An Academic Question - Barbara Pym

After having years of publication, and with a loyal (though somewhat small) coterie of readers, the swinging seventies engulfed England, and Pym’s type of quiet, humorous novels – mostly about unmarried church ladies – were deemed to be out of date. She experienced fourteen (!) painful years of rejection. But she wrote on, and even tried to make her characters and subjects more in keeping with the times. Question was an abortive effort in that direction – abortive because she wrote two version of it, then abandoned the project altogether. Instead she turned her attention to another novel, one which would be her best: Quartet in Autumn. It was darker than her usual work, and she harbored no hopes that it would find a publisher. But she clearly believed in it. By a serendipitous series of events, Quartet did find a publisher (and was a runner-up for the Booker Prize). Her career was again on track, and some of the novels she wrote during her fallow period were now accepted and enjoyed. The “Pym touch” still had a place in the world. Question, being unfinished, was not part of that initial revival. In her opening Note Hazel Holt writes that she took the two handwritten drafts of the novel and amalgamated them into a coherent whole. Should she have done it? Probably not. Though mildly engaging, marriage and children and an unfaithful husband were not subjects Pym knew firsthand, and the result is a rather tepid, aimless book. When authors decide to drop a project, their wishes should be honored.

The Same Man - David Lebedoff 

The men profiled are two of my favorite authors: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh. I’ve read just about every work of fiction they wrote (nine by Orwell, thirteen by Waugh). This dual biography revealed many facts I didn’t know about Waugh (including why he earned a reputation for cruelty); in the case of Orwell, I had read his Selected Letters, so I was familiar with his personality and his life story. Lebedoff’s prose is smooth, and there’s a gossipy element that was enjoyable (especially in regard to Waugh); but if you aren’t fans of the writers, this book is not for you. As for its title – how could two men be more different? Lebedoff acknowledges that glaring fact, but tries to justify their sameness along sociological grounds: both saw the coming age as a disaster. The last section, in which this premise is belabored, was of little interest to me, and I skimmed. Also, since I appreciated the novels, I wanted a more full discussion of them than I got; since Lebedoff is trying to support his sameness theme, he concentrates on 1984 and Brideshead Revisited, both of which present a bleak view of our present (and future) world. But I consider Brideshead to be Waugh’s weakest novel (a mistake, actually); his best, A Handful of Dust, is mentioned, in passing, three times. Orwell’s non-political work is worth reading; my favorite, Coming Up for Air, is cited once. My advice: try those two.

Pied Piper - Nevil Shute

This isn’t one of Shute’s more inspired outings. Still, he could tell a story, and I stuck around to the end. The plot concerns an elderly Englishman who’s on a fishing trip in France when it’s invaded by German troops; he accepts the responsibility of getting two children to safety in England. The number of children he’s escorting keeps increasing (there’s six by the end), which makes him, I suppose, a pied piper. Midway in his trek (there’s a lot of walking) Mr. Howard is joined by a young French woman who, it turns out, was in love with his son, an RAF pilot killed in the war. The novel was published in 1942, so it must be considered in context: it meant something to the English people at the time. Though Mr. Howard is prohibited by his age to engage in any feats of daring-do, he’s a stiff upper lip type with a firm will. The problem with the novel is that he, and all the other characters, aren’t developed; what they are in the beginning is what they are at the middle and at the end. And the assorted kids didn’t act in a way I found convincing; they accept hardships too complacently. Shute tries to generate feeling for Nicole, the young French woman; she’s likable and resourceful and a good soul – as is Howard – but not much else. The novel seems flat; it needed more complexity in characterization to have resonance. A word about the title. The pied piper of Hamelin lured children, and was an ominous figure bent on revenge. This is certainly not in keeping with the character nor the intent of Mr. Howard.

Vandover and the Brute - Frank Norris

Norris had established a reputation with McTeague and The Octopus, so after his death (at age thirty-two) there was a search for the rumored manuscript of an early novel. Vandover was literally pulled from the ashes of the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and it was published twenty years after Norris had written it. In a Foreword his brother states that it would surely have undergone revision if Frank had been given the opportunity. It needed more than revision – it needed to be re-conceived and rewritten. The novel tells the life story of a privileged man (Harvard, etc.) who has faults: he’s weak-willed, impractical, pleasure-loving, unable to commit to higher goals. But he also has – or so Norris repeatedly tells us – a side to him that’s brutish. But he never shows that Brute in action. Though we’re told that Vandover spends time in houses of ill-repute and associates with low types, we only see him, near the end, engage in a self-destructive gambling binge. Early on he has a sexual relationship with a woman of loose morals; he never forces himself on her, he only does what many young men do. But Vandover will suffer grievously for his shortcomings. In the last half of the book things begin to go downhill, and by the end he’s a financial, physical and emotional wreck. He’s even relegated to episodes in which he’s naked, crawling on all fours, growling like an animal. This doesn’t work artistically, it doesn’t work logically (though, I must admit, it got to me – it was unsettling, even frightening). Now that I’ve criticized the novel, I need to give it some praise. It has life, it moves. And the Vandover I was viewing before his improbable descent was an interesting study. Despite his faults, he was a decent guy, and I liked him. This fact leads me to do some psychoanalyzing of the author. It was Norris who created this sympathetic character. So why was he so brutal toward him? Did he see his own faults in Vandover, and feel the need to exorcize them by punishing a fictional surrogate? There’s another character in the book who’s morally lamentable – lacking in compassion or ethics (qualities that Vandover has). He’s the one who deserves to be punished, but he rises in the eyes of the world. He even has thoughts of rising to the presidency of the country. And who knows – he may get there.

