Harriet Devine's Blog

The Water's Lovely

I rarely buy books at full price, preferring instead to trawl the charity shops or get them from bookmooch or buy them used on Amazon or abe. Tightfisted? Maybe. But when I travel, all that goes out of the window and I more or less have to buy something at the airport, even if I have already weighed my case down already with a load of exciting books. Why that is I cannot say. Last week I went to France for a few days, and this was the result -- the most recent Ruth Rendell. I have blogged about her books a few times and have always been a huge fan, so was looking forward to getting into this new one.
I was under the impression for a long time that when Rendell wrote under her own name it would be an Inspector Wexford novel, and if it was not a Wexford novel she would publish as Barbara Vine. But obviously that's not true as Wexford is not in this one.
Primarily this is the story of Ismay Sealand, an attractive, intelligent young woman, who lives in a nice house in Clapham where she shares a flat with her younger sister Heather. Downstairs live her schizophrenic mother, who sits all day with her ear glued to the radio except when she is haranguing all and sundry with quotations from the Book of Revelations, and her long-suffering aunt Pam, still attractive in her mid-fifties but despairing of finding a happy relationship. Ismay is in love with a young lawyer, Andrew, who she hopes will soon move in, and marry her in due course. Heather, much less obviously attractive, has a new boyfriend, Edmund, and soon they are engaged. Here, though, is a huge problem, as far as Ismay is concerned. Many years ago, when she and Heather were in their mid-teens, their stepfather Guy was found drowned in the bath, and Ismay has always been almost certain that Heather was responsible for his murder, though this has never been discussed or even mentioned within the family. But, knowing that Heather had witnessed Guy kissing her in an openly sexual way, she has always assumed that she killed Guy to protect her. So she is afraid that if Heather marries she may do something similar again, perhaps to protect one of her own children. But to tell Edmund, or even to confront Heather, seems overwhelming and impossible. Then Ismay's own troubles begin, as Andrew becomes increasingly absent and finally admits to having a new girlfriend, and everything becomes unbelievably painful and complicated.

As always in Rendell's novels there is an extraordinary range of secondary characters, all in one way or another damaged and twisted. The terrifyingly chirpy Marion, with her brightly dyed red hair and her habit of skipping and dancing everywhere, is completely devoid of any moral sense and devotes her life to deceit, petty crime and the planning of murder. Her brother Fowler, a professional beggar, will imbibe anything alcoholic or medicinal which is likely to get him stoned, but though almost as amoral as his sister is considerably more intelligent. Edmund's mother Irene has spent her entire life bullying and emotionally blackmailing her son with constant and entirely invented illnesses. Eva Simber, Andrew's childlike new girlfriend, has a mind that is literally empty of anything apart from her appearance and her possessions, all paid for by her wealthy father. As for Pam's new lover, met on a 'romantic dating walk' in Epping Forest....

Of course all these people's lives intersect, sometimes in quite surprising but always convincing ways. And yes, there is a twist at the end, though I have to say that the ending was, for me, rather less satisfactory than I usually associate with Rendell. Everything is certainly tied up and sorted out, everyone more or less gets what they deserve or at least what they want, which is not necessarily the same thing. But I was left feeling slightly disappointed by the final denouement, though I am not of course going to say what that was. Despite this, however, I was completely gripped by the novel and once again astonished by Rendell's extraordinary ability to create so much tension and menace in such a wonderfully understated way.

Anachronisms

Just briefly putting on my professorial hat this morning to say something I forgot to say in the previous post on Lady's Maid. In the opening section of this fine book, which is set in the mid 1840s, before EB's marriage, Wilson starts to take an interest in what her mistress is reading. It is mostly poetry, and one of the books she notices is The Prelude. OK -- I think it is fair to say that EB admired Wordsworth's great autobiographical poem, and the form of it probably influenced her own later verse novel Aurora Leigh. But hang on a minute -- although Wordsworth spent most of his life writing and revising this tremendous poem, it was not published until after his death (1849), so the first time EB could have had a copy on her bookshelf was 1850, about five years after this episode in the novel. Yes, I know I'm being picky, and perhaps few other readers will have noticed and even fewer have minded. But I did, just a bit.

