Anna Richard's first novel is the story of Jean, an oversized baby born in 1920 who grows to giant adulthood by the start of World War II - a war which will bring her new opportunities for pleasure and pain. Tormented by her ghastly mother, Wisteria, the child Jean is underfed and overworked in an effort to contain her growth. Her size makes her schoolfellows afraid of her ("I broke someone's arm once when I fell on her") but beautiful Gloria is not scared of Jean. Gloria gives Jean some sense of normal life, with her affectionate parents and determination to make Jean socialise. The outbreak of war - which also thankfully dispatches Wisteria - gives Jean an answer to her perpetual question: what am I for? Engaged as part of a demolition team, given clothes - a set of overalls - that finally fit her, Jean develops a sense of self and purpose. The war also brings her love, in the form of a rather small and ratlike GI whose sexual ideal is a giantess; Danny will eventually take her to California where she will explore other, often extraordinary, ways of being useful.
I was drawn to this book because of a personal affinity with the theme; I've been 5 feet 10 inches tall since I was thirteen, and well remember the feeling of being oversized in a primary school designed for tiny infants. But there is much to offer readers of all heights. Everyone will have felt at some point that they do not fit the world around them; Jean's story magnifies that experience and shows how it can be dealt with to magnificent effect. Jean herself is a marvellous character, aware of her strength and the capacity for mayhem, and therefore determined to be gentle and restrained; her slow-burning pleasure in the discovery of all the things her marvellous body can do is beautifully realised. Indulged Gloria, daughter of sweet-shop owners, could be an irritating do-gooder but she is drawn with depth and sincerity. Even the monstrous Wisteria is allowed sufficient humanity to stop her being a caricature.
The quality of the writing is also excellent. I could quote almost any paragraph, but here is a paragraph about Jean's war: "Death came often to the seaside. Jean grew strong shifting tons of rubble left over from lives taken, and the survivors added their own lifesongs to the din around them. The air crackled with the static of people. It could go in any direction, the static, numbing life or making it a fierce itch that can never be quelled. Jean let hers sing through her arms and legs as she worked; she didn't want to stop at the end of each day because then she would be deafened by the excess of life within iner and reminded that what she was, was not enough. Not yet." The novel exploits the remarkable images available in wartime, and at all times to giant young women, to great metaphorical effect. Richards also has a keen eye for the ridiculous and Jean's size means that there is a great deal of humour in the book, not all of it farcical or at her expense.
If I have one quibble it is with the section of the book in America in which Jean becomes involved with an evangelical movement. This seemed to me to be a rather broad caricature of American society and to be essentially plot-driven, rather than telling us much more about Jean. But there is much to admire and enjoy, and Jean's story is thoroughly absorbing and enriching. I hope Anna Richards is working on an equally inventive second novel.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Monday, 11 April 2011
Development by Bryher
My last post was about an unpublished novel by H.D., Bryher's lifelong partner; Bryher's own novel was published in 1920, during the early years of their relationship. Bryher was the chosen name of Winifred Ellerman (1894-1983), the daughter of an immensely wealthy shipowner; she was part of the Anglophone literary circle in Paris in the 1920s; living in Switzerland in the 1930s, her house was a staging post for Jewish refugees escaping Nazism; she saw out the war in London, editing a magazine, and until her death she continued to write historical fiction, non-fiction and memoirs.