I happened to check the word count of these reviews. I’m over the 200,000 mark (very close to the length of Moby Dick). The history of this undertaking, and my opinions on reviews in general, can be found at Reviewing the Reviews.
I’m disappointed in the lack of readership. I wish a dialogue about books had developed, one stemming from comments that agree or disagree with my opinions. But I realize that readers of literary works are few (especially when those works are from the past and off the beaten track). And, since I’m not writing for a major newspaper or magazine, those few potential readers aren’t aware of the existence of “Jack London.” I persist because it’s become something I do: I read a book, I offer my take on it. In an odd way, this is my autobiography, though it’s a limited one. I began writing these reviews about 15 years ago, so they constitute less than a fourth of my reading life. The feelings of the twelve-year-old boy who was startled by the power of “To Build a Fire” are not represented.

The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead
Elwood is an upstanding high school student who wants a look at the local college where he’ll be taking classes; to get there he hitches a ride, and it turns out that the car he’s in is stolen. A judge sentences him to a reformatory called Nickel Academy. Elwood needs no reforming; but he’s a black boy in rural Florida in the 1960s, and the white judge is apparently not interested in extenuating circumstances. Elwood soon discovers Nickel’s dark secret: brutal beatings, sometimes amounting to intentional murder. Though he obeys the rules, hoping to earn merit points (which can lead to early release), he gets into trouble simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a result he’s pulled out of his bed at night and taken to the “White House.” The prolonged whipping he receives is so severe that he loses consciousness and must spend weeks in the school’s infirmary; he has scars that he’ll carry for the rest of his life. Whitehead is able to create credible characters and situations, and he does so in a prose that’s clear and smooth. Still, as the main protagonist Elwood is one-dimensional. Another boy, Turner, is more complex and thus stronger. By the end of the novel I understood why Whitehead gave Turner such a prominent role. But I have mixed feelings about that ending. Though surprised by the twists and turns, I felt that I was being tricked. I think the novel should have taken a more direct (and less dramatic) line – should have stuck with Elwood and shown him harden into a man who never achieved his potential. In a note at the end Whitehead states that he based Nickel Academy on a real life place: the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Soon after finishing the novel, while TV channel surfing, I came to a station devoted to true crime stories; just as I was about to click the remote I heard the word “Dozier.” At the conclusion of the hour long documentary I was left feeling that Whitehead hadn’t subjected Elwood to the worst that Nickel/Dozier had to offer. After his beating Elwood isn’t left to fester in a tiny, crowded sweat house; he isn’t raped (there was another house devoted to that activity); he doesn’t become a slave laborer. And he isn’t an eight year old child. Dozier was a place of evil, run by evil men (men who never came to justice). And though the majority of inmates were black, there were many white boys at Dozier. The two were strictly segregated, and the whites had better facilities, but all suffered. The unmarked graves contain the remains of both races. What these boys, black and white, had in common was poverty. No middle class or wealthy boys were sent to Dozier. Only the poor.

A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
I’ve read six other novels by Shute, and this is the first one that I abandoned. Things were going quite well when the setting was Malaysia during WWII. Jean is part of a group of women captured by Japanese forces. They’re made to walk from one location to another, ostensibly to find a prison camp where they can stay. No camp is found, and half the women and children die on the trek. Though Jean is the youngest of the group and the only one unmarried, in her quiet way she becomes the link holding them all together. This person who, in daily life, seems to be ordinary, turns out to be extraordinary in a time of extreme hardship. She isn’t depicted as heroic; her qualities are resourcefulness, grit and compassion. The women happen to meet some Australian men who are also prisoners. Jean strikes up a friendship with Joe, and he helps them by pilfering food and medicine. He’s found out, and the Japanese commander has his hands nailed to a tree, and then he’s beaten to death. Jean survives the war, and the novel switches back to England, where she learns that she’s inherited a large amount of money. What follows are many plot twists, some of which were unlikely. After a shift in locale to Australia, the novel becomes a love story. Besides creating strong and appealing female characters, Shute was usually good at depicting love relationships. This one fell flat for me; I found the scenes of intimacy to be awkward. And the intimacy was limited – the Shute Rule against premarital sex was in effect. That this annoyed me may reflect today’s liberal moral climate, but I think that in the 1940s a twenty-seven-year-old woman wouldn’t be as withholding of her favors as Jean is. Overall, I felt the absence of the more down-to-earth character she had been in Malaysia. The side plot – about transforming desolate Willstown into a town like Alice – bored me, so it was time for me to part ways with my old friend Nevil.

