Harriet Devine's Blog

Cover Her Face

About a month ago I read PD James's most recent novel, Death Comes to Pemberley, and was a little bit lukewarm about it. And now here we have PD James's very first novel,  which I picked up recently in a charity shop. Amazingly enough it was published in 1962, which is exactly 50 years ago. Equally amazing is the fact that, having been born in 1920, Baroness James was 42 years old before her remarkably successful career got off the ground. Inspiring or what?

Actually I have to admit I was a little bit lukewarm about this one too. It's quite a conventional story in the sense that it takes place in a medieval manor house and has a limited selection of suspects, most of them family members. The house belongs to the well-to-do Maxie family, parents and two adult children, Stephen and Deborah. This being the 1960s, there are also servants -- an elderly housekeeper and a young woman, Sally Jupp, who is an umarried mother with a baby son. Sally has come to the house from the nearby 'Refuge for Girls', whence she has been sent when her pregnancy became known. She is an attractive though not very likeable young woman, and the whole household is shocked when she announces to the assembled company at a dinner party that she has been proposed to by Stephen Maxie. Shortly afterwards she is found strangled in her bed. Who did it? Everyone seems to have some kind of motive, but it is up to the detective, none other than Adam Dalgleish, to weave his way through the thickets of deception and reveal the truth. Of course there are plenty of red herrings, but no massive surprises here, and in fact the final denouement seemed a little weak to me. 

I've read quite a number of PD James's later novels and enjoyed them a good deal. This one seemed very much like an apprentice piece to me -- conventional in plot and also in structure, with Dalgleish calling the whole cast of characters together in the final chapter and going through them one at a time till he reached the real perpetrator -- all very Poirot-esque. I suppose you've got to begin somewhere and this is by no means a bad start, just not the most exciting one. At least it knocks 1962 off my Century of Books!

Hard Times

After my recent re-read of Great Expectations I found myself still hungry for more Dickens and this was the one I chose. It was another re-read, and I also saw a rather good adaptation of it at Theatre Clywd  in Wales a few years ago. It happens to be Dickens' shortest completed novel, at only 104, 821 words (you can see all the word lengths here on normblog), so less than a third of the size of most of the others, though that's not why I chose it. It was also the last he finished before his rather shockingly early death. I haven't been reading the biographies though everyone seems to be raving about the latest one by Tomalin, so I can't make any wise remarks on his state of mind at the time, but it did strike me as a deeply tragic novel, with very few, if any, of the splashes of comedy that you find in many of the earlier works.

Hard Times is set in the industrial north of England, in a city Dickens calls Coketown. Wikipedia thinks it is based on Preston, though I've heard Bolton also suggested. Whatever -- it is in fact the only one of Dickens' novels not to be set in London. The point of the setting is to allow Dickens to address the very poor working conditions in the northern factories, and the shockingly uncaring attitude of the capitalist factory owners, who treat their workers appallingly and deal with any attempt to protest as a sign that they want 'to feast on turtle soup and venison, served with a golden spoon'. The bosses come off very badly here as uncaring and morally corrupt, but the unions are portrayed as equally unpleasant and blinkered. 

The cast of characters is small -- very much so for Dickens -- and centres around the family of Thomas Gradgrind who, at the start of the novel, is the local schoolmaster. Gradgrind's system, which he imposes on his own children as well as those in the school, is one of pure reason. Facts are Gradgrind's obsession -- 'Now what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of service to them' -- and he firmly suppresses any sign of imagination or the life of the heart. This quotation is how the novel begins, and the rest of the story demonstrates the terrible wrongness of Gradgrind's view and its disastrous effect on his two eldest children, Louisa and Tom. Tom is living proof that his father is mistaken in his belief that Facts will instill a moral sense, and turns very much to the bad, while beautiful Louisa, deeply emotionally confused, obeys her father's wishes and marries the appalling banker Bounderby. Many years her senior, Bounderby is fond of describing his dreadful childhood, his drunken grandmother and his desertion by his mother -- happily, towards the end of the novel, he will be confounded and proved to be a liar. Bounderby's housekeeper, Mrs Sparsit, is a wonderful character -- well born and proud of it, she has slipped down the social scale but has ambitions to marry Bounderby who she nevertheless despises as a 'noodle'. She makes Louisa's life miserable, and takes great delight in always referring to her as Miss Gradgrind, but her attempts to bring her disgrace backfire is a very satisfactory way (for the reader, but definitely not for Mrs S.)

