Harriet Devine's Blog

The Quiddity of Will Self

I sat on the Picadilly Line with Will Self's liver on my lap...

This novel was kindly sent to me by the publisher several weeks ago, and I started reading it at once. The only reason it's taken me so long to get around to reviewing it is that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it justice. If I describe it as a postmodern extravaganza -- and surely someone somewhere has called it just that -- regular visitors here (if any there be) will see at once that it's not the sort of thing I usually read and review. But let's have a go anyway.

First of all, the title. I did not know what quiddity meant, and had to look it up, though if I hadn't bothered I'd have eventually found a definition some way into the novel. Here's what the OED has to say about it: 

• 1 the inherent nature or essence of someone or something.
  2 a distinctive feature; a peculiarity:his quirks and quiddities

OK -- both probably relevant here. Now how about Will Self? I knew he was a novelist of rather scary brilliance, but all I'd read by him was some of his journalism. Was this going to hamper my enjoyment of the novel? I can't possibly say, but probably if I had it might have added another layer to my enjoyment. Not that it needed any more layers, because I enjoyed it very much indeed.

But what's it about? I hear you say. Well, I can quote the blurb to give you some kind of idea:

The ghost of a beautiful young woman, Sylvie, hovers outside the window of Will Self's study. She is seeking to influence his latest novel, before she can rest in peace.

Sylvie was a member of the WSC -- a mysterious cult of charismatic writers who appear to worship Will Self. When Richard, a twenty-something wannabe, discovers Sylvie's dead body he gets sucked into their dark world of absinthe, cloaks, and bizarre initiation rites, slowly losing his sense of perspective on the strange events that encircle him. What is the true nature of the WSC? What did they do to Sylvie? And does Richard now face a similar fate?

Quite honestly, though, this is really only scratching the surface of the comic, multi-faceted, multi-narrated, metafictional, confusing and delightful plot. Five different narrators voice the novel's five parts -- or rather four, as Richard, who narrates Part One, returns in Part Three in the form of a diary he is writing in a Liverpool tower block, while he also writes a novel, watched avidly by numerous members of the general public. Sylvie narrates Part Two, after her own death. Part Four is narrated by Mia, and takes place in 2049, after the death of Will Self, who, we learn, finally managed to win the Booker Prize in his 80s. And Part Five is narrated by Sam Mills. But what Sam Mills is this, and how much relationship is there with the 'real' Sam Mills? Well, for a start, the Sam Mills who has put her name on the title page is female, and the Sam Mills in the novel is male. But the very name of the novelist hints at some kind of gender confusion, and there's reason to believe that it may not in fact be the real writer's real name. And, as Sam Mills wrote recently in a Guardian article, 

In symmetry with Will, I suffer from sex dysmorphia; I habitually feel like an angry young man trapped in the body of a female …

 Be that as it may, there does seem to be some autobiographical material in this section -- it is undoubtedly true, for example, that Sam Mills was, or is, a writer of young adult novels, a couple of which I've reviewed on here, and almost certainly this novel did take nine years to write and was turned down by several publishers. As for the letter purportedly written by Sam to Will Self, and the account of his reply -- well, who knows. And does it matter? I don't think so. In fact I know it doesn't. For this is a novel partly -- or largely? -- about writing, about words, about identity and its confusions.

And would you like this novel? You'd have to be prepared to let go of a great many preconceptions about how stories are meant to be told, and of the need to come out at the other end with some kind of satisfying conclusion or closure. There's lots and lots of sex, though not of the gratuitous variety -- it is, believe it or not, integral to the plot. The only thing I can think of that the novel resembles a little is a film called Being John Malkovitch, so if you ever saw that and liked it, you'd perhaps like this too. 

Anyway, I'm in no doubt that this is a novel of real brilliance. The Daily Mail, my least favorite newspaper of all time, wrote of 'glimpses of genius', and for once it's hard to disagree with them. 

Oh -- and as for that opening quote about the liver -- well, you'll just have to read the novel to see what that's all about.

Related articles

Sam Mills' top 10 fictional sex changes

Woman Not Reading

This is what I feel rather like doing today -- it's grey and rainy outside and I woke up much too early. But duty calls -- too much to do, too little time.

