Harriet Devine's Blog

Woman with Book

Bonus picture for Christmas Day - this unusual, lovely nativity scene is by Rembrandt.

Madonna with Book

Something for the season by the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck (c. before 1390-1440)- part of his Ghent altarpiece (1426-90). Wishing everyone a very good Christmas and a happy 2020.

Platform Seven by Louise Doughty

A psychological thriller with a difference! Like many others I was blown away a few years ago by Louise Doughty's Apple Tree Yard - I loved the TV adaptation too. So when I spotted this on Kindle for 99p I couldn't resist it. I knew nothing about it when I started reading it and was quite shocked when I discovered that the narrator is dead. Yes, that's right - she's telling her story from the perspective of the afterlife. I'm not a fan of ghost stories and wondered if I was going to enjoy the novel but I really did.

The story is set in and around Peterborough British Rail station, which, as the narrator Lisa describes it, 'sits in the middle of England like a spider in its web'. I don't know if Platform Seven is really a popular place for suicides, but being set far away from the rest of the platforms, and being the place where nighttime freight trains roar through, it certainly suits that gloomy purpose well. As the novel starts, a man is heading across the bridge to the station in the small hours of the morning. The CCTV guard is sleepy, and nobody sees him apart from Lisa, who met her own death there some months ago.

It's a long time till we find out the circumstances of Lisa's death. Initially her memory of her life is very limited, but soon the fog clears and she recalls the months which led up to it. The story is a painful one. Lisa, in her mid-thirties, falls in love with Matthew, an attractive, charming young doctor. The relationship is passionately sexual and it's not long before Matthew moves in. And then the trouble starts. This is a story of psychological violence, coercive control. Matthew questions Lisa's sanity. He flirts with other women, limits her access to her own friends. But all this goes on in private - in public he is adoring and charming, and everyone who meets the couple envies Lisa for having such a perfect partner. 

Lisa's supernatural status is handled interestingly. She seems to have some access to the thoughts of living people but aspects of their stories remain mysterious to her. More than anything she longs to be able to communicate with them, to help and reassure them, but this is beyond her capabilities. She doesn't have the capacity to teleport around the place - she's limited to walking like everyone else, and at the end has to take a train to get to a destination where she believes she can do some necessary healing.

Though the main focus of the narrative is on Lisa herself, we also learn about the back stories of the station staff and of some of the passengers who pass through the station. More painful lives here, but also some hope and redemption. This was one of those books I was sorry to come to the end of.

 

Woman With Book

Dressed for the party but rather be reading a book? Or fed up with waiting for your husband to get ready? We'll never know. This is by Frédéric Soulacroix (1858-1933), a French painter. A quick look at his large output (here for example) reveals that he was very good at painting satin dresses

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

When I recently posted my review of Maugham's Cakes and Ale someone commented that they preferred Of Human Bondage, which I'd never read. So now I have. It's been described as Maugham's masterpiece, and though I actually preferred The Razor's Edge, which I reviewed last year, I can see why people might think so.

Published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is said to be Maugham's most autobiographical novel. It covers the first thirty or so years of the life of Philip Carey. Born with a club foot, which affects his self-image for most of his life, Philip is orphaned at the age of nine, and sent to live with his Uncle William, the vicar of Blackstable, and Aunt Louisa, his gentle, timid wife. The couple are childless and have no idea how to make a young boy's life enjoyable, let alone fun - his aunt develops a great fondness for him but her husband's strict discipline and coldness prevent her from demonstrating it. He is soon sent as a boarder to the cathedral school of Tercanbury, where his disability makes him an object of scorn. He is expected to go on to Oxford, but opts instead to spend time in Germany. However he is persuaded to return to London and take on an apprenticeship as an accountant, which he hates and does badly at.

Having shown some talent in art, Philip next decides to move to Paris to study. Although he enjoys his time there and makes friends, he realises he has not got the ability to become a professional artist. Instead he returns to London and starts studying medicine. Here he encounters a young shopgirl named Mildred, and falls passionately in love with her despite her scrawny appearance and her total indifference to him. Mildred is happy enough to accept free dinners and trips to the musical hall, but withholds her sexual favours and eventually leaves him for another man. She's been promised marriage but the man turns out to be already married. Soon she is back and increasingly dependent on the besotted Philip, who even supports the child she has had. Philip has meanwhile started an affair with the pleasant, easy-going Norah, but soon realises he is an slave to his irrational passion for Mildred. Many vicissitudes follow, before Philip finally discovers what he had been searching for all along and enters what promises to be a happy and settled life.

Maugham took the title of this novel from the work of the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics contain a chapter called 'Of Human Bondage,or the Strength of the Emotions'. Spinoza writes of the impossibility of controlling the emotions, a fact which greatly troubles Philip in the novel. He can rationalise all he likes, ask himself why on earth he is so enslaved to a woman who has no qualities, either physical or mental, which ought to attract him, but he's unable to shake off his passion. Clearly this is something that interested Maugham a great deal, and it's tempting to see Philip's struggles against his desire for Mildred as echoing the author's experience of his own forbidden homosexual desires. Maugham, like Philip, also loved art, and anyone interested in turn of the century French artists will find much to enjoy here.

Cakes and Ale also contains autobiographical material, and maybe other of Maugham's books do too. As I seem to have developed rather a liking for his work I'm going to explore some more of his novels, and I've also just got a copy of Selina Hastings' much praised biography. So you'll probably be hearing more about him before long.

Woman Reading

Actually called 'The Letter', this evocative painting is by the American artist James Caroll Beckwith (1852-1917). Without revealing the contents of the letter, there's a sense of great sadness in her attitude and the fact that she's dressed in black.

Two Women Talking

I had a nice picture of a woman reading lined up for you today but then I happened on this. I do love a painting that tells a story, and this one obviously does. It's by the Dutch-born, British-settled artist Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (1836-1912) and it's called 'Unwelcome Confidences'. It's obvious that the confider is the one in brown and the confidee is the one in green - but what exactly is the clearly upsetting - or embarrassing - information being imparted here? I'm guessing it concerns a man who the green girl is in love with/engaged to? Any suggestions?