Development is – as you might expect from the title – a Bildungsroman. The protagonist Nancy, aged four at the opening of the novel, moves from indulged child to schoolgirl to young woman struggling to find her place in the world. The child Nancy longs for adventure, preferably at sea: we first meet her sitting in a box, a make-believe boat, while The Swiss Family Robinson is read to her. This nursery scene is disrupted by a real sea-story: Nancy is taken to see a ship wrecked by a storm and the daring rescue of the crew. She will be lucky enough to have many more adventures; her family take her to Italy, Spain and North Africa, where she rides across the desert on a donkey, and Switzerland, where she tastes the freedom she longs for by running far ahead on a mountain walk. Her imagination is stocked by tales from ancient history – she is not much of a reader of fiction – and she casts herself always in the part of an adventurous boy, regretting her sex and the constraints it imposes. School, where she is sent at fourteen, is an appalling shock: the uniform mediocrity, the strangeness of a crowd of girls, the pointless activities all confound Nancy and her sense of self. She survives through preserving an aloof attitude that reinforces her sense of separateness, although she does make a couple of friends: boyish Doreen, from Cornwall and fond of sailing, and kindhearted Eleanor. More travel, being finished in Paris, even publishing her own book of verses cannot satisfy Nancy’s need for recognition and friendship; a week in the Scillies, sailing at night with the fishing fleet, only sharpens her resentment of her gender:
“Why was she born with a boy’s heart when she might not go to sea?”
One of the most interesting things about Nancy is her synasthaesia. Words, letters and musical notes all have an ascribed colour, to the extent that music is difficult for her to listen to, being an overly complex muddle of colours. She tries her youthful hand at art, but without the immediate success she craves; she then bends her sense of colour towards writing, exploring the literary world with a view of colour shaping her response to books.
Nancy embodies the solipsism of the child and adolescent. As a child, disembodied voices read to her, speak to her; adults are barely named, there are occasional references to “the family”, but not to her parents as individuals. Most of the girls at her school are a uniform mass; the teachers have names, but are just as uniform. Out in society as a young woman, she is disappointed by the shallowness and conventionality. Her inwardness is profound: every experience, every line read and place seen, is viewed through the prism of her own self. This occasionally makes her irritating, although the writing of this inwardness is cleverly sustained and grows with Nancy, adjusting its focus according to her age. The characterisation of Nancy – and she really is the only character – is consistent, with colour and depth. However, to really enjoy this book you have to like Nancy, and I’m not really sure that I did: discontented and privileged, with no idea of her own privilege but every idea of the obstacles in her way, she is a convincing adolescent but not an attractive one.
Development is often cited as an early lesbian work, but you have to look quite closely to detect any sense of this. It helps to know that Bryher was influenced by Havelock Ellis's Sexual Inversion, and uses Ellis's definition of lesbian characteristics to inform her portrait of Nancy, such as her rejection of feminine norms, her sense of separateness, her highly developed intelligence and sensitivity to art and nature. Development and its sequel Two Selves are available in a single-volume version, as is some of Bryher's later historical fiction. Her memoirs - which given her long life, complicated relationships and network of friends ought to be decidedly juicy - seem unfortunately to be out of print.
Development is – as you might expect from the title – a Bildungsroman. The protagonist Nancy, aged four at the opening of the novel, moves from indulged child to schoolgirl to young woman struggling to find her place in the world. The child Nancy longs for adventure, preferably at sea: we first meet her sitting in a box, a make-believe boat, while The Swiss Family Robinson is read to her. This nursery scene is disrupted by a real sea-story: Nancy is taken to see a ship wrecked by a storm and the daring rescue of the crew. She will be lucky enough to have many more adventures; her family take her to Italy, Spain and North Africa, where she rides across the desert on a donkey, and Switzerland, where she tastes the freedom she longs for by running far ahead on a mountain walk. Her imagination is stocked by tales from ancient history – she is not much of a reader of fiction – and she casts herself always in the part of an adventurous boy, regretting her sex and the constraints it imposes. School, where she is sent at fourteen, is an appalling shock: the uniform mediocrity, the strangeness of a crowd of girls, the pointless activities all confound Nancy and her sense of self. She survives through preserving an aloof attitude that reinforces her sense of separateness, although she does make a couple of friends: boyish Doreen, from Cornwall and fond of sailing, and kindhearted Eleanor. More travel, being finished in Paris, even publishing her own book of verses cannot satisfy Nancy’s need for recognition and friendship; a week in the Scillies, sailing at night with the fishing fleet, only sharpens her resentment of her gender:
“Why was she born with a boy’s heart when she might not go to sea?”
