Harriet Devine's Blog

Women and Letter

Neither of them are reading it but one of them has just read it - presumably it breaks off an engagement or announces a death as the girl is in such need of comfort from her mother. Painted by Sir Frank Dicksee(1853-1928), who was known for his dramatic scenes.

The Wych Elm by Tana French

'I've always considered my self to be basically a lucky person'. So says the narrator Toby Hennessy in the first sentence of this extraordinarily immersive standalone novel by Tana French. The rest of the book's 500 pages set out to deconstruct Toby's image of himself. An only child, born into a comfortably well-off middle class family, Toby has sailed through life feeling sure all will always turn out well for him. At the age of 28 he is working as the PR representative of a successful Dublin art gallery. He has a smart car, an attractive flat and a beautiful, devoted girlfriend. But everything changes one night when, after an evening out with a couple of old friends, he wakes up to find his flat has been broken into by a couple of violent men who end up beating him to within an inch of his life. After two weeks in hospital in excruciating pain he is discharged, but remains dependent on painkillers and Xanax, severely damaged both mentally and physically. One hand and a leg don't work properly, and, worst of all. Toby's memories are no longer reliable. He's gone from a carefree successful young man to a physical and mental wreck:

My own life blurred and smeared in front of my eyes; my outlines had been scrubbed out of existence (and how easily it had been done, how casually, one absent swipe in passing) so that I bled away at every margin into the world.

Anxious about his welfare, his family suggests he goes to stay at The Ivy House, where his Uncle Hugo lives alone. This will be beneficial for both Toby, who is not capable of living by himself, and Hugo, who has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. So Toby and Melissa move in to this house, which is fraught with memories from his earlier life:

The Ivy House, twilight hide-and-seek among the moths and the silver birches, wild-strawberry picnics and gingerbread Christmases, endless teenage parties with everyone lying on the grass gazing up at the stars…

For Toby belongs to a large and close-knit family. In addition to his father and Hugo there are two other brothers, whose offspring, Susanna and Leon, are pretty much the same age as Toby. The cousins have spent so much time together growing up that Toby considers them as practically siblings. The habit of getting together for family Sunday lunches continues, and during one of them a shocking discovery is made - one of Susanna's small children finds a human skull inside the huge wych elm tree in the garden. It soon transpires that there's a whole skeleton inside the tree, and, moreover, one that is only about ten years old. Enter the police, who make a series of uncomfortable visits during which it seems that Toby is the prime suspect. And, with his unreliable memory, he fears this may indeed be the case.

So yes, this is a psychological thriller, but one with a difference. Unreliable narrators are always interesting but here is one who is unreliable to himself, and thus a fascinating creation. During the course of the police interviews, and increasingly in conversations with Susanna and Leon, Toby discovers that he has completely misinterpreted much of the social interaction that went on during their adolescence. Astonishing secrets are revealed and Toby is forced to question many of his firmly held beliefs. As Hugo wisely tells him, one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath. 

The novel is something of a slow burn, but that's all to the good. And in case the reader is wondering if there's going to be any action - yes indeed there is, as a very shocking development comes near the end of the book and has huge repercussions for Toby's future. 

This is the first Tana French novel I've read, though many years ago I attempted her first, In the Woods, which I read very little of before giving up. I'm now going to go back to it with my new understanding what an amazing writer she is.  Stephen King, who admires her work, says she transcends the crime genre and should be thought of an author of literary fiction. Certainly this novel comes into that category, for the use of language alone but also for the fine, perceptive way she handles her characters and their interactions. Brilliant.

 

 

 

 

 

The Caravaners by Elizabeth von Arnim

I haven't had much luck in the past with Elizabeth von Arnim - I've tried twice to read Elizabeth and her German Garden and not got on with it at all. I also tried Christopher and Columbus and didn't get very far with that either. In fact the only one of her novels I have finished and enjoyed was the wonderful Vera, which I read in 2011 and reviewed here. Wikipedia tells me that the monstrous husband in that novel was based on von Arnim's unhappy marriage to Bertrand Russell's brother. I couldn't help wondering whether the pompous, foolish misogynist who narrates the Caravaners bore any relation to her first, German, husband, though the interesting introduction to this latest Handheld edition doesn't suggest this. 

