Cluny Brown - Margery Sharp

Twenty-year-old Cluny is described by her uncle, with whom she has lived all her life, as being “plain as a boot.” But when we get to know her she displays a buoyancy that’s engaging (she even bounds when she walks). She’s an original, a free spirit without a hint of artifice. In an early chapter a woman the uncle talks to in the park gives him a piece of advice: “I think your niece sounds exceptionally charming. You mustn’t suppress her, you must help her to develop. She may be a really special personality.” This appraisal is right on target; but rather than be developed, Cluny’s adventurous nature is stifled while she’s living with her stodgy uncle. When she’s sent to work as a servant at a country estate new worlds open for her. Sharp recognized that Cluny alone couldn’t carry the novel, so she introduces a half dozen well-drawn characters (and not a villain among them). Love is in the air, romances bloom, including one for Cluny. But the events at the end, though they have an engaging sprightliness, aren’t convincing. I think the author cared so much about her creation that, like a fairy godmother, she simply waved a magic wand and blessed Cluny with an exciting life. I can’t really blame her.

The Feast of Lupercal - Brian Moore

Moore traces the evisceration of Mr. Devine (Dev), a master at a Catholic boy’s school in Belfast. Thirty-seven years old, he’s still a virgin, though fairly content with his drab, solitary life. That life is soon to be in turmoil. He’s in a stall in the school’s men’s room when he overhears a teacher refer to him as an “old woman” with no knowledge of how a fellow could feel about a girl. Dev is stung by these words; when he meets twenty-year-old Una she seems responsive to his tentative advances, and he’s emboldened to pursue her. This awkward “romance” results in disasters raining down upon Dev; at the end he’s in the same situation he was in the beginning, but inside he’s shattered beyond repair. No longer will he accept his lot in life, but never again will he attempt to make intimate contact with a woman. This is a desolate, relentless, grimy book. Though Dev is someone I understood, I wasn’t moved by his emotional destruction because Moore doesn’t make him an appealing person. At Saint Michan’s School the cane rules (the scenes of beatings are appalling), and Dev wields his with gusto; he sees the boys as ugly, vicious lumps. In other ways he’s a mild man, not a bad sort. He rises up to display defiance at the end, but it’s short-lived and too late. Hanging over the characters (like a cane about to descend) is the harsh and repressive Catholicism prevailing in Belfast in the1950s. Moore condemns a society that twists people’s natures into grotesque shapes. I felt that the only response to such a place would be to violently rebel against it or to leave it (which is what the author chose to do).

Night and Silence Who Is Here? - Pamela Hansford Johnson

This novel’s lugubrious and obscure title is inappropriate and its subtitle, “An American Comedy,” is a misrepresentation. The author brings together a group of over-the-top eccentrics at a New England college. But colorful eccentrics behaving oddly aren’t funny per se, not if they have no substance nor a coherent plot to provide a basis for their actions. Things move along with a dogged joie de vivre as Johnson tries, in prose that sparkles too brightly, to make her characters cavort about, to be funny, funny, funny. Forced zaniness never works. As for Who Is Here?, I wasn’t, not for long; I made a quiet exit from a party that was turning out to be a flop.

Thurber Country - James Thurber

Early on Thurber did some excellent work, but at a point in his career everything he wrote – even if it was bad or indifferent – got published by The New Yorker, where he was employed. He got lazy – or at least I attribute the “tossed off” quality of these twenty-five pieces to laziness. Only nine had any merit. In this collection of prose his idiosyncratic drawings, in which he can capture an expression with a minimum of lines, are the high points.

The Unspeakable Skipton - Pamela Hansford Johnson

In an opening note Johnson states that she had “always wanted to write a study about an artist’s paranoia.” Skipton is a writer. I didn’t see a paranoid individual, though he’s certainly deranged. He has delusions of grandeur (he believes he’s a genius of the highest order); he’s arrogant – abusively so – and his heart festers with an overabundance of hatred. Since his writing isn’t appreciated by a world of fools, most of the novel concerns his machinations to get money. He’s an artist starving in the garret – literally. People (for whom he has extreme distaste) interest him only as potential sources of income, and he resorts to pimping, blackmail and thievery so he can buy food and pay his rent. This sounds grim, but it’s not. Not as Johnson presents it; she even manages to sustain a comic tone. The writing is topnotch – lively, sometimes moving with headlong impetuosity. The characters Skipton interacts with are a colorful group and Bruges, Belgium is a wondrous setting. By the end – even though I was in the mind of a warped and unsavory person – I felt pity for Skipton. In order to convey pity I suppose Johnson also felt it. I hope she did; poor souls such as Skipton meet with enough derision in their lives. *

King Solomon’s Mines - H. Rider Haggard

A rip-roaring yarn. Close escapes from the jaws of death, monstrous villains, an epic battle that rages over several chapters, a fabulous treasure. Throughout the exotic and gory events Allan Quartermain, the narrator, remains down-to-earth and unheroic (he even admits that he’s a bit of a coward). His solid presence provides a needed balance to the high drama. Haggard knew Africa and its people well. I was interested in how a Victorian colonialist would depict the natives. He grants them a condescending respect, sometimes even admiration, but they’re not the equal of an Englishman. Good as it is, the book’s ideal audience is the young; if I had read it when I was twelve it would have knocked my socks off.

The Eye - Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)

This long short story was fated to fail; its premise is too unwieldy. Yet Nabokov uses smoke and mirrors to fashion a rickety plausibility. He plays with the idea of a person viewing himself from outside himself – being merely a disembodied eye. The eye constantly sees the contempt and indifference the world has for him. In this outing Nabokov’s cruelty is tempered; in his Foreword he refers to his character as “poor” Smurov, and I wonder if he could relate to him; the parade of indignities he subjects Smurov to have a masochistic quality (was young Nabokov rankled by the lack of recognition for his writing?). At the end Smurov retreats into the realm of the imagination. He insists that he has found happiness there; in dreams he can possess the woman he loves. His last (and pitiable) words: “What more can I do to prove it, to proclaim that I am happy? Oh, to shout it so that all of you believe me at last, you cruel, smug people . . .”