One of the most interesting things about Nancy is her synasthaesia. Words, letters and musical notes all have an ascribed colour, to the extent that music is difficult for her to listen to, being an overly complex muddle of colours. She tries her youthful hand at art, but without the immediate success she craves; she then bends her sense of colour towards writing, exploring the literary world with a view of colour shaping her response to books.
Nancy embodies the solipsism of the child and adolescent. As a child, disembodied voices read to her, speak to her; adults are barely named, there are occasional references to “the family”, but not to her parents as individuals. Most of the girls at her school are a uniform mass; the teachers have names, but are just as uniform. Out in society as a young woman, she is disappointed by the shallowness and conventionality. Her inwardness is profound: every experience, every line read and place seen, is viewed through the prism of her own self. This occasionally makes her irritating, although the writing of this inwardness is cleverly sustained and grows with Nancy, adjusting its focus according to her age. The characterisation of Nancy – and she really is the only character – is consistent, with colour and depth. However, to really enjoy this book you have to like Nancy, and I’m not really sure that I did: discontented and privileged, with no idea of her own privilege but every idea of the obstacles in her way, she is a convincing adolescent but not an attractive one.
Development is often cited as an early lesbian work, but you have to look quite closely to detect any sense of this. It helps to know that Bryher was influenced by Havelock Ellis's Sexual Inversion, and uses Ellis's definition of lesbian characteristics to inform her portrait of Nancy, such as her rejection of feminine norms, her sense of separateness, her highly developed intelligence and sensitivity to art and nature. Development and its sequel Two Selves are available in a single-volume version, as is some of Bryher's later historical fiction. Her memoirs - which given her long life, complicated relationships and network of friends ought to be decidedly juicy - seem unfortunately to be out of print.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Paint It Today by H.D.
A review of this slim volume will help make sure March doesn't go by without a single post. H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) is best known for her modernist poetry, but she also wrote a number of novels. Three of these, Asphodel, HER and Paint It Today are autobiographical works, not published in her lifetime, which function as romans à clef about her complicated emotional life. H.D.'s first love and her poetic muse was Frances Gregg; in her early twenties she was engaged to Ezra Pound; she was married for a few years to the writer Richard Aldington; and eventually settled into a long partnership with the writer Winifred Ellerman, known as Bryher. This relationship was not uneventful - Bryher herself was married twice, once to one of H.D.'s lovers - but they brought up H.D.'s daughter together.
Paint It Today is an unfinished work that examines H.D.'s relationship with Frances Gregg (Josepha in the text), a compelling and enthralling but ultimately harmful experience, and the beginnings of her relationship with Bryher (Althea). As you might expect, it is written in a dense, poetic style, full of classical allusions and references. The narrative shifts between the third person and the first person, with the protagonist, Midget, sometimes taking up the narrative voice, usually as if from a great temporal distance, to depict Midget's struggle to establish and comprehend her identity:
Myself who was an unformed sort of nebulous personality shall have no name. You might have called me Midget if you were very stupid, but I was not Midget. Midget was an intense star. Midget was a reality. Midget had broken from all humanity, had fought and won, was a flaming banner.
That quotation is fairly typical of the style, which is full of metaphor and lyrical reference and based on a careful, rhythmic construction which makes it very pleasurable to read. Colours and flowers recur in the text, always freighted with symbolic meaning, and bringing a very visual quality to the prose. Occasionally there are passages that would probably have been revised, and the narrative ends with a note that the next section is to start there. Admirers of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein are likely to enjoy H.D.'s fiction; it is also of interest as an early representation of lesbianism, which is why I came to read it.
Paint It Today is an unfinished work that examines H.D.'s relationship with Frances Gregg (Josepha in the text), a compelling and enthralling but ultimately harmful experience, and the beginnings of her relationship with Bryher (Althea). As you might expect, it is written in a dense, poetic style, full of classical allusions and references. The narrative shifts between the third person and the first person, with the protagonist, Midget, sometimes taking up the narrative voice, usually as if from a great temporal distance, to depict Midget's struggle to establish and comprehend her identity:
Myself who was an unformed sort of nebulous personality shall have no name. You might have called me Midget if you were very stupid, but I was not Midget. Midget was an intense star. Midget was a reality. Midget had broken from all humanity, had fought and won, was a flaming banner.