Tania - Parmenia Miguel
This is an unlikely book for me to read. It’s a “biography and memoir” of Isak Dineson, a writer I’m not a fan of. But Dinesen was a colorful character, and Miguel is such a good writer that she pulled me into the story. In her short Preface she states that Dinesen feared being misrepresented, particularly by her fellow Danes. She also was afraid of being subjected to Freudian probing. So she asked Miguel to take on the job of writing her biography; and, out of friendship and loyalty, Miguel acquiesced. She states that her approach was to “present a portrait of a Romantic and magical personality, not at all of the twentieth century.” Rather than an effort at dissection, she “opted for a more lyrical interpretation in keeping with Tania’s spirit.” Though at times Miguel takes an adoring attitude to Dinesen, I found myself reading between the lines and seeing someone a good deal less than attractive. Was this Miguel’s intent? And it’s interesting that though the book is based on “many years of visits and interviews,” Miguel appears only once, as “the wife of an American diplomat in Paris.” Yet, though she plays no role in these pages, Miguel seems to have access to her subject’s innermost thoughts. Does this constitute the “memoir” aspect of the title? And in this revealing book much is left unrevealed. Foremost, for me, was Dinesen’s relationships with men. Though she very much wanted men to find her attractive, to fall under her spell (a desire that increased as she grew old and frail), I wondered if this childless woman ever had any sexual relationships. Deny’s was supposedly the love of her life, but what was the nature of their intimacy – was there any intimacy at all? It’s all a bit mysterious – which, oddly, adds to the success of the book. As for the woman who emerges – and Dinesen does emerge – I felt respect for her indomitable nature. And she has some interesting observations to make: “There are three kinds of complete joy in the world: 1) to feel an excess of strength within oneself; 2) to be convinced that one is fulfilling one’s destiny; 3) the cessation of pain.” I wasn’t aware of how famous Dinesen was in her lifetime. This was enormously important to her. And the question arose in my mind: what would have become of her if she had no fame – if she hadn’t fulfilled the destiny she desired? I think her life story would be very bleak indeed. She gave a talk at the Poetry Center in New York, and Miguel describes the scene as she was leaving: “Crowds gathered afterwards on the sidewalk to catch a glimpse of the diminutive teller of tales leaving the auditorium in a wheelchair, swathed in black, her eyes luminous with a sort of trancelike excitement, her arms filled with red roses.”

Pastoral - Nevil Shute
I turn to Nevil Shute’s novels like I would to comfort food. And it’s not junk that I’m consuming – all of the six books I’ve read by him are quality work (with On the Beach being his best). His approach, in both prose and the presentation of plot and characters, is workmanlike; you always understand exactly where you stand. And even when he’s writing about machinery he makes it engrossing. His two themes are hardship and romantic love. In Pastoral the hardship is war. Peter Marshall is a bomber pilot, conducting nighttime raids on Germany. He falls in love with a section officer who relays the radio messages between planes and ground. Peter’s feelings for Gervase intensify a conflict in him. Though he’s a loyal Brit, he’s flown fifty-eight missions, and he doesn’t want to complete the two he has left; he wants to live and love. But the path of love is not a smooth one – he commits to Gervase quickly, she’s reluctant. Too quickly, too reluctant? It seemed so to me. And there’s a touch of sentimentality near the end that I found discordant. Sentimentality is a flaw Shute sometimes fell prey to, but it’s one I can forgive because it stems from his feelings for his characters. When needed, he can write with steady resolve: the two long sections in which he describes bombing missions are masterfully done. What always matters with Shute, even in his lesser attempts, is that he understood the human heart. One scene embodies the reason why so many readers have turned to him. Gervase knows that Peter and his three man crew enjoy fishing, so she pays a visit to an old lady who owns an estate that has a lake stocked with trout. She asks for permission to allow the men to fish there. After a long conversation permission is granted. When Gervase returns to the base someone who doesn’t know she’s already made her visit says, “I wouldn’t go out there, if I were you.” And then he tells her why. The way Shute constructs the scene the reason he warns her off comes as a surprise, and it has a lingering impact.

The Photograph – Penelope Lively
The novel opens with a man finding a photograph in which his deceased wife is holding hands with the husband of her sister. He concludes that an affair had been taking place, and he initiates a search into the infidelity. We go into his mind and that of the sister and her husband. The voices of all three are distinct and strong; we get to know these people. But Kath, the deceased woman, is a shadowy presence; we see her only through the limited perceptions of those others. And we’re never told, until the end, how she died. When it’s revealed I didn’t feel cheated, or that I was being teased (I had a pretty firm idea as to how, one which I believe Lively intended me to have). What matters is why Kath died. But the book is constructed in such a way that it’s those other three who I was involved with and who I understood. A skilled writer like Lively could have found a way for Kath to emerge and speak for herself, but she chose not to. The only insight comes in one of the closing chapters when Mary Packard, a character who had been close to Kath for many years, finally makes an appearance. Mary tells of the Kath she knew, and passes judgment on three people who were dazzled by her beauty but who left the person inside emotionally abandoned. That’s the Why of Kath’s death, though it comes late and indirectly. In opposition to Kath, Lively describes Mary as “one of those rare and perhaps blessed souls who are able to make their way through life without the need to be shored up by companionship, or dependents, or love.” The seventy-year-old author seems to be offering up a formula not for conventional happiness but for immunity from the pain others can inflict on the needy.

Carry On, Jeeves – P. G. Wodehouse
Many upper crust Brits consider Wodehouse to be the greatest comic writer of the century. That would be the early twentieth century, when idle young men could live luxuriously off stipends from wealthy aunts or uncles. This volume has ten stories about Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves. Bertie is a carefree soul who wakes late from a “rather cheery little evening” of fun and games and a quantity of alcoholic drinks and who will spend the next evening in the same manner. He avoids anything that takes much effort or will tax his brain (this includes cultural pursuits). In the ten stories in this volume he or a friend (with names like Corky and Bicky) get into some predicament, and the ever resourceful Jeeves rescues them. Often this involves a disentanglement from a serious relationship with a woman. Bertie has an inventive way with words. When he first meets Jeeves he’s suffering from a hangover, and Jeeves mixes a concoction for him to drink: “For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb in the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right.” He hires Jeeves on the spot. For Evelyn Waugh Wodehouse “has made a world for us to live in and delight in.” I was merely diverted for a while, until the air of frivolity grew stale and the spindly plots seemed repetitive and silly. To please me humor must have substance; these stories are all froth, and halfway though the eighth one I called it quits. Wodehouse was staggeringly productive – he published over ninety books. Also of note is that this quintessentially English writer lived most of his life in the United States; he became an American citizen at age seventy-four. He was knighted just before his death at the age of ninety-three.