Lady's Maid

I read about this on someone's blog and wanted to read it, so happily managed to get it via BookMooch. I've been reading it this week in France and found it very absorbing. It is the story of Elizabeth Wilson, who was the maid to Elizabeth Barrett -- she worked as EB's lady's maid in Wimpole Street for a couple of years before the elopement with Browning, and then was privy to the wedding, and accompanied the couple when they went off to live in Italy, where she became the adored nursemaid of their son Pen. After some years there she married an Italian and had two children -- the first of whom she had to leave with her sister, as the Brownings would not let her keep him with her. She later left EBB's service to run a boarding house, but stayed close to the family, for whom her husband also worked, until EBB's death.
This is the bare bones of the story, all of which is true (taken from EBB's and RB's letters). But Margaret Forster has wonderfully imagined this young woman's inner life. It is rather a sad story, as she adored her mistress and thought for a long time that they had broken through the mistress/servant barrier and become real friends, only to find this was not in fact the case. It has made me long to read Forster's biography of EBB which I shall seek out forthwith.

Woman Reading (5)

Monet!

I'm away!

Just off to France for a few days. If you want to see where I am, click here: La Marelle

See you soon.

Woman Reading (4)

The weekly pic!

La Grande Illusion

When I did my profile on Normblog recently, one of the questions I answered was, What's your favourite film? This was one of the ones I named. Although I'd seen it at least twice, initially when I was a teenager, both were some years ago. So, when I saw it on the library shelf the other day, I checked it out to see if it really was as great as I remembered it. In a word, yes, it is.

Made in 1937 by the great French director Jean Renoir (son of the Impressionist painter) this is often described as an anti-war film, and so it is. But it takes a very different approach to its aims -- different from what we are used to these days, I mean, since anti-war films today usually show the horrors and pointlessness of war. La Grande Illusion, although set in World War I, does not show anything of the fighting. Instead it focuses on a small group of French officers who have been captured and imprisoned in a series of prisoner-of-war camps.  In this war, officers were pretty well treated in such places -- they were allowed, at least, to have food parcels and letters, and to put on shows. The chief French characters here are the aristocrat Boeldieu, played by Pierre Fresnay, the middle-class mechanic Marechal (Jean Gabin) and the Jewish couturier Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio). Then there is the German camp commandant, von Rauffenstein, played by the wonderful Eric von Stroheim. Strapped in a brace for his broken spine, wearing white gloves on his fire-burned hands, not issuing from his room until his valet has sprayed him with scent, this man has tried to recreate in  his grim surroundings a replica of the world he has left behind, and nurtures one geranium on his windowsill.

As the film starts, Boeldieu and Marechal are shot down the their reconnaissance plane, and we see them being entertained for dinner by von Rauffenstein and his officers before their transfer to the camp. Straight away this scene introduces what is probably the most important theme in the film. The aristocrats, Boeldieu and von Rauffenstein, discover they have friends in common, have both frequented the same restaurants before the war, even, as we find out a bit later, slept with the same woman. Their worlds are the same, in other words, and at this first dinner they chat urbanely, breaking into English from time to time. Marechal, a down to earth man of the people, is completely excluded. The story moves on to the first prison camp, where the two officers share a room with a number of other men, including the wealthy, good-hearted Rosenthal, who happily shares with his room-mates the luxurious food parcels sent to him by his rich family. After dinner, the real business of the day begins -- a  tunnel is being dug, and will enable the whole roomful of men to escape from the camp. When Boeldieu is rather respectfully asked if he will share the digging, he agrees at once: 'Golf courses are for playing golf, tennis courts are for playing tennis, and prison camps are for escaping'. At last the day comes when the tunnel is complete -- but only hours before the planned escape, the men are told they are being transferred to another camp. As they line up to leave, a new consignment of men arrives, and Marechal manages to speak to one of them, in an attempt to tell them about the tunnel. But the man is English, and only says, "Sorry, old man, I don't speak French".