That quotation is fairly typical of the style, which is full of metaphor and lyrical reference and based on a careful, rhythmic construction which makes it very pleasurable to read. Colours and flowers recur in the text, always freighted with symbolic meaning, and bringing a very visual quality to the prose. Occasionally there are passages that would probably have been revised, and the narrative ends with a note that the next section is to start there. Admirers of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein are likely to enjoy H.D.'s fiction; it is also of interest as an early representation of lesbianism, which is why I came to read it.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Not so quiet ... by Helen Zenna Smith
Helen Zenna Smith was a pseudonym of Evadne Price (1901-1983), a jobbing writer whose career encompassed this novel and its sequels, romantic fiction, stage plays, working as a war correspondent for the People during World War II, and acting as astrologer for She and Australian Vogue. She was commissioned to write a parody of All Quiet on the Western Front, but proposed instead a serious war-story from the point of view of a woman war-worker. She used as her source material the unpublished diaries of Winifred Constance Young, who had been an ambulance driver in France, and drew on Remarque's original novel for aspects of the form and language of her work. Published in 1930, the novel can be grouped with other works that spoke frankly and critically about the Great War, often from a pacifist viewpoint, such as Testament of Youth and Goodbye to All That.
Written in diary form, the novel opens with an unflinching description of Helen Smith's life as an ambulance driver in northern France. The accommodation is filthy and uncomfortable, the food disgusting, the work exhausting both physically and mentally. Their Unit is overseen by the Commandant, an older woman with a decidedly cruel streak, fond of autocratic whims and demeaning punishments. Helen (or Smithy or Nell; as a generic figure, her names are mutable and interchangeable) contrasts their war service bitterly with the campaigns run at home by women like her mother, and the self-satisfaction mothers take in their sacrifice of daughters to this work, with no idea of the sufferings they endure. The idea that the older generation, and particularly older women, are responsible for the horrors of war is strongly expressed throughout the text.
War service brought together women of various classes and backgrounds, and the novel engages with this theme. The ambulance drivers were recruited from among "refined women of decent education" but this still allows for a certain amount of variation, from lower-middle-class gentility through to members of the aristocracy familiar to their fellow workers from the pages of the Tatler. This variation, and the cramped conditions in which the women live, cause inevitable conflict. Helen bitterly resents the fact that the ambulance drivers also do all the cleaning work at the Unit; she frequently wishes that working-class girls could be recruited to do this. Given the long and strenuous hours she spends driving the ambulance, she has something of a point, but doing work she sees as demeaning is as much of a trial as the additional physical labour. Helen's attitude towards other women war-workers is highly variable: while she values the especial skill of women ambulance drivers, she is scornful of the "Seeing-Francers", the vast majority of volunteers who last only a few weeks in the service, suggests that women in positions of command invariably become megalomaniacs, and despises the amateurism of middle-class women undertaking war-work in England. This is, however, consistent with her view that the majority of war-work exists only to perpetuate the war machine and to allow manifestations of self-sacrifice, rather than helping to alleviate suffering or bring about an end to the conflict. The novel also deals frankly with heterosexual desire and obliquely with lesbian desire. While politically this is not a feminist text, nonetheless it has a great deal to tell us about the lives of women in wartime.
Helen's is an angry, bitter story; she sees the youth and joy crushed not only in herself, but also in her friends and lovers. She exposes a hollowness at the centre of notions of the nobility of war and self-sacrifice, and the extreme cost of war service for both men and women. Barbara Hardy's introduction to the novel tells us that Evadne Price wrote it in six weeks, and this sometimes shows in the text; this is not an elegant or poetical rendering of war experience, but raw and immediate, intended as a popular novel - which indeed it was, as a bestseller in its time. Not So Quiet ... is still in print, and there are also lots of secondhand copies of the Virago edition around.