I Am Charlotte Simmons – Tom Wolfe
Seventy-three-year-old Tom Wolfe goes back to college. His fictional alma mater is prestigious Dupont, which ranks up there with Yale (which Wolfe attended in 1957). Things have changed drastically since he was a student, so Wolfe begins this novel with thanks to the many young insiders who helped him gather information about present-day conditions on campus. Though I wonder how reliable his sources were, they can’t take the blame for this smarmy novel: all blame falls on Wolfe’s shoulders. His trademark white suit, it turns out, hides a bad case of dandruff (probably the only kind of bodily discharge he doesn’t describe in detail). Charlotte Simmons’ first visit to her dorm’s coed bathroom is a grueling example of male vulgarity at its scatological worst. But are males, even college students, that bad? Are the women as sluttish as Wolfe portrays them to be? Do students speak in what is described as Fuck Patois, in which that word is used as every form of speech? Has sex at the collegiate level become an act indulged in randomly and indiscriminately? (“Sex! Sex! It was in the air along with the nitrogen and the oxygen! The whole campus was humid with it! tumid with it! lubricated with it! gorged with it! tingling with it! in a state of around-the-clock arousal with it! Rutrutrutrutrutrutrutrut – ”) A claim might be put forth that Wolfe is making a moral statement about the immorality on today’s campuses; but, if so, his depiction of life at Dupont would have to bear the stamp of authenticity. And authenticity is what this over-heated novel lacks. What we’re getting is an old man’s fantasy (which would account for the many lingering descriptions of “ripped” male anatomy). The prose is hammered out in a makeshift fashion, and the characters are stereotypes or gross exaggerations. Even the virginal Charlotte Simmons, dumped in the middle of this Sodom and Gomorrah, isn’t developed to the point where she garners sympathy; she serves a merely functional role, as a colorless counterpoint to the rest of the students. My rule is that I must read at least half of a book to review it. I quit a third of the way through this novel, but its so mammoth that I’m making an exception. As for why I got that far, I simply fell victim to the fascination that the repellent offers. And, to give Wolfe a crumb of praise, he still writes with a demented vigor.

The Far Country – Nevil Shute
This novel contains elements basic to a successful love story. First and foremost, the characters must be real, for why else would we care about them? Shute’s portrayal of Jennifer Morton is especially strong; she’s multi-dimensional and appealing. When she’s on a trip to Australia she meets Carl Zlinter, and it’s under dire circumstances. An accident had occurred at a mining camp, and she helps him perform two operations, one the severing of a leg, the other cranial surgery. Jennifer is no nurse; she’s pressed into duty because she’s the only person in the vicinity with clean hands. Carl is a lumberman, but in his native Czechoslovakia he had been a doctor; after WWII he migrated to Australia and had to serve two years as a laborer. The men in the camp call him Splinter, and turn to him for medical care (which, by law, he isn’t allowed to do). So Jennifer and Carl are thrown together, working for twelve hours in an intense situation; an intimacy arises. In the following months their feelings for one another deepen; Shute gives us reasons why they fall in love. And they deserve one another’s love: they’re good people with similar values. Beyond some kisses there are no sex scenes, but it’s clear that they’re made of flesh and blood. We’re left believing that these two will make a good life together. This isn’t a great novel, but it’s a satisfying one. Since there are no major complications, it can be said that Shute approaches the subject of love in simple terms. There are other ways to do it. But many attempts fail because the characters aren’t real and reasons for the depth of feeling which merits the word love are never convincingly developed.

Fortune Is a Woman – Winston Graham
I enjoyed a previous work by Graham, so, despite its silly title, I took a chance on this one. It starts out promisingly, but gradually the promise dissipates. The falling off in potential occurs because Graham wants this to be a mystery/suspense novel, along with a love story, and halfway through he begins to manipulate characters and situations to make the book serve those purposes. Things get very complicated, but I didn’t try to follow the twists and turns because the whole endeavor had become an empty fabrication. The love story was flat, the mystery was based on unlikely convolutions, the action scenes were clumsy. In that previous novel by Graham – The Walking Stick – its main character was authentic – painfully so. If, in Fortune, he had focused on Oliver Branwell’s obsession, this wouldn’t have been a love story, nor would it have been a mystery. It would have been a psychological study. But that’s a complex undertaking. Instead an author can take the easy route – and still be commercially successful – by writing something second-rate like Fortune Is a Woman.

The Possessed – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian)
When I was reading this as a comic novel, for more than half its 700 pages, I thought it was wonderful. Dostoyevsky assembles a cast of people who are twisted in some way – mad, delusional, malignantly manipulative, etcetera – and sets them to work on one another. The book is in the Victorian tradition, complete with set scenes on a grand scale; there’s a Gala held to raise funds for the Aid of Needy Governesses which turns into a fiasco, complete with pratfalls. The melodramatic pot-boiler of a plot (about an undercover attempt to overthrow the whole of society) is run by a ragtag handful of bunglers. Possibly Dostoyevsky was commenting, in a cynical fashion, on the errant tendencies in the Russian character. At any rate, it was vivid, vigorous and entertaining. My first stirring of unease came in a long dialogue Stavrogin has with a priest; it involves a confession and a discussion of faith and the soul and God’s forgiveness. Suddenly we’re in Crime and Punishment territory. This change in tone slowly takes precedence. Dostoyevsky tries to force elements that are comic into a serious mold. The result is still comic, but foolishly so; the book becomes a nonsensical jumble, and two hundred pages from the end I had enough. I truly believe that for much of the book Dostoyevsky was having fun; if I was, how could he not be? Maybe he couldn’t separate himself from his reputation as one who probes into profound matters. Who knows?

Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Cranford is an English village which, Gaskell writes in the first sentence, “is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women.” Yet these Amazons are not warriors; they’re spinsters or widows concerned solely with local matters, and the rare conflicts that take place are conducted with slights and snubs. Cranford began as stories that appeared in the mid-1800s in Household Works, a magazine edited by Charles Dickens. Their quiet charm made them very popular and they were collected to make up this slim volume. Gaskell’s benevolent attitude toward her elderly ladies can become a bit saccharine, but that’s countered by the sly humor she directs at their preoccupation over matters of status and propriety. My enjoyment of the book was probably due in part to what readers long ago found pleasing: it offers escapism. Cranford is a safe retreat from worldly turmoil.

The Breaking Wave – Nevil Shute
This unusual war novel involves a Wren in the British navy who works behind the lines maintaining guns on ships that will take part in the D-Day invasion. Except for one flyover by a German plane, there are no battle scenes. For Janet Prentice war will have a lasting appeal. She’s young, involved in an event with a vital purpose; added to that, she falls in love for the first and only time in her life. But war’s dark side hits her hard. Though she’s unscathed physically, she deals with guilt (involving that flyover by the German plane); she comes to believe that she killed seven innocent men. Shortly afterwards she loses Bill, the man she loves, then her father. She sees their deaths as retribution for her actions, and she conceives the idea that she’s fated to lose five more things she loves. She’s not deranged; in the months before the invasion exhaustion and stress have eroded her emotional resources. When the dog Bill had entrusted to her is crushed by a tank she breaks down. It’s a case of PTSD before that term was in use. The war is over for Janet. She goes through years of caring for others as they die: first her mother, then a distant relative. She repeatedly tries to rejoin the Wrens, but is rejected. Though the bulk of the plot is devoted to her, the first person narrator is Alan, Bill’s brother. The book opens twenty years after the war, with Alan returning home to a sheep ranch in Australia; on the morning of his arrival he learns that his parent’s live-in maid had committed suicide. Her name – or the one she gave them – is Jessie Proctor. What follows, in flashbacks, is Janet Prentice’s story. To make Alan the narrator of this story (he only spent one day with her and Bill) seemed like a dubious contrivance, but it didn’t interfere with my reading because the Janet that emerges is strong and authentic. More so than Alan, who is the other central character. I was disappointed in how Shute wraps things up; I couldn’t accept the final entries in Janet’s diary. In this book you have to take the good with the not-so-good. And the good is not just engrossing, but it goes deep.

Kept in the Dark – Anthony Trollope
In an ideal marriage, by Victorian standards, a wife should be pure as the driven snow, a husband should be a stalwart and benevolent Master. Though these roles are antiquated, what gives this book relevancy today is the fact that jealousy and possessiveness are constants in human nature. Trollope creates a situation which is analogous to a tightening noose. A year before her marriage to George Cecilia was engaged to a charming reprobate; when she began to discern Sir Francis Geraldine’s true nature she broke things off. Then she meets and marries George and they live in conjugal bliss. But Cecilia never tells him of her previous engagement. Though she’s innocent of any wrongdoing, she never summons up the courage to divulge something that she finds distasteful. To further complicate matters, George knows and despises his wife’s former suitor. Sir Francis, with malicious intent, sends George a letter in which he reveals his relationship with Cecilia; he tells no lies, but he implies that he and Cecilia still have a sort of understanding. At first George believes the letter is a complete falsehood; when Cecilia admits that the facts in the letter are true, suspicions arise in George’s mind. How could she have been close to such a despicable man? Why has Cecilia kept him in the dark about Sir Francis? What secret has she been hiding? Distrust and a feeling of being duped consume George, and his response is to institute a complete separation. Though Trollope tries to give George a basis for his emotions, his harshness toward someone he purports to love puts him in a bad light. The two strongest characters are the villains; the book is most alive when Sir Francis and Francesca Altifiorla are in action. Interesting, isn’t it, how evil is more compelling than virtue? This slim volume may have been Trollope’s last work; it was serialized in Good Words magazine in 1882, the same year he died. I read it in a republication as it first appeared (in cliffhanger installments, and complete with typos). As always with Trollope, those readers long ago were rewarded. Not a masterpiece, but a good read in which one forms opinions about the situation and the protagonists.

The Vagabond – Colette (French)
It was Colette’s nature to overdramatize emotions; her fiction, which is based on her life experiences, reflects this aspect of her personality, and I can usually accept her on those terms. But the problem that tarnished this novel’s virtues was my persistent feeling that her first-person narrator was misrepresenting matters. We’re to accept that Renee’s first husband was such a monster that he destroyed her ability to give herself to another man, no matter how perfect he may be. Enter Max. Though at first she keeps this rich and handsome admirer at a distance, she slowly sees him for what he is: kind, considerate, sensitive and ready to marry her and thus end forever her money worries. Finally she concedes that she loves him, but she allows nothing beyond passionate kisses (though she ardently wishes for more). Renee goes on tour with the promise that when she returns she’ll marry Max, but in her letters to him she begins to pull away: “Love is so simple, isn’t it? You never supposed it had this ambiguous, tormented face? We love and give ourselves to each other, and there we are, happy for life, isn’t that it? Ah, how young you are . . .” Of course (to the delight of Erica Jong, who considered this to be “the first and best feminist novel”) Renee chooses the shabby life of a vagabond performer; at least she will retain her independence. And though she will experience solitude, she has the proud consolation of enduring it. I simply didn’t buy any of this, starting with the monster (after all, Renee was in her twenties when she married a notorious womanizer; how naive a victim could she be?). And would a worldly thirty-three year old woman who is fearful of aging and losing her physical charms act like a virginal tease toward a man she loves? As for solitude, why does a lesbian with an “indefinable attraction” make an appearance near the end? Colette gave us not the truth but glossy romanticization. This is evident in the overblown prose: “Ah, how long shall I not thirst for you upon my road!” This comes from the final letter Renee writes to Max. Lucky fellow, Max.

