Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

First published in 1957, in the middle of Elizabeth Taylor’s career, Angel tells the fictional story of Angelica (Angel) Deverell, charting her rapid ascendancy as a writer of wildly popular but ludicrous romance novels and her gradual decline into obscurity. It’s a brilliant novel, easily one of Taylor’s best – and with a spinster as one of the key supporting characters, it might be a late entrant for #SpinsterSeptember, too.

The novel begins in 1901, when Angel is fifteen, and follows through to her death. Having been raised by her mother, Emmy, who runs a grocer’s shop in fictional Norley, Angel longs to escape her drab life in the provinces. In adolescence, Angel’s vanity and aloofness make her unpopular with the other girls at the private school she attends – a privilege Angel’s Aunt Lottie has helped to fund despite her niece’s ingratitude.

She had never had any especial friends and most people seemed unreal to her. Her aloofness and her reputation for being vain made her unpopular, yet they were times when she longed desperately, because of some uneasiness, to establish herself; to make her mark; to talk, as she thought of it, on equal terms: but since she had never thought of herself as being on equal terms with anyone, she stumbled from condescension to appeasement, making what the other girls called ‘personal remarks’ and offending with off-hand flattery. (pp. 16–17)

Feigning illness to skip school, Angel pours her fantasies into a novel, which she writes while in bed, convincing herself it will be a success. Meanwhile, Emmy and Aunt Lottie hope to find Angel a position in a nice office or as a lady’s maid – aspirations the girl swiftly rejects.

After two refusals elsewhere, Angel’s book, ‘The Lady Irania’, is accepted for publication by Gilbright & Brace, but in truth, the partners are divided about it. While Willie Brace considers the novel to be tosh, Theo Gilbert believes it will sell; in fact, Willie’s wife Elspeth has already devoured it, as many other female readers are likely to do in the future. The book is published and is indeed a commercial success, setting Angel on her path to fame as a romantic novelist.    

Beloved by readers, Angel’s novels are savaged by critics, who consider them ludicrous, confused, and full of overwritten gibberish. In effect, she writes not from personal experience but from ignorance and imagination, but her formula proves a hit with the reading public, if not the literary critics. In her self-centred vanity, Angel cannot take even the slightest note of criticism from others, causing problems for her kindly, insightful publisher, Theo, and his sharp wife, Hermione.

The more the critics laughed, the longer were the queues for her novels at the libraries; the power of her romanticism captivated simple people; her preposterous situations delighted the sophisticated; her burning indignation when some passing fury turned her aside from her plot into denunciations and irrelevancies, swayed some readers into solemn agreement and others into paroxysms of laughter. (p. 75)

Angel becomes increasingly vain, selfish and deluded as she moves into adulthood. Arguments and differences of opinion are commonplace, typically due to Angel’s obstinacy and fantasies. Nevertheless, she somehow twists these situations to maintain the upper hand, casting herself as the victim when the reverse is often true. And yet, underneath this abrupt, obstinate exterior, a more vulnerable, lonely individual lurks within. Theo is one of the few people to truly see and understand Angel’s vulnerability, and he strives to protect her, often at the expense of his own well-being.

[Hermione:] “Did I ask questions at dinner that I shouldn’t have?”
[Theo:] “I don’t think so. She is abnormally touchy.”
[Hermione:] “Tremendous offence taken at almost everything I said. And yet it is all right for her to ask you if my pearls are real. While I am sitting in the room and supposed to be playing the piano for her entertainment.” (pp. 64–65)

Following the success of her early novels, Angel and her mother, Emmy, move to Alderhurst in the country. Emmy, however, feels lost without her grocery business to deal with, and she misses the bustle of Norley life.

As the years go by, Theo can see that Angel is desperate for love. To date, all of Angel’s passion has been poured into her books, but now she needs a lover to alleviate the loneliness. Through a mutual acquaintance, Angel is introduced to Esmé, a handsome but wayward painter, and his dutiful sister, Nora, a fledgling poet. Despite being in his company for only an hour, Angel is captivated by Esmé and determines to get closer to him, which she does in time, but only after several years have elapsed. Theo, however, can only see trouble ahead, especially given Angel’s brittle temperament.