Written in diary form, the novel opens with an unflinching description of Helen Smith's life as an ambulance driver in northern France. The accommodation is filthy and uncomfortable, the food disgusting, the work exhausting both physically and mentally. Their Unit is overseen by the Commandant, an older woman with a decidedly cruel streak, fond of autocratic whims and demeaning punishments. Helen (or Smithy or Nell; as a generic figure, her names are mutable and interchangeable) contrasts their war service bitterly with the campaigns run at home by women like her mother, and the self-satisfaction mothers take in their sacrifice of daughters to this work, with no idea of the sufferings they endure. The idea that the older generation, and particularly older women, are responsible for the horrors of war is strongly expressed throughout the text.
War service brought together women of various classes and backgrounds, and the novel engages with this theme. The ambulance drivers were recruited from among "refined women of decent education" but this still allows for a certain amount of variation, from lower-middle-class gentility through to members of the aristocracy familiar to their fellow workers from the pages of the Tatler. This variation, and the cramped conditions in which the women live, cause inevitable conflict. Helen bitterly resents the fact that the ambulance drivers also do all the cleaning work at the Unit; she frequently wishes that working-class girls could be recruited to do this. Given the long and strenuous hours she spends driving the ambulance, she has something of a point, but doing work she sees as demeaning is as much of a trial as the additional physical labour. Helen's attitude towards other women war-workers is highly variable: while she values the especial skill of women ambulance drivers, she is scornful of the "Seeing-Francers", the vast majority of volunteers who last only a few weeks in the service, suggests that women in positions of command invariably become megalomaniacs, and despises the amateurism of middle-class women undertaking war-work in England. This is, however, consistent with her view that the majority of war-work exists only to perpetuate the war machine and to allow manifestations of self-sacrifice, rather than helping to alleviate suffering or bring about an end to the conflict. The novel also deals frankly with heterosexual desire and obliquely with lesbian desire. While politically this is not a feminist text, nonetheless it has a great deal to tell us about the lives of women in wartime.
Helen's is an angry, bitter story; she sees the youth and joy crushed not only in herself, but also in her friends and lovers. She exposes a hollowness at the centre of notions of the nobility of war and self-sacrifice, and the extreme cost of war service for both men and women. Barbara Hardy's introduction to the novel tells us that Evadne Price wrote it in six weeks, and this sometimes shows in the text; this is not an elegant or poetical rendering of war experience, but raw and immediate, intended as a popular novel - which indeed it was, as a bestseller in its time. Not So Quiet ... is still in print, and there are also lots of secondhand copies of the Virago edition around.
Sunday, 27 February 2011
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
It's Persephone Reading Weekend in literary blog land, hosted by cardigangirlverity and Paperback Reader, who have some tempting competitions for Persephone enthusiasts. I've read all my Persephone editions, but I did have a Penguin edition of High Wages knocking about, and decided this was a prime opportunity to give it a try.
High Wages opens in 1912, when seventeen-year-old Jane Carter gets a job in Chadwick's, a draper's shop in the fictional Lancashire town of Tidsley. Jane is bright and ambitious, and the novel tracks her successful progress at Chadwick's; the war is good for the drapery business, and Jane becomes a valuable employee, if a constant thorn in the side of cautious, dim Mr Chadwick. Jane longs for a shop of her own, and thanks to her friendship with motherly Mrs Briggs, who has come up in the world but doesn't much like it, Jane is able to leave Chadwick's and set up her own dress shop. In other ways, however, Jane's life runs less smoothly. Her friendship with Maggie, who also works at Chadwick's, is lost when Maggie's young man Wilfred shows a preference for Jane. Jane likes Wilfred, who works at the library and is well-read and intelligent, but her eventual passion is for Noel Yarde, a young solicitor who marries the local heiress.