A Bell for Adano –John Hersey
It took a while, but my good will toward this novel slowly ebbed, and then turned to animosity. In his Foreword Hersey states that “Major Victor Joppolo, USA, was a good man” and he closes with “We have need of him. He is our future in the world.” Joppolo is in charge of an Italian town recently liberated from Nazi control. The citizens of Adano come to love this just and compassionate man who embodies, in his decisions, the ideals of democracy. The novel is written in a simple, clear style and is cinematic in that scenes are presented with the minimum of words (often in the form of dialogue). I was on board – until some problems began nagging at me. The Italians are persistently portrayed as childish and overly emotional. The worst example comes in a mass panic over a false “gas attack,” when only Joppolo’s calm intervention stops the flight of the fearful mob. Hersey is treating these people – war survivors – as comic figures. And, in a roundabout way, he allows free rein to a contemptuous attitude. Joppolo is always respectful in his speech and actions, but the other American soldiers are a foul-mouthed bunch who consider the young women of Adano to be subjects of lewd speculation, and they routinely refer to the Italians (often in their presence) as “wop” and “dago.” The straw that broke it for me came in the chapter in which we get the story of how Giorgio died. It was so mishandled, so overwrought, so damn false that I abandoned the book in mid-sentence. Bell would win the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. Apparently Hersey gave the judges – and the American public – the stereotypes and platitudes they wanted at the time.

Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
The title story of this collection is by far the best (at least of those I read). A recently widowed father visits his married daughter in Seattle. She has one child and is expecting another. She’s quite willing for her father to move in with her (a tradition in Indian households) and her non-Indian husband (who is away on a business trip) is fine with that idea. But the father is satisfied with his life in a condo in Pennsylvania; he enjoys taking package tours to Europe, and on one he met a woman he starts a relationship with (something he doesn’t want to disclose to Ruma). We’re in the minds of daughter and father, switching between them, and it turns out that Ruma is the one who is lost, needy, dissatisfied; there’s no specific reason given for her discontent, but it comes across as real. During his stay her father asserts his independence; he prepares his own meals and he starts a garden; when he leaves he drives himself to the airport in a rental car. Lahiri has presented us with two character studies in which she gets the feelings of both people right, and she doesn’t try to expand the story beyond its natural limits – it’s complete unto itself. These virtues are missing to some degree in the other four I read. “A Choice of Accommodations” was the worst of the lot. Two unappealing and uninteresting characters meander about emotionally and wind up nowhere (actually, on a bed in a vacant dorm room, in a ridiculous scene). The prose in all these long and ambitious pieces is precise and complete in a dutiful way. I think Lahiri tries very hard, in a dutiful way, to be a great writer. But, for me, her problem has to do with conception – knowing her characters and recognizing where they’re going. That accounts for why I left three stories unread.

Stones for Ibarra – Harriet Doerr
It came as no surprise that the events depicted in these interconnected stories closely parallel those of the author and her husband. In a way, this is a book about death: in the second sentence we learn that doctors have given Richard Everton six more years to live. He has decided to spend that time reviving the fortunes of his grandparents, who owned a copper mine in a remote part of Mexico. He and his wife (from whose point of view we get the story) give up their life in San Francisco and head into the unknown. What they find are the ramshackle remains of a once-grand house. They are resourceful and determined and slowly the house is made into a pleasant place and the mine is again producing. So life in Ibarra works out for the Overtons. But the bulk of the book is not devoted to them. What we get is an honest portrayal of a town and its people, especially their way of thinking and their world view. Chapters are devoted to various characters (such as the unscrupulous Chuy Santos and his red taxi). When Doerr turns to personal issues she does so in an understated, muted way. The major emotion Sara deals with is her sense of doom as she watches the deteriorating condition of her husband. When Sara goes to a nearby town and waits her turn to make a phone call to a doctor in the states, her anxiety is effectively conveyed by having her sit, observe others and count off the minutes. The restraint works here because we’re in Sara’s mind, so intimacy is built in. But it extends to Richard, and as a result he seems to be partially in the shadows. Maybe too much in this book is left unrevealed. What we do get is a mood: the hushed stillness of loss.