The Caravaners was published in 1909, and was apparently inspired by a caravan holiday von Arnim had taken a couple of years earlier with a group of family and friends (it was the wettest summer on record, as is the one on the novel). In itself this is an interesting piece of social history - I had no idea that caravanning was popular as early as this. Of course the caravans were not the kind we think of today - they were great lumbering wooden constructions, pulled by horses. In the book there are three of them - the Ilse, the Ailsa and the Elsa - and much comedy is derived from the cramped conditions, the way the crockery flies out of the cupboards in transit, and the difficulty of getting the caravans up hills (all three horses have to be employed to drag them up one at a time). Part of the fun was of course the pressures of living for an extended period in the open air - the caravaners had to walk alongside their horses, which in the book as well as in von Arnim's own experience often meant trudging through mud in pouring rain, rather then sitting comfortably being drawn along - and meals had to be cooked in one large pot on open fires. All this really amounted to serious roughing it for the middle-class participants, who nevertheless took part in this new hobby with enthusiasm.

Not so for the narrator of this wonderfully entertaining satirical comedy. The only male narrator created by von Arnim, he is Baron Otto von Ottringel, a middle-aged Prussian officer. He and his much younger wife Edelgard have been persuaded by the beautiful young widow Frau von Ekthum to join a group of mostly English friends on a caravan holiday in Kent and Sussex. The Baron has the idea of writing an account of this adventure to be read to his friends and neighbours on his return. However, things don't turn out the way he had hoped. Xenophobic in the extreme, he finds the English incomprehensible and infuriating. He's a raging snob and despises Jellaby, the Socialist MP, who seems to him unaccountably popular with the ladies in the party. He also starts by despising Jellaby's friend, referred to by everyone as Browne, who he thinks is the lowest of the low - that is until he discovers him to be the younger son of a Duke, after which he fawns on him, always calling him Lord Sigismund. He is pathetically besotted with Frau von Ekthum, who he feels is delightfully responsive to his attempts at conversation - he judges this by the fact the her only response is always simply 'Oh'. Women, for Otto, need to know their place, which is why he doesn't have much time for the Frau's sister Mrs Menzies-Legh, the chief organiser of the party and the only member who seems willing to engage in conversation with him. For Otto she is far too outspoken and forward to measure up to his view of the ideal woman.

Needless to say this view is imposed endlessly on poor Edelgard. She is his second wife, his first having died suddenly after nineteen years of marriage. Otto and Edelgard have been married for six years, and he has conveniently added the duration of his two marriages together, to enable him to claim that their holiday is a silver wedding celebration. He has a very definite idea of the perfect wife:

Indeed, the perfect woman does not talk at all. Who wants to hear her? All that we ask of her is that she shall listen intelligently when we wish, for a change, to tell her about our own thoughts, and that she should be at hand when we want anything. Surely this is not much to ask. Matches, ash-trays, and one’s wife should be, so to speak, on every table, and I maintain that the perfect wife copies the conduct of the matches and the ash-trays, and combines being useful with being dumb.

At the beginning of the holiday Edelgard conforms to this ideal, but hardly any time has passed before she starts to rebel. She shortens her skirts, refuses to obey Otto's commands, becomes outgoing and friendly with the other members of the party, even loses weight. Needless to say Otto is appalled by her insubordination, but his attempts to reprimand her are water off a duck's back.

What I think is perhaps the greatest achievement of this wholly delightful book is the way our view of Otto is gradually modulated as the story proceeds. At first he appears simply like a buffoon and it's only too easy to laugh at his ridiculous views and at his total inability to understand and interpret the feelings and actions of his fellow travellers. As time goes on, though, he seems increasingly pathetic, lost and confused. Alas, he has learned nothing from his week's holiday, a fact which becomes only too evident when, in Canterbury Cathedral, he overhears a conversation between Jellaby and Frau von Ekthum. They are discussing Otto himself, and analysing all his faults, but he is convinced the subject is Mr Menzies-Legh.

There's so much to enjoy in this brilliant novel, not least von Arnim's wonderful way of conveying a double view of the events of the holiday -we are never in any doubt about the perspective of the other caravaners, even as it is conveyed through Otto's skewed vision. There are so many wonderful moments here I could draw your attention to, but really you should read this for yourself. Von Arnim has risen hugely in my estimation and I will be seeing out more of her novels to read. Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy. Highly recommended.