Anyway, this is called The Green Sofa, painted by the Belfast artist  Sir John Lavery (1846-1921) and sold last year for an amazing $1.3 million. It's very nice, but I'm not sure I'd have coughed up that much for it, even if I had that sort of money to throw around. Actually though Lavery was a pretty great painter and had quite an interesting life. You can read about , and see more of his lovely pictures, in a very lively article here.

The Frozen Shroud

Isn't this a lovely and evocative cover? If I saw this in a bookshop I'd pick it up just to see if the inside lived up to it. The Lake District is a part of England very dear to me, because I lived only an hour or so away from there for nearly twenty years. It was a great joy to be able to whizz up the motorway and spend the day wandering in a Wordsworthian sort of way among the lakes, rivers, mountains and waterfalls. Martin Edwards has cleverly chosen to set his latest series of crime novels in this lovely area, though he even more cleverly adapts the geographical location to suit his purposes, so that some bits of it are real and some invented. 

This is the latest in what I have only just realised is a series of six. I've read the other five and enjoyed them enormously so I was pleased to be able to get hold of this one courtesy of the kind publisher. But it's the first one I have read as an e-book, on my iPad. And this brings me to the reason why I mention the cover -- because the version I was sent didn't have any kind of cover at all, though probably that's because it came from NetGalley. But this way of reading -- very far from my preferred choice -- really brought it home to me why I so much love real books. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it -- the plot, combining as all the novels in the series do, a cold case with a present day murder, is intriguing, and the relationship between Hannah, the cop, and Daniel, the academic historian, as always tantalisingly near consummation -- but I wanted to be able to hold a book in my hand, to muse over the cover, to flick back through the pages and check on things I might have missed. Oh yes I know you can flick away in Kindle too, but somehow it's just not the same. 

Sorry -- just a hobby horse of mine, and perhaps one I should dismount pretty sharpish. Anyway, the novel is atmospheric, the beautiful, though here often gloomy and threatening locations well evoked, the story of a series of very similar and somewhat gothic murders stretching over almost a century properly puzzling, and the characters, as always, attractive and believeable. If you haven't read this series, do give it a go -- though I'd advise starting at the beginning with The Coffin Trail, the first of the series, to get a real understanding of the history of the characters and their somewhat complicated relationship. A quick and enjoyable read, ideal for curling up with on a rainy day.

Don's Diary, 1996

In an idle moment this morning -- or rather one that should not have been idle except that I was procrastinating -- I googled myself. Of course pages and pages came up of entries to this blog, but buried deep among them I found this, which I wrote for the THE's 'Don's Diary' spot. 1996! That's a heck of a long time ago. I'm not sure why I'm sharing it with you, but here goes. I know I was very chuffed to get it published. 

Don's Diary

6 MAY 1996

Wednesday. It is bitterly cold as I set off from Gatwick. At the check-in a man asks the purpose of my visit. I tell him I'm going to a conference in Columbia, South Carolina, and he says he has just checked in a professor heading for a conference in the same city. What is mine on? Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers, I tell him. Oh well, he says, it cannot be the same one as the professor was a man. The check-in queue hardly seems the place for an ideological discussion, so I smile and move on.

Waiting for my connection in Atlanta, I meet Gary Kelly from Keele, who is one of the plenary speakers on the conference (though not the professor on my Gatwick flight). By 8pm United States time I am in my room. I am saving money by staying in a dorm and am supposed to be sharing a room, though my roommate has not appeared yet. I feel predictably depressed by the room, which is all concrete and lino, with a shared shower-room down the hall. It is also bitterly cold, so I pile the bedclothes from the second bed onto mine, hoping Ms X will not appear and demand them back. I sleep reasonably well, though I am wide awake for an hour at 2am.

Thursday. It is still very cold, but bright and sunny. Spend the morning wandering around Columbia which has some attractive old (by American standards) buildings including part of the campus of the University of South Carolina, which is hosting the conference. At lunchtime I turn up for registration and discover that Gary Kelly and I are the only non-US participants. Everyone I speak to seems astonished that although I have come all the way from England, I am not reading a paper: I would have done, but found out about the conference too late. I attend the first two sessions, and am impressed by the professionalism of the papers. Mostly by graduate students, they are all very well researched, and informed by critical theory without being overloaded with it.