She was bound to fall in love some time or other, he [Theo] thought. But I hope no harm comes of it. He could not imagine any brightness or ease ahead of her. Her sternness, the rigorousness of her working days, her pursuit of fame, had made her inflexible: she was eccentric, implacable, self-absorbed. Love, which calls for compliance, resilience, lavishness, would be a shock to her spirit, an upset to the rhythm of her days. She would never achieve it, he was sure. For all the love in her books, it would be beyond her in her life. (p. 93)

In the meantime, Nora comes to live with Angel, acting as her secretary/housekeeper/companion following Emmy’s death. In short, Nora is a foil for Angel, calming some of the novelist’s tantrums at the expense of her own emotional and intellectual needs.

…and Nora, with her heart full of love and understanding, saw the lies [Angel’s lies] as a pathetic necessity, an ingredient of genius, a part of the make-believe world from which the novels came. She [Nora] could not afford to be disillusioned about Angel and she managed not to be. She had given up her home for her, her way of life, her verse-writing; she was staked upon her: the only threat was her own self-criticism. (pp. 121–122)

Now in her thirties, Angel reconnects with Esmé, and the pair’s relationship evolves when he is persuaded to paint her portrait, even though portraiture is not his forte. A complex individual, prone to misdemeanours and racking up debts, Esmé is nevertheless fascinated by Angel’s enigmatic character – a new experience for him as usually he is attracted by a woman’s looks. Nevertheless, he correctly intuits Angel’s loneliness, capturing it in his rather stark portrait of the author. An Ill-fated marriage duly follows, but I’ll let you discover the outcome for yourself should you read the book. While Angel seems infatuated by Esmé, the reader suspects the latter might see their union as a way of securing his future, casting a shadow over the marriage from the start. 

As the years pass, Angel’s popularity as a novelist wanes, especially with the advent of war. She becomes obsessed with the idea of pacifism, moving away from her tried and tested formula of romance in favour of more earnest fare, just as her readers are crying out for escapism. Once again, Angel will not listen to others’ advice, forging ahead with her own demented plans.

The novel’s latter stages trace Angel’s decline, her move to Paradise House (the home of Aunt Lottie’s former employer) and the crumbling property’s gradual decay. But despite her financial troubles, Angel has lost none of her self-importance, sustaining a fantasy of grandeur to the end. She is not living in the past as such; rather, her present is invested with delusions from her earlier life.

The genius of this novel lies in Elizabeth Taylor’s immense skill in creating a complex, monstrous character who also at times elicits the reader’s sympathy. Yes, Angel is vain, rude, self-absorbed, intolerant, deluded and jealous, but she is also lonely, vulnerable and sad – a woman in need of care and protection. Theo sees this, as does Nora, and they try to shield her as best they can between them.

Angel was a re-read for me, and this time around I could see the tragedy of her existence more clearly. It’s a fascinating character study, all the richer for Taylor’s nuanced portrayal, complete with Angel’s deep-seated vulnerabilities alongside her many failings. 

As always with Taylor, the secondary characters are vividly painted, from the patient, self-serving Nora, who sacrifices so much to appease Angel during her tantrums, to wise, protective Theo and his long-suffering wife, Hermione, who baulks at Angel’s outrageous behaviour. The social interactions between these characters, complete with all their subtleties and nuances, are brilliantly observed.

Taylor’s talent for sharp humour is also on full display here, particularly where Angel is concerned.  

Angel found the food tasteless and unidentifiable: the fish in aspic, the chicken buried in a sauce among a confusion of mushrooms and pieces of hard-boiled egg. She felt disdainful and looked it. She was wearing a crumpled dress of sea-green muslin and her black hair hung down to her waist. Hermione could imagine her sitting under the sea, casting spells, counting the corpses of the drowned. (p. 61)

Finally, the settings are vividly evoked, from the small details of provincial life in Norley, with its grim factories and sawdust on the grocer’s shop floor, to the faded glamour of Paradise House, rapidly decaying as Angel’s money runs out. 

I adored this magnificent novel (described by the publisher as ‘Taylor’s tour de force’) and hope to find a place for it in my end-of-year highlights. Very highly recommended indeed!

