of loneliness and regret are hinted at, but then are sidestepped. In trying to account for this evasiveness, some facts stand out. Hilton died at age fifty-four, a year before the novel was published; the cause of death was liver cancer, so he must have been aware of his imminent mortality. That he has Charles being born in 1900, the same year he was, may indicate that he put something of himself in a character whose nature it was to always keep a stiff upper lip. As for the hopeful ending, Hilton may have chosen to open the door to life and love for his fictional self as it was closing for him.

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. *

A Summer Place - Sloan Wilson
A good, solid, engrossing novel. It begins with a troubled relationship between two young people; they part and go on to marry others. Decades later, when Ken and Sylvia meet again, the sexual spark is reignited, though now they’ve matured and know that their love is real. They divorce their spouses and marry. At this point Ken and Sylvia stop being the focus of the story and the children from their first marriages take center stage. It’s as if John and Molly are reliving the passion their parents had felt. But their relationship is a difficult, conflicted one because of the emotional dynamics at work. The people that Ken and Sylvia divorced are still the parents of John and Molly, and they play a complicating role. Wilson also shows how deeply the young people were damaged by growing up in loveless, dysfunctional families; whether they can unite to overcome the damage, or whether it will tear them apart, is left up in the air. Throughout the novel Wilson opted for honesty, and I respected this.

The Queen’s Gambit - Walter Tevis
I liked and cared about Beth. Her story begins when she’s put in an orphanage at age eight. It’s not a hellish place, but it offers her no emotional warmth. Beth visits a misanthropic janitor in his basement lair, and he grudgingly teaches her how to play chess. It’s soon obvious that she’s endowed with a genius for the game. Much of the book is taken up with tournament matches. I couldn’t understand the moves being described, but I shared Beth’s feelings as shifts of power occur. Against the caliber of opponents she faces, chess is mentally and psychologically grueling and demands an obsessional dedication; consequently, Beth doesn’t have much of a life outside of chess. Also, in the orphanage the children were given tranquilizers, and Beth continues to rely on them to alleviate a pervasive tension. When she’s eighteen she turns to alcohol with a vengeance. I didn’t entirely believe in the self-destructiveness of her drinking, nor how effortlessly she’s able to give it up. The book ends with her defeating the Russian grandmaster who had twice defeated her. Yet I was uneasy about Beth’s prospects for happiness. Chess can absorb and empower her, but it can’t fill an emotional void that has existed since she was a child. At age twenty she’s had a few sexual relationships (both with chess players), but they lacked the intimacy she needs. This wasn’t entirely the fault of the men. Beth has set up barriers that separate her from other people. I see the possibility – if her life continues to be loveless and friendless – of depression settling in and the drinking resurfacing. The fact that I was troubled at the end of the book means, of course, that Walter Tevis is a talented writer. There’s much emotion in Beth’s emotionally muted world. When she returns to the orphanage (after the death of the janitor) she goes down to the basement where she first saw chess pieces. I was surprised and impressed by how moving this scene was. In an understated way, vistas are opened.

A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence
I was totally out of sympathy with this novel. Rachel’s story is told by means of an interior monologue in which she sometimes expresses herself with a solemn eloquence that struck me as coming not from the character but from an author trying hard to impress. To be in Rachel’s mind is exhausting. She talks to herself a lot: “Stop. Stop it, Rachel. Steady. Get a grip on yourself. Relax. Sleep. Try.” Yes, Rachel, please, please get a grip on yourself. She’s besieged by raw emotions and often seems on the verge of hysteria. She teaches school in a Canadian town and lives with her manipulative mother. The focus of the novel is her first sexual experience, at age thirty-four. We have to endure lines such as “Put it in, darling.” Yet we’re never told if she feels pleasure when it is in. Since we’re spared nothing else about her (including her dreams and fantasies), why can’t we know this basic fact? As it is, the affair, which she had long desired, merely creates more problems for Rachel – we get a heavy dose of her doubts, awkwardness, anxiety, etc. She’s not coping at all well with life, but instead of feeling sympathy, I felt annoyance. Laurence, who did such a wonderful job in The Stone Angel, goes overboard with this character. There’s no distancing, just untempered earnestness. With relief I quit reading.

The Tomorrow-Tamer - Margaret Laurence
These stories take place in Africa. In some the main character is British, in others African; in all the cultures interact. But Laurence is a writer of fiction – a good one – so we experience this troubled interaction through people and the situations they’re in. She presents very different ways of seeing the world, but she does it with the non-judgmental attitude of an anthropologist: one way is not right, the other wrong. Laurence is a Canadian, white, but the white characters are no more fully-realized than the black ones. She lived for many years in Somalia and Ghana. You can live in a place and not understand it; Laurence understood. I may have given the wrong impression by using the words “anthropologist” and “culture.” Human feelings are at the core of every story. My favorite is “The Perfumed Sea,” about two highly unusual lovers.