In the evening I attend the first plenary lecture, by a high-flying female academic. It is mainly about women riding horses. I also feel it is rather anglophobic - she makes a lot of jokes about the English weather and national character. No point in taking offence, though. I am exhausted by the end of the evening. Still no roommate! And I have discovered how to turn on the heating, so the room is tolerably warm now.

Friday. Papers start at 8am! Unable to decide which sessions to attend (each time-slot has five to choose from) I session-hop. By the end of the afternoon, I've heard 12 papers plus Gary Kelly's plenary lecture. My head is spinning with terminology and I am increasingly irritated by the way everyone says "quote. . . unquote" and/or signals same by waving their fingers in the air. Time to go back to the dorm for a rest.

In the evening, there is a reception, with the most lavish provision of food and drink imaginable, everything constantly replenished. Everyone gets very jolly. I meet Paula Feldman, on the faculty at USC, who invites me back for drinks. I make my excuses, saying I am too jet-lagged, then regret it. After all, I have come to make contacts.

I meet some interesting people at the reception, though, and volunteer to help publicise next year's conference in Europe. I also sign up to write an entry in a forthcoming dictionary of literary biography.

Walking back to the dorm, I finally meet someone who has read and apparently enjoyed my book on Mary Wollstonecraft, which seems to have only just appeared in the US. Feel pathetically gratified. Sleep like a log. Still no room-mate.

Saturday. I've heard nine papers by lunchtime, some better than others. I am unable to concentrate on one, about two little-known verse dramas by Mary Shelley, because both the moderator and the speaker persist in pronouncing the title of one of them as "PORsepine", which makes me think about pigs. Lunch is laid on in a revolving restaurant, which induces mild nausea.

The afternoon brings the third and final plenary lecture, followed by a round-table discussion under the title "Where do we go from here?", which mostly deplores the lack of women's texts of the period to teach from, and persistent prejudice on interviewing committees towards those who admit to an interest in same.

In the evening I get a second chance to go to Paula Feldman's, and enjoy myself enormously. Champagne is flowing, strawberries and ice-cream appear, we all inspect, and are suitably impressed by, her huge collection of 19th-century women's poetry. Addresses and email addresses are exchanged. I express my intention of attending, and contributing to, next year's conference, which will be in California.

Back in the dorm I reflect on what I have learned. First, the fact that much excellent work is being done on what was, until very recently, an almost unknown body of literature. Second, that though English undergraduates, despite slipping standards, are still rather better informed than their US contemporaries, the gap has certainly closed by graduate level. Third, that conferences are always worth attending for social and intellectual networking, fatigue notwithstanding. The weather has started to warm up, and I have two days to relax in the sun before my flight home.

 

Women Reading

Group of young women reading in library of normal school, Washington, D.C.

This very evocative photo, which was found on here, comes with the following caption:

Late in the spring term of 1899, Frances Benjamin Johnston photographed these young women pursuing an education with the intention of becoming educators themselves. Johnston had been commissioned to make a photographic survey of Washington, D.C., schools to show the public what was meant by the new, “progressive” education. Her photographs were displayed at the Paris Exposition of 1900 and were also used to illustrate a series of publications titled The New Education Illustrated. I hope they all did well in their future careers.

The Carrier

I have been a huge fan of Sophie Hannah's novels from the beginning. In fact just a year ago I was raving about the one before this one, Kind of Cruel, which I thought was the best yet. So I was really excited to get hold of this, the most recently published. 

What Sophie Hannah does most wonderfully well is to set up situations at the beginning of her novels which appear to be utterly impossible and insoluble. And here, again, we have one such. A youngish businesswoman, Gaby Struthers, is stranded in Dusseldorf airport, and finds herself sharing a hotel room with a distressed and angry young woman called Lauren. It gradually transpires that Lauren is in a panic because she has come to Germany for the day without telling her abusive husband. But she also lets slip the fact that she is worried about someone she knows who has confessed to a murder but who is, in fact innocent. A bit of quick googling while Lauren is in the bathroom reveals to Gaby that the man concerned is Tim Brearly, with whom Gaby has been in love for many years, even though he is married to someone else -- in fact, to the woman who he is now accused of killing. What's more, Tim has confessed to the murder, but will not reveal his motive. Meanwhile Lauren disappears, leaving Gaby in a state of great confusion and anxiety. Did Lauren seek her out? What does she want with her? Why did Tim confess? Who really killed Francine?