Angel is published by Virago Press; personal copy.

A Spring of Love by Celia Dale

Celia Dale is fast becoming a regular feature in my annual reading highlights. Having made the list in 2022 with A Helping Hand and again in 2023 with Sheep’s Clothing, she looks set for another appearance this year with the reissue of A Spring of Love, another utterly compelling story of suburban deception, similar in style to Patricia Highsmith’s best domestic noirs.

Dale specialises in showing us how vulnerable individuals – particularly the elderly and the naïvely trusting – can be preyed upon by malicious confidence tricksters in the safety of their own homes. There is something particularly chilling about a seemingly innocent figure inveigling their way into the domestic space, and Dale leverages this violation to the hilt with her icily gripping tales of greed and deception. In A Helping Hand and Sheep’s Clothing, the scammers’ victims are female pensioners, often reliant on care and support; but in Spring, the predator targets a much younger single woman – thirty-year-old Esther Wilson, who lives in London with her widowed grandmother, affectionately known as Gran.

Esther’s life is a narrow one, governed by regular routines. She works full-time in the invoice department of a local store, leaving Gran – a somewhat petulant, overbearing woman – to amuse herself during the day. Luckily for Esther, money is not a worry. Her late grandfather left her the house – including the upstairs rooms, which she rents to a lively young couple, Gloria and Terry – plus a newsagents’ shop, efficiently managed by Mr and Mrs Grover. Esther’s only concessions to frivolity are her Thursday nights out alone, typically spent over a solo meal at a tea shop followed by a film at the cinema. Gran resents Esther’s Thursday nights as she hates feeling left out; nevertheless, Esther needs an escape, even if it soon becomes another one of her routines.

Everything changes one Thursday night when Esther meets Raymond in what appears to be a chance encounter at the tea shop. They start chatting, go to the cinema together, and meet again the following Thursday, seemingly by chance. At first, Esther is somewhat reticent; no other man has ever shown much interest, and her life experience is limited to say the least. Nevertheless, Raymond’s polite, chatty manner soon wins her over.

He was obviously so pleased to have found her, a lonely, nice-spoken young man with no friends; and she – after all, what was she herself but a lonely, nice-spoken young woman in just the same case? There could be no harm in it. You could see he wasn’t a nasty type at all. (p. 25)

In the past, Esther had not considered the possibility of a relationship with a man, steeling herself against the world and any emotional attachments. But now, with Raymond on the scene, she is swept along by the attention, opening a world of possibilities that didn’t exist for her before.

It was as though until now she had wilfully blinkered herself against living humanity because she was afraid that to look at it would hurt her. She had thought she was content, a woman without much need for love, envying no one, desiring nothing; now she stared about her hungrily, amazed by the joy of possessing what she had not known she lacked. (p. 78)

With his old-fashioned manners and kind, chatty approach, Raymond charms Gran, quickly getting her onside. Gran, for her part, takes to Raymond immediately (initially at least), viewing him as a sort of son or nephew to joke with. A masculine man conscious of his status, but not one to be feared. Only later, as Esther and Raymond become closer, does Gran start to feel left out…

At first, everything in the garden seems rosy. Esther and Raymond get engaged, and preparations for a quiet wedding are soon underway. Gradually, however, alarm bells start ringing – certainly for the reader and possibly for Esther herself, although somehow Raymond seems to be able to explain them away without arousing too much suspicion. It all starts when Raymond shows signs of wanting to control Esther’s money, ostensibly because it’s the man’s domain to manage – a small ‘loan’ at first and hints about wanting a car for his job as a travelling salesman. Nevertheless, Esther persuades him to wait for his bonus, which is due fairly shortly.

She saw with clear eyes, as he justified and excused, that he loved money, deeply, obsessively, and the knowledge seemed to her quaint and sad, growing from a past of which, although he told her much, she knew so little. (p. 108)

Raymond also tries to convince Esther to convert the upstairs flat, currently occupied by Gloria, Terry and their baby daughter, Kim, into two single bedsits, doubling the potential rent. But Esther is against this too, recognising how hard it is for a young family to find lodgings, especially with a young baby to consider.