The Chequer Board – Nevil Shute
Shute was a born storyteller. Despite all sorts of problems with this novel, it held my attention for almost four hundred pages (and there was even a kick at the end). As for those problems: clumsy construction, overly-long episodes, a somewhat saccharine message. The prose is workmanlike, but that’s okay with me as long as an author gets the emotions right, which Shute does. John Turner is beginning to experience neurological problems stemming from a WWII wound (a shard of metal was embedded in his brain). The doctor’s prognosis is grim: he has less than a year to live. Turner, who takes things impassively, says, “It’ll all be the same in a hundred years.” But he does give thought to how to spend his last months; he tells his wife that there are a few things he needs to clean up. He recalls being in a hospital ward with three other men whose plane was strafed by a German Jerry. The copilot was the only one who wasn’t in trouble with the authorities. Turner was wanted for black market dealings, a paratrooper was up for murder outside a London pub, and an American Negro soldier was to be tried for rape. Since Turner’s eyes are bandaged, the other three are told to read to him, or just talk, and a relationship of sorts develops. It’s these three men that Turner sets out to find – to see how they got on. And how they got on makes up the novel. One character is given the lion’s share of attention – Shute can’t seem to let go of any detail of the pilot’s story. That leaves much less space for the other two (the paratrooper gets the short shrift). As for the message, it’s that one’s color doesn’t matter. But Shute’s approach is simplistic in that all the black soldiers stationed in an English town are noble souls while the Southern whites are virulent racists. When a writer stacks the deck, I resist being pushed in one direction. Still, I liked Turner; I liked the other two men (I never got to know the paratrooper); I liked how Turner and his wife renew their feelings for one another. And I liked the ending, which deftly brings it all full circle.

The Nun – Denis Diderot (French)
Suzanne is sent to a convent as a postulant; though she’s a devout Catholic, she has no religious vocation, so for her the place is a prison. She resists taking her vows, but is forced to do so by her parents. Later she resorts to legal means to be released. Her actions make her a pariah, and the Mother Superior and her minions inflict punishments that would warm the heart of any sadist. Later Suzanne is transferred to a different convent, where the new Mother Superior is a flaming lesbian. Innocent Suzanne doesn’t understand the overtures being made to her, nor the raptures that the Mother Superior goes into during their “petting” sessions. At this point a polemic had shifted into a lurid potboiler, and I quit reading. I had also begun to question Diderot’s motives. The novel is in the form of a letter Suzanne writes to a Marquis (in order to enlist his help). She states in the opening paragraph that she writes “with neither skill nor artifice, but with the naivety of a young person . . .” Actually, she writes like an intelligent and sophisticated man named Diderot; Suzanne is little more than a victim of the deprivations and tortures he inflicts on her. I don’t know of the conditions in convents in the mid-1700s; maybe they did twist women into monsters. Maybe Diderot was passionately opposed to repression. He states that “I do not think a more terrifying satire of convents has ever been written.” But satire uses irony, sarcasm and wit; this novel is devoid of any of those qualities (unless you find the lesbian Mother Superior’s swooning to be funny). It’s interesting to note that in order to avoid trouble with the authorities Diderot didn’t attempt to publish the book in his lifetime. So where’s the dedication to a cause? In the mid-1960s it was made into a film, which was promptly banned by the French government; in the ensuing scandal, those Catholics who found it blasphemous were pitted against free thinkers. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m sure the sensationalism of Diderot’s novel was fully exploited. Lastly, regarding the “new translation” by Russell Goulbourne. Shouldn’t prose written nearly two hundred years ago retain an archaic tone? Only the overly-pure heroine’s overwrought emotions give the book a dated aspect. That and the gothic cruelties.

A Web of Lace – Pascal Laine (French)
A choppy style: “There was a square in that village. Where the roads crossed. The main road had the right of way. The church was in the square. The war memorial and benches for sitting.” Authorial intrusion: “They can’t surface from that deep silence. And a novel’s shallow, not like them. So, they flit across the page, Pomme and her mother.” The butterfly of elusiveness is what Laine tries to capture. Aimery, a young student, falls in love with Pomme, and she with him; but, like the author, Aimery is unable to comprehend her innermost nature. She’s one of those beings who submit to life without words; since she doesn’t express what she feels, Aimery begins to wonder if she feels at all. When he breaks with her (she’s cleaning the room they share – she’s comfortable with objects, with doing things) she puts down her Ajax and says “Good. I suppose I knew it.” Then he observes as “She squeezed out the sponge and wiped her hands. She didn’t object, she didn’t cry. It wasn’t what he imagined, exactly. He’d hoped to get a bang out of it, sort of. Into the bargain, as it were. Instead, the resentment came back, even greater. The girl was some sort of brute.” Of course, there’s nothing brutish about Pomme, and though they part she will remain a presence that forever stays with Aimery. As for the title of the English edition, I prefer the French one: The Lacemaker. “Pomme’s short hands raced like crazy when she knitted. But the knitting didn’t detach itself from her. It didn’t break that unity she’d got. Whatever she did she was part of it.”

The Rainbow and the Rose – Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute is commonly classified (or dismissed) as a “master storyteller.” He’s that, and more. In this novel, as in others by him that I’ve read, he gets his people right, and the subject that he’s most interested in is the many-faceted concept known as love. His approach is solid, matter-of-fact, but he can be innovative; in Rainbow he pulls off a remarkable switch in first person narrators. Ronnie Clark is trying to fly a doctor to the site where a pilot named Johnnie Pascoe crashed his plane while on a rescue mission. Ronnie’s first attempts to land fail due to the rough terrain and bad weather, but he’s determined to try again the next day. Since there’s no place for him to spend the night, Ronnie stays at Johnnie’s house – he wears Johnnie’s pajamas, sleeps in his bed. And he dreams. In his dreams we morph into a new narrator: Johnnie Pascoe. This switch is not done with a touch of the supernatural, nor is it explained. Nor did I question it (I merely noted how close the two men’s first names were). We’re in Johnnie’s mind, experiencing his relationships with three women when he was twenty, thirty-five and fifty-nine. That lasting love eludes Johnnie makes this the story of a man who never got life’s tender blessings, but whose back was never bowed. Because of its wistful, meditative quality, the book struck me as a kind of summing up. And, indeed, it was written in 1958 (Shute died in 1960, at age sixty). I haven’t yet read his last novel – Trustee from the Toolroom. I have read On the Beach, which came out just before Rainbow; in that book Shute handled intimate relationships with more restraint. Though he knew that it’s better to evoke feelings rather than state them, he sometimes says too much when dealing with Johnnie. He can be forgiven for this misstep, for it arises out of his attachment to the man. If Ronnie becomes Johnnie, Nevil was Johnnie.

