Harriet Devine's Blog

Woman Playing Music

 

Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigee Lebrun painted this lovely portrait. If you click the link you will be able to see a video collage of a number of her paintings.

My Lover's Lover

I've had a slightly strange relationship so far with the novels of Maggie O'Farrell. I tried her much admired first novel, After You'd Gone, and just didn't get on at all with it -- in fact I abandoned it rather quickly. I now think that must have been a mistake, and I will try again. Then I got hold of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, and enjoyed it enormously. So when I was in the wonderful £2 Bookshop in Oxford (cheaper, nowadays, than most charity shops, around here anyway) and spotted this, I snapped it up. I've just emerged, having found it pretty un-put-downable.

"To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom" (Evelyn Waugh) is the epigraph to the fourth and final section of this novel. To be honest, I'm not sure how applicable this is to the plot. Love, or what people take to be love, is certainly the theme of the book. It starts with Lily, who meets the gorgeous Marcus at a party and has moved in with him within days. But his flat is haunted by the spectre of his last girlfriend, beautiful, tragic Sinead, with whom Lily becomes obsessed. However when she finally managed to discover the truth of Sinead's story, everything she has thought and believed is completely turned upside down.

Does this sound like chick-lit? In less capable hands it certainly could be. But it is saved from belonging to that rather depressing-sounding category by two things. One is the quality of the writing, which is really good -- Maggie O'Farrell uses words and images in a way which is constantly surprising and infinitely pleasing. The other is the subtlety and perceptiveness with which this novel explores the variety of emotions elicited in human beings by what is known as "being in love". All four of the main characters -- the fourth is Marcus's friend Aiden -- certainly suffer from this in their different ways throughout the novel. And when I say suffer, that is the operative word -- there's precious little joy here, and a great deal of pain, most of it caused, one way or another, by Marcus. O'Farrell seemed to me to be questioning, or at least causing me to question, whether people really have any idea what love really means -- here it seems to shade too easily into obsession, and trust is not something that figures in any appreciable way. As for wisdom, which E Waugh says is the result of loving another human being, I'm not convinced that anyone here has really gained all that much of it.

Maggie O'Farrell has just published another novel, The Hand That First Held Mine, which I now look forward to very much. Have you read her? I think you should.

Lady Anna

It's a while since I read anything by Anthony Trollope and I can't claim to be a great expert -- I've read three or four of the Barsetshire novels and that's it. Not much considering AT's astonishingly large output of forty-seven full length novels. Anyway, an online reading group of which I am a totally silent member decided to start on this and as I happily spotted it in the library I thought I might as well embark. I will say at once that this is not thought to be one of his best books, but I enjoyed it a lot nonetheless.

The Lady Anna of the title is the daughter of one Josephine, Lady Lovel. At least, that is the title she has clung to, in the face of all opposition, since her husband, the wicked Earl of Lovel, threw her out of his Cumbrian castle with baby Anna, declaring that she was not his wife -- he claimed he was already married to an Italian woman. So Josephine and Anna have lived in poverty all their lives, supported by the kindness of a local tailor who, despite being a political radical, has used up over six thousand pounds of his hard-earned savings so that this woman and her daughter may at least eat and clothe themselves. But as the novel begins their fortunes may be on the turn, as the Earl has died and it seems that, if the marriage can be proved to have been legal, Anna -- now just twenty -- will not only have the right to be called Lady Anna but will be stupendously rich. This is good news for Lady Lovel but bad news for the new Earl, a charming young man who has almost no money and, by the terms of the will, will not inherit anything apart from the crumbling castle. Obviously, as everyone but Anna quickly sees, there is one simple solution -- the new Earl must marry Anna. Then he will be rich and she will live the life her birth and title befit her for.

There's just one problem, though. Anna is secretly engaged to Daniel Thwaite, the son of the tailor who supported them in their poverty. As his father has spent all his money on the Lovels, Daniel is forced to work as a tailor himself. He is also a hard-headed radical and hates aristocrats. Clearly there are going to be problems. Anna is sent to stay with some relatives in the country and meets the Earl, who is very charming and sweet-natured, and obviously very attracted to her. She wavers. But when he proposes, she turns him down -- she is committed to Daniel and can't break her promise. Now follows a deeply painful era in which everyone tries their utmost to make her change her mind. Her mother is the most violent of all in this attempt. Which one will she finally choose? I'm not going to say, in case you decide to read it.

I found this novel really fascinating. The absolute horror that is felt by all the upper classes at the thought that Anna may marry a tailor is remarkable but undoubtedly true to the life of the period. Also extremely convincing and thought-provoking is the character of the mother, who has married for money and title and, having rapidly lost both, has spent her entire life obsessively craving for them. The aristocrats do not, on the whole, come out all that well, but neither does Daniel, who is dour and humourless and just as blinkered in his hatred of the upper classes as they are in their scorn of the workers. Could Anna be happy with him? Or would she better off with the Earl, who wears pretty silk dressing gowns and owns racehorses?

I am now set on reading more Trollope and have just downloaded Can You Forgive Her onto my ipod touch.