Next time we meet Boeldieu and Marechal, they are in a new camp, a huge medieval fortress. We gather that they have made a number of escape bids by now, and presumably have been sent here as the most secure of all the camps. Here, to their mutual surprise, it turns out that the commandant is none other than von Rauffenstein, who expresses his regrets at having to incarcerate Boeldieu, who he treats with the utmost courtesy. Boeldieu, however, though acknowledging their commonality, seems a little uncomfortable about this preferential treatment. Reaching their room, they discover an old friend, Rosenthal, and soon another escape plan is underway. Marechal and Rosenthal assume that Boeldieu will come with them, but he, instead, sets up a tremendous diversion in the castle which keeps all the guards busy while the other two men escape. This, in fact, proves to be Boeldieu's ultimate sacrifice, though he sees it as a fitting way to end his professional military career.

The last section of the film shows Marechal and Rosenthal undergoing terrible hardships on their 200 mile journey which, they hope, will lead them to safety in neutral Switzerland. Subsisting only on sugar lumps, they slowly make their way over the mountainous landscape, slowing down more and more when Rosenthal injures his foot. Finally they decide to shelter in a barn, where they are found by the only inhabitant of the farm, Elsa, a widowed German woman living alone with her daughter. She gives them food and shelter, tends Rosenthal's foot, and a relationship develops between her and Marechal. But soon the men have to go, and after a painful parting they make their way over the snow to the Swiss border. A group of German soldiers finds their tracks, and we do not know, until the very last shot, whether they will make it or not.

So why is this an anti-war film? I think it is because Renoir shows that men are not divided by race or country of origin. Again and again, we see that common humanity breaks through the barriers of the two opposing sides, whether it is the two aristocrats moving in their rarified world, or the simple German jailor who tries to cheer up Marechal when he is put in solitary confinement and is delighted when he hears the prisoner start to play the mouth organ he has left on the bed for him ("This war has gone on too long", he says to his fellow guard), or, of course, the love that develops between Marechal and Elsa, who will, perhaps, manage to be reunited when the war ends. I also think that Renoir is not being simplistic here -- there are still divisions, but they are divisions of class. Von Rauffenstein, in particular, has no time for the lower orders, and frequently speaks of 'a Marechal, a Rosenthal' as if he is describing some class of animal. Boeldieu is a much more complex character, locked into his formal upbringing and unable to accept the warm gratitude offered to him by Marechal, but obviously uncomfortable with the preferential treatment he gets from the commandant. As for Rosenthal, he is obviously an enormously sympathetic Jewish character, and possibly the reason why the Nazis not only banned the film but tried to destroy every existing copy. We can only be grateful that they didn't succeed.

The Boys Who Saved the World

Unattractive cover, rather clunky title, but an extraordinary and memorable read. Not my usual sort of thing as this is primarily a novel for 'young adults', but believe me, anyone of any age who starts this book will not be able to put it down. The narrator is sixteen-year-old Jon, a sensitive, intelligent boy who is extremely emotionally confused following the departure of his vicar father, who has left his mother for another woman. At school Jon has got sucked into a new 'religion', The Brotherhood of Hebetheus. This is led by the charismatic Jeremiah, who has convinced his followers that a young Asian girl, a pupil at the school, is in fact a terrorist who plans to bomb the school. His plan is simple and the boys follow it unquestioningly, believing that by doing so they will bring about world peace. They kidnap the girl, take her to a remote cottage in the country, and start sending out videos to the government and the media, demanding a change in the terror laws and a recognition of their new religion. But everything goes horrendously wrong.

This novel is powerful, exciting, upsetting, disturbing and thought-provoking. It confronts many important issues -- terrorism and the war on terror, of course, but also religious beliefs, racial prejudice (the boys believe their hostage to be Muslim but in fact she is Hindu), fundamentalism -- not to mention adolescent sexuality, friendship, parent-child relationships..... Jon is an entirely convincing narrator and there is great skill in the way he has been drawn as a boy with a good heart and good intentions who has been led into an impossible, indeed appalling, situation. In fact Sam Mills has done a brilliant job of portraying the whole group of boys, all, in one way or another, damaged and vulnerable. Not a comfortable read, but an impressive book.