The Jewel in the Crown – Paul Scott
On page one Scott writes “This is the story of a rape . . .” In a broad sense, it’s the story of the Indian struggle for independence, and this hugely complex subject is presented in a way that’s intelligent and fair. But a rape is the focal point from which all else spirals out; this makes the final hundred pages, a journal in which Daphne Manners tells what happened in Bibighar Gardens, essential to the book’s success. It’s here that Scott flounders badly. His first person voice is definitely not that of a young woman. And there’s no reason for Daphne to write an overly-detailed narration of events, which is what Scott has her doing. In her lack of substance she stands in stark contrast to the others who preceded her. The intense feelings she expresses – such as her love for Hari Kumar (unsupported by one scene in which the two share emotional intimacy) – don’t emanate from a real person but come across as words written on the page by an author. An author who was clearly struggling. The dramatic approach Scott had utilized throughout – that of telling his story by delving into the inner lives of a variety of characters – worked brilliantly in the opening chapter. He gets Miss Crane right, as he does many others, only to get the last, crucial person all wrong. Because of this I can’t – as I had planned to do – praise a book that has many virtues. This is especially painful since Scott was clearly aiming for greatness; Jewel is the first installment of a two thousand page epic called The Raj Quartet. In an effort to soften this negative review I’ll close by recommending his last novel – a short, two-character piece called Staying On. In that one he got everything right.

On the Beach – Nevil Shute
This book’s message, regarding the danger of proliferation of nuclear weapons, surely had impact in 1957, but time has lessened the relevance of that issue. What still matters are the dual love stories. The feelings that Peter and Mary Holmes and Dwight Towers and Moira Davidson have for one another are more than credible – they’re meaningful. The novel also has aspects that give it a thought-provoking depth. Sensible, sane people exist on two levels: they accept the fact that they will soon die, but they carry on with plans for the future. Captain Towers buys presents to give to his wife and children, who have long ago perished in the dead zone that is the North American continent; Mary begins planting a garden which she will never see; in the last weeks left to her Moira begins taking a secretarial course. The effect of this oft-repeated dichotomy in the characters’ thinking is to give the so-called “little” things in life their rightful significance. These people are ordinary, decent folks, but – like those little things in life – their decency is elevated so that it’s all-important. Also thought-provoking is Dwight’s refusal to give himself to Moira, which is something she wants with all her heart; he chooses to remain faithful to his wife. He rescued Moira from an alcoholic blur – his influence makes her carry on with dignity – and she appreciates what he has done for her. She also knows that she has meant a lot to him, for he tells her so in a beautiful way. But still . . . She dies alone, with a bottle of brandy as her only companion. Is she the tragic figure in all this? On the Beach is not a sophisticated piece of writing, but my total involvement with four people made it a moving experience. Nevil Shute took the subject of impending death to write a novel about life. *

Please Pass the Guilt – Rex Stout
The first Nero Wolfe mystery I read – Fer-de-lance – was the first one Stout wrote. Guilt was next to last in the series, written when the author was eighty-seven. Though there’s a separation of forty years between the two, this outing has one of the strengths present from the beginning: Archie is still jaunty. My problem concerns the murder Wolfe is trying to solve. Two men are vying for the presidency of a corporation; one keeps a bottle of bourbon in the drawer of his desk. Before a crucial meeting his opponent sneaks into his office with some LSD, planning to spike the bourbon; instead a bomb in the drawer blows up, killing him. All this seems ridiculous. Using LSD to disable a person is a hare-brained idea. And where did the bomb come from? Either the culprit who planted it had expertise in bomb-making (highly unlikely, given the suspects) or he/she purchased it (a tricky proposition). Also, since it would take time to rig a bomb in a drawer, they would need prolonged access to the office of a senior executive. Wolfe’s intelligence is the basis of these mysteries, so to offer up a stupid premise (the problems I’ve cited are never addressed) is to undermine the whole enterprise. I was after a simple diversion, but this didn’t fill the bill. The abrupt ending indicates that Rex Stout had run out of patience and just wanted to be done.

The Perfect Stranger – P. J. Kavanagh
This book is well-written and unabashedly autobiographical, but the author never fully animates himself. It’s interesting that Kavanagh, at the halfway point, interjects a piece he wrote when he was twenty: “I give the story now as I wrote it then, because it is true to how I felt at the time, the disconnectedness.” What follows is an account of a war experience. It’s unreadable, but before I quit I came across sentences like this: “Please God make me a human being.” The author notes that, after this segment, “. . . the rest of the book is the story of a rescue; and you can only measure the size of a rescue if you know how badly it is needed.” We’re to believe that a person who lacks something vital will be transformed. I didn’t buy that, nor did I care; a flat character just isn’t interesting. When I checked Stranger out from the library I thought I was getting a novel by the Kavanagh who wrote Tarry Flynn, which was also autobiographical but was brimming with life. My mistake – two different authors altogether.