Naturally all these and many other mysteries get solved in the end. And in addition there are various other developments in the novel, many of which concern DI Simon Waterhouse and his wife Charlie Zailer, whose strange marriage staggers on regardless. 

I must admit that I enjoyed this a bit less than the last one, partly because I found it hard to warm to any of the characters. Gaby was so relentlessly nasty to poor Lauren, who, despite being uneducated and helpless, certianly didn't deserve the stream of sarcasm she was subjected to. However, I suspect that this was a pointer to Gaby's own unhappiness, and she did warm somewhat to Lauren as the novel went on. Charlie, too, seemed incapable of much other than sharp comments and showed very little sympathy for anyone she encountered. Simon, of course, is always weird and shows no sign of changing. But I was still intrigued by the story and glad to follow it though its twists and turns. So, though it's not Sophie Hannah's best, I'm still recommending it as a highly readable psychological thriller. 

 

Rabbit Reading

Seeing as its Easter, here's a bunny reading. I had no idea why rabbits were associated with Easter, but thanks to Wikipedia I now have rather more information than I can easily process.

Thanks to them too for this nice 1907 card, wishing everyone a very happy Easter.

A Treacherous Likeness

I do like a good historical thriller (with the emphasis on good) and especially so if they have real historical figures appearing in them. Tricky to do, but fun if it works. So I was more than delighted when I was offered Lynn Shepherd's latest novel to review, since the historical figures in it are people about whom I already knew rather a lot. But as it turned out, that was a bit of a mixed blessing.

The people concerned here are the poet Percy Shelley, his wife Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and her step sister Claire Clairmont. In fact when the novel begins, in 1850, Percy is long dead, and Mary is a sick elderly lady living with her son, the 'controversially ordinary' Sir Percy and his manipulative wife Jane, whose sole purpose in life is to sanitise the poet's posthumous reputation, a far from easy task. This is, indeed, the starting point for the novel. Jane Shelley is deeply anxious because Claire, for many years an exile from England, has reappeared in London. Jane fears that she holds documents that will show that the poet, far from the ineffectual angel she wishes him to appear, was actually immoral, untrustworthy, and verging on the unbalanced. To help her to retrieve the documents Jane calls in the detective Charles Maddox, who soon works out that there are other secrets to be uncovered which are at least equally damaging, and which involve his own family. Soon we are back in the years 1814 to 1816, as Charles looks hard at the existing evidence of the shenannigans of the Shelley entourage, uncovering disturbing indications of unexplained infant deaths and promptings to suicide. 

Lynn Shepherd was well qualified to write this novel, as she has a PhD in English Literature and has clearly used all her research skills here. Not only that, but she has brilliantly interwoven the real words of her characters -- Mary, Shelley and Claire -- with her own imagined dialogue, so that the people appear totally convincing. Also, all the mysteries that Charles sets out to solve are genuine and have puzzled Shelley scholars for generations. What was the true nature of Shelley's relationship with Claire? Whose was the baby Elena, adopted and then inexplicably dropped by the Shelleys in Italy? What happened in Wales in 1814 to terrify Shelley so much? and much more besides. I could not possibly fault all this, or indeed wholly disagree with her conclusions about Shelley's peculiar mental state. I've always had a very soft spot for Claire and thought she came out well here. But, though I've never really warmed to Mary, I can't say I've ever gone down the road that Shepherd takes us on -- enough said.

Many years ago I wrote a book about Mary Shelley's mother, the great feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and did my fair share of puzzling over discrepancies in the historical accounts, one of which resulted in an article with the rather charming name 'A Meritorious Wife; or, Mrs Godwin and the Donkey'. You might think that this foreknowledge would have put me off the novel, and I see that Daisy Hay, author of the recent Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives, showed her displeasure with it in her Guardian review. But you know what? I took it all with a pinch of salt and thought it was really good fun. In fact my only real quibble was that by the end my head was rather spinning with all the revelations and complications that Charles uncovered. But maybe that's just me. 