Dorothy Whipple crams a lot of interesting stuff into High Wages. Jane's progress and development are interesting in their own right, but Whipple also brings in the social constraint of small-town life, and the ways in which the Great War chips away at notions of rank. We get an insight into how a lively young man like Noel can be reduced to a silent, uncommunicative husband, hiding behind his newspaper. But her main theme is that of business, and how business and its success and failure can have far-reaching effects on the personal lives of those who rely on it; it is the vagaries of business that really drive the plot. Her characterisations have depth, and even when a character appears only briefly - like the seaside landlady that Jane and Mrs Briggs stay within Blackpool - she gives colour and texture to the depiction. There are also some entertaining comic episodes, particularly Jane's regular battles with Mr Chadwick and the moment of high farce when she encounters a cad at the Tidsley Hospital Ball.
If I have one quibble about this book, it is that I was unconvinced by the ending. I won't give it away, but Jane's choices at the end of the book seem slightly out of character to me. I also thought the ending rather rushed, as if Dorothy Whipple had run up against her publisher's deadline, and hurried it to a close. But in terms of interest and enjoyment, High Wages sits alongside Someone at a Distance and The Closed Door among Dorothy Whipple's fiction, and I can quite see why Persephone have published it.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Mrs Tim of the Regiment by D E Stevenson
I'd been meaning to read this for a while, having read other bloggers' enthusiastic responses to the book, and having greatly enjoyed Miss Buncle's Book, so was very pleased to get a copy as a present. Unfortunately, however, I found in Mrs Tim a rather disappointing hybrid of the Provincial Lady and Mrs Miniver.
The diary form, Mrs Tim's domestic and social concerns, especially with her appearence, and her social position are all strongly reminiscent of the Provincial Lady. But the text lacks the satirical bite of Delafield's work and also its economy. Delafield can evoke (and skewer) a pompous bore in a few sentences; Stevenson tells us, strenuously and at length, why awful characters are so awful. Mrs Miniver shares a definite smugness, one of her least attractive characteristics, with Mrs Tim. I did, however, enjoy Stevenson's characterisation of Mrs Tim's Scottish neighbour Mrs Loudon, whose robust good sense and direct manner lifted the narrative whenever she appeared. Fortunately, for the last third of the novel, she appears a great deal.
Perhaps I've just missed the point of the book, but the sharpness, humour and outlandish cheek that made Miss Buncle's Book so good seemed to me to be absent almost entirely. There are some interesting aspects to the novel: the portrayal of army life, the complex relationships between sectors of the middle-class, and the frequent references to money were all enlightening to some extent. It may be that the later volumes, which deal with the war and its aftermath, do not need to resort to clearly contrived romantic plots and sudden outbursts of nature-worship to keep the narrative going. But currently I don't feel inspired to find out for myself if they do.
The diary form, Mrs Tim's domestic and social concerns, especially with her appearence, and her social position are all strongly reminiscent of the Provincial Lady. But the text lacks the satirical bite of Delafield's work and also its economy. Delafield can evoke (and skewer) a pompous bore in a few sentences; Stevenson tells us, strenuously and at length, why awful characters are so awful. Mrs Miniver shares a definite smugness, one of her least attractive characteristics, with Mrs Tim. I did, however, enjoy Stevenson's characterisation of Mrs Tim's Scottish neighbour Mrs Loudon, whose robust good sense and direct manner lifted the narrative whenever she appeared. Fortunately, for the last third of the novel, she appears a great deal.
Perhaps I've just missed the point of the book, but the sharpness, humour and outlandish cheek that made Miss Buncle's Book so good seemed to me to be absent almost entirely. There are some interesting aspects to the novel: the portrayal of army life, the complex relationships between sectors of the middle-class, and the frequent references to money were all enlightening to some extent. It may be that the later volumes, which deal with the war and its aftermath, do not need to resort to clearly contrived romantic plots and sudden outbursts of nature-worship to keep the narrative going. But currently I don't feel inspired to find out for myself if they do.