Akenfield - Ronald Blythe
Blythe was a novelist who wrote this sociological study of a small farming village in England, circa the late 1960s. He gives us the words of fifty residents; that’s what the book is, people talking. I’m sure the phrasing of the monologues was altered somewhat, though the minds that emerge are those of distinct individuals. We have insight into a variety of personalities, we get various (and varied) world views. A farm-worker, a wheelwright, a schoolmaster, a blacksmith, a thatcher, a magistrate, a sheep farmer – these are some who come forward to tell their stories. In the older folks there’s a remarkable depth of knowledge about their craft (the jobs involving manual labor are far more complex than I had imagined); also, they have intense pride in their skills. In the young, growing up in a time of mechanization, those qualities – depth of knowledge and pride – are disappearing. Though this is a sociological study, Blythe captures the complexity and scope of life in its two forms – that of the community and that of each of the fifty individuals. He does so in an absorbing and unobtrusive way. But, like so many skilled craftsmen, writers of his caliber are disappearing. It’s sad to think of that; but every bit as sad to think that there’s no one to whom I can give this book – no one is interested in Akenfield or Akenfield. So I’ll close (in resignation) with the last words from the last person to speak – the gravedigger: “I want to be cremated and my ashes thrown in the air. Straight from the flame to the wind, and let that be that.” *

Apartment in Athens - Glenway Wescott
Written in 1945, this is anti-Nazi propaganda. Which is no criticism; we need propaganda in time of war. My gut reaction shows how well Wescott succeeded: I hated Kalter, the German who confiscates the home of a Greek family and ultimately destroys their lives. But the book is more than propaganda. It’s primarily an exploration of the thoughts and emotions of the four member of the Helianos family, particularly the husband and wife. In many ways the marriage of this mismatched couple has been rocky; but, partly due to the stress of their German visitor, the bond between them deepens. Who writes about lovers approaching old age, long-married, aware of the faults of the other, no longer physically attractive, no longer feeling sexual desire? Mr. and Mrs. Helianos are not heroic in a conventional sense, but Wescott has written a book of heroism. What triumphs is simple love. *

Fools of Fortune - William Trevor
The atrocity at the core of this novel is handled with skill. Initially the reader isn’t clear as to what happened, but slowly the facts emerge. More importantly, the human implications grow over time (especially in the way the mother is affected). An act of such destructiveness will never loosen its grip on the victims – it has a life of its own. Trevor is successful with the character of Willie, in a first person narration that makes up the bulk of the book and which covers Willie’s life from boy to young man. But the novel has an unwieldy construction (a common feature of Trevor’s work – one that may have discouraged many readers). Most confusing is that Willie addresses what he’s writing to a “you,” but it takes far too long before we know who “you” is. When she meant something to me I wanted to reread the sections where Willie talks directly to Marianne, but that would mean searching back through the pages. Also, it turns out that we’re reading a letter that was never sent, written by an old man. After the Willie section Marianne becomes the first person narrator. Maybe, in trying to make the voice of a young girl contrast with Willie’s, Trevor overcompensates; she comes across as a bit soppy. Next he presents their child, Imelda, in the third person. Imelda reconstructs the past in her imagination, using scraps of information, but this isn’t convincing; nor is her madness; nor is Willie’s lengthy exile; nor is the idyllic coming together of the lovers in old age. The book sags badly under the weight of too many false turns. I think Trevor felt strongly about this material, and at the end he tried to force his feelings on the reader. That never works.

Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness - Kenzaburo Oe (Japanese)
This book consists of four stories. I couldn’t read more than two pages of the first – it was experimental, very weird, and I hadn’t the energy or inclination to struggle through it. “Prize Stock” was readable and engrossing (and provocative in its depiction of the black airman as an animal – he’s the “prize stock”). It’s raw, gross, primal; when he’s working in this mode Oe hammers at the reader and pitches emotions almost to the point of hysteria (which is what many of his characters feel); but the stridency seemed unwarranted. Two of the other stories concern the event that came to dominate Oe’s life: the birth of his retarded son (call the boy autistic if you wish, but Oe uses much more blunt and cruel terms than “retarded”). Their bizarre premises and awkward plotting make them oddities. I think I’ve read Oe’s masterpiece – A Personal Matter – and I should give up on him.

The Stone Angel - Margaret Laurence
The clarity of the writing of The Stone Angel reinforces my belief that plot obfuscation and stylistic ornamentation are mostly just clutter. Laurence presents Hagar with such honesty and in such depth that she became someone I was emotionally involved with. The novel is framed so that we see an entire life unfold from the perspective of old age (Hagar is ninety). Her determination to be independent – something that she clung to willfully since she was a young girl – is eroded by infirmities; this she cannot abide. Old age is a loss of dignity, a loss of control, a disintegration of body and mind. The petty forms these losses take are shown to be of great importance. How we want to hold onto even our simplest powers! Hagar’s struggle has a nobility; that she loses this struggle is inevitable, but she fights to her last moment. And what of the life behind her? Hagar probably never said, to anyone,“I love you.” Not to her father, her husband, her sons. Much that she did and said was hurtful, critical, harsh. She’s to blame for all the missteps, lost opportunities, and disappointments littering her past. But I could understand her; in her father she had a bad role model, and early on we’re locked into a way of responding to others. During her final weeks she tries to express feelings of compassion (particularly to her beleaguered son), but her attempts are faltering, given grudgingly. She cannot do more, and that’s the tragedy of her life. *