As Esther settles into her marriage with Raymond, Gran begins to feel increasingly like a gooseberry in the relationship. At first, she is delighted with Raymond, enjoying his flattery and jokes, but over time she begins to see him as a usurper. Before Raymond’s arrival, Gran had Esther to herself, but now she must share her, at least when he’s around.

Slowly and stealthily, Raymond continues his attempts to gain access to Esther’s finances, leveraging her belief in fairness and equality to his own personal advantage. By claiming he has converted his bank account into a joint facility, Raymond knows Esther will follow suit, which she duly does, and likewise with drafting new wills. It’s all very subtly done, of course, but the reader can see what’s happening, even if Esther can’t. Occasionally though, Esther glimpses the intense bitterness inherent within Raymond, the blazingly blue stare she recognises as a sign of danger…

His voice was so utterly without expression that Esther glanced at him. His face was without expression too, but his eyes were blazingly blue, the blue she had seen only once or twice before that seemed to have a fire behind it, of excitement or rage or – hatred? He was perfectly still, but behind his back the hands clasped one another as though locked together and in amazement she perceived that he was petrified with anger, blind and numb to everything but what he saw with that blue stare. (p. 138)

Gran also picks up on Raymond’s dark side, sharing with Esther her belief that he possesses a hard streak – a view shared by Mr Grover, who manages Esther’s shop. But once again, Esther explains it all away, putting it down to a combination of Raymond’s troubled childhood and Gran’s jealousy and loneliness at being neglected.

What Dale does so well here is to show us how Raymond – who we strongly suspect all along is a scammer/confidence trickster – inveigles his way into Esther’s world, preying on her naivety, trusting nature and willingness to fall in love. In A Helping Hand and Sheep’s Clothing, the scammers work in pairs, allowing Dale to partly convey their motives through dialogue between the two characters. With Spring, however, Raymond is operating alone, which enables Dale to keep an element of mystery about his motives, actions and earlier life. That said, there are clear hints along the way – noticeable red flags signalling Raymond’s intense hatred of ‘wayward’ women.

‘Self, self, that’s all women ever think of – I know, I’ve had some!’ (p. 141)

‘I’ll tell you why – because women are animals, that’s why. They think of nothing else but men, men, men, morning, noon and night. That’s the only thing they want. That’s why I don’t want your precious Gloria here, chasing off after her good time when she’s tired of Terry and never mind what happens to the kid.’ (p. 143)

Once again, Raymond has a way of rationalising these outbursts to Esther, putting them down to his feckless mother, who abandoned him as a little boy. In some respects, Esther and Raymond come from similar backgrounds, both having been raised by relatives due to absent or deceased parents. For Esther, this upbringing has built up her reserve; but for Raymond, it has come out in bitterness (especially towards certain types of women) and a lack of trust.

The denouement, when it comes, is more shocking than I anticipated but sadly believable nonetheless – as are Esther’s responses, especially given the era. (The book was first published in 1960 and remains highly relevant today.)

Alongside the unknowability of others – one of the novel’s key themes – Dale also explores the nature of love. What, for instance, does it feel like to be in love, especially if we haven’t experienced it before? How can we recognise it when it happens? In her naivety, Esther instinctively feels there must be peace and happiness in love, alongside tolerance and trust. Other than that, she has little idea. She is devoted to Raymond, and he certainly succeeds in opening up her world, for a few years at least.

There’s also the question of whether Raymond falls in love with Esther as he is trying to fleece her. It’s probably too much of a spoiler to discuss here, but I think there’s a turning point in the narrative which only becomes completely clear once the reader reaches the end. From their emotionally barren childhoods, Esther and Raymond manage to forge a strong bond – a kind of love, despite rarely using that term with one another.

In summary, then, this is another masterful novel by Celia Dale – a gripping story of greed, deception, misogyny and horror, all the more terrifying for its seemingly innocent trickster and grounding in normality. As ever with Dale, there are some wonderful notes of humour to balance the darkness. I’ll finish with a short quote that illustrates a touch of this skill.