These are the bosses, but the workers also have a part to play. Central to this is the story of Stephen Blackpool, a factory hand. Married at a young age to a woman who turned to drink and makes his life a misery, Stephen is devoted to beautiful, calm Rachel, but cannot marry her because his lack of money makes divorce an impossibility. Stephen must be one of the most unlucky and put-upon characters in English literature -- ostracised by his fellow workers because he refuses to join in a strike, falsely accused of a theft at the bank, he is no sooner on the brink of being vindicated when he falls down a disused mineshaft and dies of his injuries. I literally sobbed the other night when I was reading the account of his death, just as I had when I saw it in the theatre, much to the embarrassment of my teenage son. 

This is a novel with very little in the way of a happy ending. Louisa escapes her marriage and returns to her father but will not remarry even after Bounderby's death -- Tom is exiled to America where he dies ignominiously -- Gradgrind sees the folly of his system but also must regret its effect on his children. Only Sissy Jupe, the circus girl adopted by Gradgrind, is allowed a happy marriage and a contented family life. Dickens apparently said he wanted to 'strike the heaviest blow in my power', and you can see what he meant. But for me this is a truly wonderful novel and I loved every minute. Now, what next -- I want still more Dickens but can't decide which. Maybe Dombey and Son, another old favorite?

 

Woman Reading by the Harbour

Painted by James  Tissot (1836-1902), a French painter who spent a good many years living in London. You've certainly seen some of his paintings before -- they often feature beautifully dressed young women and are very charming.

The Big Sleep

You couldn't get much more evocative than this cover, could you. The picture doesn't actually represent the edition I've been reading, which is a three-in-one volume from Everyman's Library, but I couldn't resist the wonderfully noir-ish photo here. For this is, of course, a wonderfully noir-ish novel by the master of the genre. 

Born in America, but educated in England at the prestigeous Dulwich College, Raymond Chandler published this, his first novel, in 1939, when he was over forty years old. He'd been writing  for years -- reviews, short stories, even poetry -- but it's in this novel that his wonderful prose style found an outlet that brought him success and a great deal of admiration from other writers in particular -- 'he writes like a slumming angel', said Ross D MacDonald, one of the many crime writers whose work shows the influence of Chandler. 

You may well have read this, or seen the 1946 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but in case you haven't -- Philip Marlowe, a private eye in 1930s Los Angeles, is invited to a large mansion where he meets General Sternwood, a dying millionaire. Sternwood is concerned about his younger daughter Carmen, who appears to have run up large gambling debts, and asks Marlowe to investigate. While there he also meets Vivien, Carmen's older sister, who thinks the General may want him to find her husband, Rusty Regan, who has recently disappeared. Marlowe is soon plunged into a seedy underworld of gangsters, purveyors of indecent books and photos, and photographers who drug underage girls before photgraphing them naked. Several deaths and much secrecy and double-crossing later, Marlowe gets to the heart of the matter and, at the end, does his best to make sure the person responsible is taken care of in the best possible way under the circumstances.

The plot is very complex and at times almost confusing, or at least demanding of attention to follow its twists and turns. But what makes this novel so hugely enjoyable is the marvellously vivid picture it gives of the depraved underworld of post-depression California, with its gambling dens, drug addicts, wealthy nymphomaniacs and crime rings. Marlowe himself, despite an addiciton to alcohol, is basically a good guy with a strong moral sense and an attractive ability to see his own failings. But above all what I enjoyed here was Chandler's wonderful prose.

This room was too big, the ceiling was too high, the doors were too tall, and the white carpet that went from wall to wall looked like a fresh fall of snow at Lake Arrowhead. There were full-length mirrors and crystal doodads all over the place. The ivory furniture had chromium on it, and the enormous ivory drapes lay tumbled on the white carpet a yard from the windows. The white made the ivory look dirty and the ivory made the white look bled out. The windows stared towards the darkening foothills. It was going to rain soon. There was pressure in the air already.

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise longue with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stockings.  They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony and sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem. She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. Her head was against an ivory satin cushion.

This was my second read of The Big Sleep and I loved every minute. Next up is Farewell My Lovely, but I'm spreading these novels out with other things sandwiched in between. Highly recommended.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

A couple or so years ago it seemed that everyone was reading this novel, which for me is often a good reason not to, and I didn't. But when it fell into my hands in a charity shop recently it seemed that its time had come. I remembered it having been generally praised to the skies, and that makes one wary, but apart from that I didn't have much of an idea what was in store.