Reviewing vs. Blogging

For many years I used to review academic books for various learned journals. My policy then was to be as thorough, fair and honest as possible.  If I didn't like it -- that is, if I thought there were serious mistakes or questionable arguments, or if I just thought it was badly written, it was my job to say so. In a few (to me rather memorable) cases, I tore a book to shreds. Usually, though, I did my best to praise what was worth praising and point out what was less so.
Blogging is a very different sort of game, for me at least. In common, I think, with a number of other regular book bloggers, if I read a book I don't like, I don't write about it. New books, that is -- if a book has been around a while and is well established, I have fewer qualms about expressing my reservations, as I did recently with Possession. But if it is something that has recently been published, I'll just keep quiet. It's hard enough for new authors to get established and sell their books without the additional burden of having them rubbished on people's blogs. I've been sent a few books to review recently and have not liked many of them, so they won't be appearing on here. Sorry.

The Return of the Soldier

Another Virago Modern Classic, though sadly my copy does not have this nice cover. I discovered Rebecca West a few years ago when I read The Fountain Overflows and then the other two volumes in this amazing trilogy. West (1892-1983) is a superb writer, and these were some of the most memorable books I have ever read. The Return of the Soldier (1918) was new to me, and was in fact her first novel, though she had written a biography of Henry James two years earlier. It is quite a short novel -- 188 pages and not small print -- but is, I would say, dense with meaning and implications. Set at the time it was written, so just at the end of the first world war, it begins with two women, Kitty and Jenny, waiting for news of Chris Baldry, Kitty's husband and Jenny's cousin, who is away fighting in France. These are wealthy and privileged women, living in a lovely, elegant house just outside London -- Chris's family home, in fact, though the modern and stylish Kitty has had it extensively and exquisitely redecorated. Kitty is a beauty -- when we first meet her she is sitting "with her golden hair..all about her shoulders" and wearing "over her frock a little silken jacket trimmed with rosebuds". As Jenny, the narrator says, "she looked so like a girl on a magazine cover that one expected to find a large '7d.' somewhere attached to her person". It is two weeks since Chris's last letter, and Jenny, at least, is starting to worry -- we gather, almost at once, that she has secretly been in love with her cousin all her life, though she never completely admits it.
Their waiting comes to a sudden and shocking end when a visitor arrives at the door. Mrs Margaret Grey comes from a world these women know nothing of. Cheaply and hideously dressed, with muddy boots, she sits meekly in a chair looking round with open admiration at her lovely surroundings. The news she brings is so shocking and unexpected that Kitty, at least, is unable to believe it. She has heard from Chris, who is in hospital in Boulogne, suffering from severe shell shock, which has manifested as amnesia. Basically he has forgotten everything that has happened in the past fifteen years, and thinks he is still twenty years old -- at which age, it transpires, he spent an idyllic summer in love with Margaret, whose father ran an inn by the river. When this news is proved to be true, Chris is brought back home. But, though fit and well in body, he has no recollection of Kitty, and is puzzled and confused by the changes she has made to the house. In the evening he turns to her and says,"I know my conduct must seem to you perversely insulting...but if I do not see Margaret Allington I will die". Angry and uncomprehending, Kitty is forced to agree, and Margaret comes to visit every day. She and Chris spend many happy hours together, but despite streams of doctors' visits, his memory shows no sign of returning. Finally, it is Margaret who thinks of the one thing that will bring his memory back -- but she knows that if she allows this to happen, she will lose the happiness of their time together.
This novel is about so many things -- the nature of love, perhaps, above all else, but also class snobbery and of course the effects of war. Jenny, who perhaps changes more than any other character in the course of the book, comes to see the beautiful Kitty and the apparently dowdy Margaret in a very different light. Read it! It is truly a wonderful book.