Woman with Book

This interesting 1884 painting is called The Japanese Mask. It's by the French artist Gustave-Claude-Étienne Courtois (1852–1923). I'm fairly sure this has appeared on the blog before but it caught my eye this morning and so here it is (again?).

Woman with Book

Last week's painting was unintentionally anonymous as I forgot to note the name of the artist and couldn't find it on google images. This one is just plain anonymous (ie nobody knows) but none the worse for that.

And for those who like to read about artists and like cats - here's a bonus painting by the Dutch artist Henrietta Ronner-Knip (1821-1909) which is called Taking a Nap. She painted loads of cats,

 

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

I've read some great books lately, just not got around to writing about them on here. Among my many unrecorded reads in recent months have been two novels by Jane Harper, Force of Nature and her prizewinning The Dry. Both were acquired for 99p via Kindle Daily Deal, and read on my iPad. And now I've just finished her most recent book, The Lost Man, which I thought was the best of the three.

Set, you won't be surprised to hear, in the remote Australian outback, this is the story of Nathan, whose property adjoins that of his two brothers Cam and Bub. These are huge tracts of land used for cattle farming, which today is done exclusively by helicopter. Nathan's land, though smaller than that of his brothers, is still so large that it takes hours to get to his family home, inhabited by his widowed mother, his two brothers, and Cam's wife Ilse, plus their two little daughters, Lo and Sophie. The novel begins in the run-up to Christmas, when temperatures are regularly 40 degrees in the day. The family, including Nathan and his son, have gathered in the family home. However celebrations have been put-on hold because Cam, who had set off in his car to fix a radio mast a few hours drive away, has been discovered dead, a few kilometres from his abandoned car. He has clearly died of heat exhaustion. His body is found beside a local landmark known as The Stockman's Grave, a large block of granite erected in the middle of nowhere in memory of a local inhabitant at the end of the 19th century. The place is nowhere near Cam's actual destination and he had plenty of water and food in his air-conditioned car. So how and why did he end up here?

This rather satisfying variation on a locked-room mystery runs through the whole novel and is only solved in its final pages. Meanwhile we discover the reason why Nathan lives such a lonely, isolated life. His marriage has ended acrimoniously and he has limited custody of his seventeen year old son Xander, who he doesn't see nearly often enough and will see even less of in the future - the boy lives with his mother in Brisbane, 1500 miles away, and is about to start university, which will keep him too busy for regular visits. Nathan is not even welcome in the local town, owing to an incident which occurred some ten years earlier. What's more, he is still carrying a torch for his brother's wife Ilse, with whom he had a brief relationship which circumstances prevented him from continuing. It seems clear that Ilse married Cam on the rebound, but she and Nathan have never had the chance to talk about their shared past. The family worries about Nathan, who has let his gun licence relapse and is frequently out of radio contact, sometimes for months at a time. There's a general concern that he's slowly committing suicide. 

Gradually we learn about the violence suffered by the three brothers at the hands of their father, and of his attacks on their mother Liz. Clearly there are many secrets in this family, and nobody seems able to talk about them. Although this is a crime novel, there's little or no investigation into Cam's mysterious death, which seems destined to remain an insoluble puzzle. Instead the novel slowly uncovers the hidden layers of relationships within the family, mainly revolving around the departed Cam, whose public persona - charming, efficient - gradually crumbles to reveal a rather different character under the surface. This is all done with immense skill and subtlety, and every element contributes to a satisfying and ultimately positive ending to the story.

I've never been particularly drawn to novels set in the Australian outback, and now I've read three of them with huge enjoyment. This one in particular really drew me in to the attraction of these extraordinarily huge spaces. It might seem strange to talk about claustrophobia in this contest, but of course, with your nearest neighbour several hours away, relations between family members are necessarily constrained and exaggerated. 

All in all this is a great novel and I was very sorry to finish it. I'll be looking out with anticipation for the next Jane Harper.

 

 

 

 

Girl Reading

I found this painting on a website I follow called Old Paint. But I didn't make a note of the name of the artist and can't track it down - I know it was by a contemporary woman painter! I often use Google Images but this time nothing turned up. So it has to be anonymous unless anyone recognises it.