So -- did I like it? Yes I did. I'm not sure it will make it to my best of 2012, but it was a fascinating and absorbing read. People seem to describe Jackson as a writer of gothic fiction, though I'm not entirely sure what exactly that means, and it's not a term that draws me in. I would describe it as a powerful portrait of a disturbed psychology. Mary Katherine Blackwood --Merricat -- tells the story here, and so everything that happens, and has happened, is told through her obviously skewed perspective. She's not exactly an unreliable narrator, as she is rather frighteningly honest about her views of the people and the world which surround her, but she does not disclose everything she knows and indeed there are crucial facts which we are left to guess at even when one important fact has been revealed (or rather, I would say, confirmed).

Merricat is eighteen. She lives in a large and beautiful mansion in a small New England town with her older sister Constance and her aged and disabled Uncle Julius. Six years ago the rest of her family died, all on the same day, all poisoned by arsenic, an event for which Constance was tried but eventually acquitted. Since then the three survivors have shut themselves away, though Merricat goes to town once a week to shop. This is a terrible ordeal for her, as the townspeople mock her and abuse her as she goes through the town, and she harbours a tremendous hatred for them as a result. Much of her life is lived in a fantasy world and she tries to control events by rituals of her own invention, burying objects or hanging them in trees, investing certain words and actions with tremendous power, creating safe spaces where she and her cat can take refuge. By this means she manages to control her world, but everything is thrown into disarray with the arrival of Cousin Charles, an impoverished relative with designs on Constance and on the large sums of money hidden in the family safe. Merricat's attempts to dispel his malign influence eventually bring disaster, though ironically the breach between the sisters and the rest of the town is partially healed as a result.

This is certainly a brilliantly achieved novel. OK, the revelation towards the end must surely have been guessed by most readers long before, but the focus is rather on what it reveals about Constance and Merricat's relationship than anything world-shaking in terms of the plot. If as I suspect Shirley Jackson's other novels are rather along the same lines I can't say I'm impelled to rush out and get another one -- she seems to me to be a writer best taken in small doses. But if you haven't read this one, please do so before too long -- it's well worth it.

Interesting enough there was a review a few days ago by another blogger coming late to the novel -- the very perceptive Claire of Captive Reader. Her reaction differs from mine -- have a look and compare. If you've read it, which of us do you agree with? 

 

A Century of Books update

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I'm following Simon's Stuck in a Book project of reading a book for every year of the 20th century. Here's the first update. So far I've read three and have another on the go.

And here's the list of dates -- I shall add the books when I have read them. So far I've read three and have a fourth on the go.

1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935 Storm Jameson, Love in Winter
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950  
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962 Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991 Josephine Hart, Damage
1992
1993
1994
1996
1997
1998 
1999

 

 

Woman Reading by a Table

A couple of weeks ago I showed you a lovely painting by the Danish artist Carl Holsoe (1863-1935) and promised you some more of his work. So here's another of his beautiful, delicate portraits, though I don't know what this one is called.

Untying the Knot

I'm never sure how attentively anybody examines the front page of my blog, but if there are any very attentive people out there, they may have noticed that this novel has been on my 'What I'm Reading' list for a very long time. Now, I'm not a slow reader, as you will also have noticed, so what happened here? Well, this novel came to me as a Kindle edition and I don't have a Kindle (and never will, I hope). Of course there are other ways of reading online, and I'd already read two of Linda Gillard's novels  -- House of Silence and Emotional Geology -- on my laptop and/or my iphone, and enjoyed them both a lot. But my life has been ridiculously busy and complicated lately, and once I'd put this latest one aside, it always seemed easier just to pick up a book. But I finally got back to Untying the Knot a couple of days ago and once I had, I whizzed through to the end in record time and now I'm going to tell you why you should read it, if you haven't already.

Linda Gillard, as I'm sure most people know by now, has been a bit of a publishing phenomenon. An established author, she found herself suddenly blocked by an unenthusiastic publisher and decided to bring out House of Silence as an ebook. She has followed its extraordinary success with other titles, of which this is the most recent. Although all three of the novels I've read so far can loosely be described as romances -- not a genre I am particularly attracted to on the whole -- they reach out beyond that rather confining definition and deal with issues of great interest.

