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 Housebreaker of Shady Hill - John Cheever

How good was Cheever? Very good as a prose stylist. The problem is that too many stories are infused with yearning. Yearning for beauty, sexual love, youth. The yearning is elusive; it cannot be satisfied. This theme, when repeated, becomes tiresome. In the worst story of the lot, “O Youth and Beauty,” a wife shoots her drunken husband as he sets out to run the hurdles in their living room (he had once been a star athlete). Unfortunately, I wanted a lot of the people in this collection to be put out of their misery. The best story is the shortest and simplest. In “The Worm in the Apple” the residents of Shady Hill closely observe a happy family; they’re waiting (and hoping) to find the worm at the center of their life. It never appears.

Exile and the Kingdom - Albert Camus (French)

Camus was a philosopher who wrote fiction – and did it very well in The Plague and The Fall. But in most of these stories the philosophical aspect takes precedence. The characters and plot (which is what I value in a work of fiction) are of secondary importance to an overriding Idea – one which often remained obscure to me. I was left feeling detached and unsatisfied.

The Psychiatrist and Other Stories - Machado de Assis (Portugese)

Many of these unique stories dwell exclusively in the mind and emotions; some are about people with obsessions. The long title story is an exploration of sanity. Who is sane, who is insane? By framing those questions from an intriguing perspective Machado succeeds in undermining our standard assumptions. The prose (which was translated by different people) is lovely; I felt as if I were being carried along on a strong river current in the night. But because Machado attempted to capture something so elusive, the experience provided by these stories is limited and fragmentary. I can’t categorize this collection – but Machado always defied categorization.

The River - Rumer Godden

Initially I found this book pleasant enough, but I started to get annoyed. Irritated with little Harriet’s contemplating the Big Issues of Life (she’s a budding writer of great talent). Captain John, with his tragic war injuries and his melancholy presence, struck me as right out of a movie (a young Ronald Colman would be good in the role). Then there was the business about Harriet’s brother and the cobra. How could a reader possibly not know, many chapters before it happened, that the boy would be killed by the snake? Not only were Godden’s situations staged in too obvious a way, but her characters were stagy too.

Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym

Good Pym. She has the ability to involve the reader with her ordinary characters (actually, all people are odd, if one looks at them closely, which this author does). Of the two women, Pym didn’t quite get Prudence; I never believed in her affairs (which weren’t fully explored – how far did she go?). Jane was much more solidly grounded. All the men were vain, selfish and fatuous, and this was unfortunate (come on, Barbara, you can be more fair-minded than that!). Still, no meanness was intended. One of Pym’s strengths was that she knew the sadness and loneliness of life, and how we must cope; she coped by absorbing herself in the harmless occupation of writing quiet, humorous, perceptive novels.

In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin
Well written, but for me a travel book needs a vital human presence at its center. Theroux did this in The Great Railway Bazaar – he was what the book was about, and I found him interesting. Chatwin reveals little about himself. He describes the characters he meets well enough, but they have little affect on him. Also, there’s a lot of filler – facts he researched and presents at length. At the halfway point I decided I didn’t care enough about Patagonia.

The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden
The last third was disappointing. Up to then the book had been an atmospheric evocation of youth and budding womanhood in a delicately-rendered French setting. An expert job. Then Godden launched into the plot (which had been dormant) and things turned melodramatic and silly. Characters I liked I stopped liking. The final insult is the “ending” – actually, Godden just hurriedly wraps things up, leaving many important issues unresolved. Maybe she realized what a shambles her lovely novel had become.

A Woman of Means - Peter Taylor
A very good novella. It’s a psychological study of three people. The father is the weak link – he’s a wooden character. But the boy and his stepmother come across strongly. This is a complex work in which thoughts and motivations are explored in all their tangled and contradictory aspects. But it’s a tribute to Taylor’s exploration that, when the stepmother goes crazy, it’s startling and yet in keeping with all that preceded. We see the seeds of her mental disintegration in what went before (although we may not have recognized it). The novel is static – not much action takes place – but it was engrossing throughout.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote
Holly Golightly is an interesting creation, and because of her this is a mildly diverting novella. Though it got a bit thin, even for its short length, and Capote resorted to makeshift plot twists to keep it going. I didn’t care to read the other stories, though I had previously read the last one, “A Christmas Memory.” Now there’s a gem!