I have not read Shepherd's other novels, but I am now keen to read Tom All Alone's, which uses the characters and seetings of one of my favorite novels of all time, Bleak House, as well as featuring the attractive detective who reappears here. Anyone else read either of these?

 

Dr Thorne

How Did He Do It?  is not the title of a novel by Anthony Trollope, though it could be (cf. Can You Forgive Her? Is He Popenjoy?, Did He Steal It?). No, it reflects my amazement at the astonishingly prolific output of a man who managed to hold down a highly responsible job while producing 47 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 18 works of non-fiction and two plays. And not just any old novels, mind you -- although his reputation was a bit up and down at first, there's no doubt -- in my mind at least -- that he was one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century. And in fact, one reason why he was looked at with a rather beady eye by some of his contemporaries was the very fact that he wrote so much and in such an organised way -- he paid his servant an extra £5 a year to wake him up with a cup of coffee at 5am so that he could write for three hours before he went to work. What's wrong with that, you may ask? Well, there was a view at the time that you had to wait for the Muse to strike you before you picked up your pen, so Trollope's method seemed a good deal too mundane. Also, he was not much liked for his most delightful way of suddenly addressing the reader, or, in more contemporary parlance, drawing attention to the act of writing:

But it will be too much, perhaps, to tell the reader what she wore as Beatrice's bridesmaid, seeing that a couple of pages, at least, must be devoted to her marriage dress, and seeing, also, that we have only a few pages left to finish everything...

I've read a few of Trollope's novels over the years, though only reviewed one on here, the not very well known Lady Anna. Dr Thorne is much better known, being the fourth of the so-called Barchester Novels, of which I have read the first three, though in pre-blogging days. The eponymous doctor is a middle-aged gentleman of modest means, who lives in the village of Greshamsbury. Twenty or so years before the story begins, he adopted the illegitimate baby daughter of his ne-er do well brother, who had been murdered by the brother of the village girl he made pregnant. The child's mother has married and gone to America, the brother has served his sentence and subsequently become stupendously rich, but the doctor and his beloved adopted Mary have gone on quietly with their lives in domestic peace and comfort. Mary has become very close to the daughters of the neighbouring squire Mr Gresham, with whom she has shared lessons throughout her teenage years. Now, as the novel begins, the Gresham's only son Frank has reached twenty-one, and the whole neighbourhood is sharing in the celebrations. As we soon learn, Frank and Mary have fallen in love, but from this seemingly innocent fact springs the whole convoluted and often nail-biting plot.

Money, social class and "blood". To these and their often complex interactions are owed the trials and tribulations of poor Mary and Frank. For Frank's father has managed to get himself into deep financial trouble, and that part of his estate that he has not sold is heavily mortgaged. Thus it is that, certainly as far as his mother and her aristocratic relations are concerned, Frank has but one duty -- to marry money. Mary has neither money nor that second prerequisite, "blood" (of the blue variety), and indeed her illegitimacy puts her beyond the pale. Of course, the immensely wealthy heiress who the family would like Frank to marry is the daughter of a tradesman, but her riches overrule what would otherwise be an absolute barrier.

As anyone who is familiar with Trollope will know, these are his common concerns. But that does not make this novel any less appealing. Trollope manages to satirise the worst excesses of the appalling aristocrats and the dreadfulness of their lawyers in a way which is both funny and horrifically convincing. But he also manages to create characters who have undoubted faults and yet make them surprisingly sympathetic. And then of course there is Mary, the most admirable heroine, intelligent and feisty as well as pretty, who suffers dreadfully through a great part of the novel but bears it with great courage, and dear, good-hearted, loyal Frank, and the delightful doctor himself, very human and not always right but always having at heart the best interests of those he loves. 

I am so happy to have rediscovered Trollope. After a rather worrying reading block earlier this year, it is exciting to find that there are more than forty unread novels to look forward to! I've started one already, and another is on its way, so keep a watch on here for more reviews soon. Any fellow Trollope fans out there? What's your favorite?

 

Spring Landscape

Something for everyone who is suffering from an unseasonably late and cold spring. Here in France we have so far escaped the snow and bitter cold that has hit the UK for the second time this month, but the sky is grey, the temperature low, and there's no sign of the beautiful spring blossom that is shown in this lovely painting by the Danish American Emil Carlson (1853-1932). But it will come sooner or later.