Friday, 25 February 2011
Without My Cloak by Kate O'Brien
Without My Cloak was Kate O'Brien's first novel and this Victorian family saga draws heavily on her own family background in Limerick. Limerick becomes Mellick in the novel, sitting in a sheltering, well-watered landscape called the Vale of Honey, and the home of the Considines. The family dynasty was founded by Anthony Considine, a horse-thief, who comes to Mellick with a stolen thoroughbred horse in 1789. By 1860 his son Honest John Considine has established a successful and respectable business trading in animal feed. His youngest son, another Anthony, takes over the running of the business, and is even more successful. The large Considine family - eight of Honest John's children make it to adulthood, and several of them have children - are rich, well-housed, and influential. One is a doctor, another a priest; Anthony Considine becomes mayor of Mellick. The novel will explore the progress of the Considines, as a clan and as individuals, and in particular the perpetual struggle between family loyalty and self-fulfilment.
Of the older generation, it is siblings Eddy - who has managed a partial escape from the family by acting as London agent for the business - and Caroline who fret most against the constraints of family life. Eddy is presented as a cultured hedonist, and the narrative strongly hints at his homosexuality. Caroline has married a man that she does not love for the sake of family advantage and respectability, and when she does fall in love, her world is shattered. But their stories act as preludes for the story of Denis Considine, eldest son of Anthony Considine the mayor. Denis is handsome, intelligent, and greatly beloved by his widowed father; he has a passion for landscape gardening that his father is rich enough to indulge. Hoping to make gardening his profession, Denis nevertheless enters the family business as a clerk; already compromised, when he falls in love with an illegitimate peasant girl. Christina, he is plunged into a confusion of loyalties that only Christina herself can resolve. The novel ends with Denis's twenty-first birthday, a day that will see both a violent rejection of the family and a tentative acceptance of his social role.
The narrative is long and leisurely. Kate O'Brien's inexperience as a novelist shows through occasionally; there can be a lot of dense exposition rather than the more distanced evocation of character familiar from her later novels, and there are some over-long scenes, especially the innumerable family parties. The introduction of Christina is particularly awkward; we know Denis very well by the time they meet, and O'Brien spends several pages making sure we know Christina just as well, which diverts attention from their growing love for one another. There are also some rather clunky snobberies: much is made of Christina's aristocrat father as the source of her beauty, grace and intelligence. But despite this, the novel is a rich, satisfying read. I'm not much of a fan of family sagas on the whole, and the book kept me interested in the Considines and their fate until the last page.
Of the older generation, it is siblings Eddy - who has managed a partial escape from the family by acting as London agent for the business - and Caroline who fret most against the constraints of family life. Eddy is presented as a cultured hedonist, and the narrative strongly hints at his homosexuality. Caroline has married a man that she does not love for the sake of family advantage and respectability, and when she does fall in love, her world is shattered. But their stories act as preludes for the story of Denis Considine, eldest son of Anthony Considine the mayor. Denis is handsome, intelligent, and greatly beloved by his widowed father; he has a passion for landscape gardening that his father is rich enough to indulge. Hoping to make gardening his profession, Denis nevertheless enters the family business as a clerk; already compromised, when he falls in love with an illegitimate peasant girl. Christina, he is plunged into a confusion of loyalties that only Christina herself can resolve. The novel ends with Denis's twenty-first birthday, a day that will see both a violent rejection of the family and a tentative acceptance of his social role.
The narrative is long and leisurely. Kate O'Brien's inexperience as a novelist shows through occasionally; there can be a lot of dense exposition rather than the more distanced evocation of character familiar from her later novels, and there are some over-long scenes, especially the innumerable family parties. The introduction of Christina is particularly awkward; we know Denis very well by the time they meet, and O'Brien spends several pages making sure we know Christina just as well, which diverts attention from their growing love for one another. There are also some rather clunky snobberies: much is made of Christina's aristocrat father as the source of her beauty, grace and intelligence. But despite this, the novel is a rich, satisfying read. I'm not much of a fan of family sagas on the whole, and the book kept me interested in the Considines and their fate until the last page.
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