I could describe the plot of Untying the Knot fairly simply -- a married couple have separated, the wife has begun a new and fulfilling life as a maker of beautiful textile artworks, the husband is living with a new and much younger woman. But it becomes clear that they still have feelings for each other -- will they ever act on them? And yes, that is the bare bones. But the novel is more than that, because what complicates their relationship, and has, essentially, destroyed it in the first place, is the fact that the husband has been a professional soldier and is still, after many years in civilian life, suffering from post-traumatic-stress. Linda Gillard has studied this terrible and disabling syndrome in great detail and writes extraordinarily convincingly about its destructive effects both on the individual sufferer and on his family. Several inter-related complications within the extended family of these two people make one very unsure of the likelihood of them ever reaching a happy outcome, and, indeed, what that outcome could possibly be. I wasn't sure myself until almost the very end, and I'm certainly not going to tell you.  

So -- if you like the sound of this very readable novel, go for it, whether or not you have a Kindle. Good intelligent comfort reading with enough discomfort to make it interesting -- what more could you ask?

Damage

A week or so ago I read dovegreyreader's review of Damage and decided there and then to get hold of it and read it immediately. Most of all I was intrigued by hearing that dgr had experienced a shock so profound that she felt in need of a defibrillator. What could have caused it, I wondered, and would I survive it?

Well, this review is not being published posthumously, so obviously I did. Of course I see what she meant and the 'gasp moment' she refers to does indeed come right out of the blue and is indeed very shocking. The whole novel, which is pretty short, packs an enormous punch and is completely unputdownable. I can't really say I enjoyed it and I'm not even sure if it's a good novel, but it's certainly an unforgettable one.

First published in 1991 and now reissued by Virago, this is the story of a sexual obsession. The narrator, whose name we never learn, is a middle-aged doctor and MP with a safe, if passionless marriage and two grown-up children. One day his son Martyn, up to now a serial philanderer, announces that he has a new girlfriend, Anna Barton, about whom he is clearly serious. Soon afterwards, in a crowded art gallery, the MP meets her for the first time.

We stood silently. I looked away. I looked back. Grey eyes stared straight back into mine, and held them, and me, motionless. After a long time she said:

    "How very strange"

    "Yes", I said.

    "I'm going now".

    "Goodbye", I said.

She turned and walked away. Her tall black-suited body seemed to carve its way through the crowded room and disappeared.

A stillness descended upon me. I sighed a deep sigh, as if I had suddenly slipped out of a skin. I felt old, and content. The shock of recognition had passed through my body like a powerful current. Just for a moment I had met my sort, another of my species. We had acknowledged one another. I would be grateful for that, and would let it slip away.

But letting it slip away proves not to be an option and soon a violently passionate affair begins, under the influence of which the MP feels completely transformed and completely powerless to do anything but let himself be swept away by the tidal wave of erotic obsession. Unsurprisingly, things do not end well. 

The title reaches out in several directions. Profound damage is done to all those involved -- the narrator himself, his wife, his son. But the root cause of all this is the damage that has been suffered by Anna herself many years earlier. She is a fascinating character, whose inner thoughts are unknown to her lover and of course also to the reader. 

Erotic obsession is at the heart of this novel. In a new introduction to the novel, written  just before her death last year, Josephine Hart wrote that:

Erotic obsession of the kind described in Damage is not lust. Others may dispute this and have and no doubt will continue to do so. My answer is simple: lust does not last. Shakespeare is right. Lust is driven by the desire for pleasure, erotic obsession by the necessity of union. That is what makes the obsessed – be it man or woman – forever unreachable to others. It is rooted in the psychology and in the case of Damage it is Anna Barton's psycho-erotic power which both creates the man – as he sees it – and which destroys him.

She's drawing a fine line here and I'm not absolutely sure if I follow her across it -- I think I'd see it more as a sliding scale. There were times when I got rather cross with the narrator and wanted him to pull himself together or see a psychiatrist -- not quite the response Hart was looking for, I'm afraid. She also described the novel as 'a confession without the desire for repentence', and that, I think, is finally what makes it so disturbing. 

There's a film, made in 1992, directed by Louis Malle and starring among others Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche, which I haven't seen and have no desire to see.  As I said at the beginning, I did not exactly enjoy this novel, but I'm not sorry to have read it. 

 

Girl with Skates

Got any ice in your part of the world? There's not a scrap of it in north west France so far, but if there was, and I happened to have a pair of skates and a modicum of courage, I might venture out onto it if, and only if, I could wear a hat as delightful as this girl has on. She is simply called 'The Skater' and she was painted in about 1920 by the American artist Marie Danforth Page (1869-1940).