Terry’s mother was like a horse-hair sofa, massive, tightly upholstered, glossy. She dominated. (p. 133)

A Spring of Love is published by Daunt Books; personal copy  

Enbury Heath by Stella Gibbons

Originally published in 1935, Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years Stella Gibbons (author of the much-loved Cold Comfort Farm) spent living in a cottage on Hampstead Heath with her two brothers, Gerald and Lewis. The Gibbons siblings lost both parents within the space of six months, and while their mother’s death was sudden, their father’s demise from alcohol-related heart disease may have been brewing for a while. With her youngest brother, Lewis, still in school and Gerald intermittently working as an actor, Stella became the family’s main breadwinner, and it is against this backdrop that the fictional Enbury Heath is set. This is a charming, bittersweet novel about family dynamics and the challenges of growing up, all laced with Gibbons’ sharp but engaging humour.

The novel revolves around three siblings – twenty-one-year-old Sophia Garden, a thoughtful, responsible young woman who works as a writer at a Canadian news agency, and her younger brothers, Harry and Francis. While Harry tries to pick up work as a jobbing actor, Francis is finishing up at school and is eager to move on.

Sophia judged the visible world very harshly and liked nothing better than to escape into her private world of dreams. As for love, she hardly thought about it; and normal girls of twenty usually think about it a great deal. Harry was so calmly sure that his beauty would win him fame and the worship of thousands of girls that he never thought about hard work and perseverance. Francis liked to dramatize his feelings and feel fierce and lone-wolfish; he enjoyed disliking people, especially relations. And all three were as moody, sensitive and quick-witted as show cats; they had hardly any of the virtues which would fit them for citizenship in a brave new world. (p. 20)

As the story opens, the siblings’ father and recent widower, Hartley Garden, has just died, leaving the children on their own. Hartley, we soon learn, was a relatively successful doctor in the local community but a terrible father, largely due to his vanity, ambition and cruelty, not to mention his tendency to drink. While the Garden siblings loved their late mother dearly, they had little time for Hartley and are secretly (and sometimes openly) relieved at his death.

Gibbons spends considerable time introducing us to these characters and setting up the siblings’ move to Hampstead Heath. Firstly, there is Hartley’s funeral to be dealt with, a dreadful affair presided over by a coterie of ghastly Garden relatives, most of who seem intent on interfering with the siblings’ lives. Chief amongst these is Uncle Preston, surely one of Gibbons’ greatest comic creations, but more of him later…

Then there is the reading of Hartley’s will, which surprises everyone when Francis unveils a previously unknown but perfectly valid version of the will, stating that Harry is to inherit everything. Harry, however, is happy to share the windfall with his siblings once he comes of age. Before then, there are considerable debts to be paid, meaning the children are likely to inherit two or three thousand pounds at most once their father’s surgery has been sold. In the meantime, Mr Marriot, the Garden family’s solicitor, will give Harry a small allowance on which to live.

Through her friend, Celia, Sophia finds a cottage for the siblings to rent. It’s situated in the Vale, Enbury Heath, a part of London that Sophia loves, and while the property itself is small, The Cottage has its own peculiar appeal.

It was called The Cottage, The Vale, Enbury Heath. An odd, self-contained, lovable little house, thought Sophia, who was one of the people who fall in love with places as well as with persons, and rather more easily… (p. 89)

All seems fine at first. Sophia enjoys decorating the cottage, and the three siblings are happy to be sharing a place together. Naturally, Uncle Preston and the other dreadful relatives disapprove of the whole thing and remain convinced that the children will get into debt or make a terrible mess of it all without their help – except Uncle Preston’s wife, Auntie Loo, who seems kind and supportive.

The whole crew of relations from Uncle Preston to Angela meanwhile rang up almost every evening to enquire, warn, admonish, coo and say that they simply must come over and see the house. They were all, except Auntie Loo, hoping that the children would make a shocking mess of the housekeeping, and their telephone calls were in the nature of vulture-like hoverings and anticipations over what they hoped would soon be a carcass. (pp. 130–131)

As the weeks pass, it soon becomes clear that the siblings are looking for different things out of life. With her love of routine and order, Sophia wants nothing more than for the three of them to settle down to orderly lives. The terrible misery of growing up under Hartley’s gaze is all in the past, but as far as Sophia sees it, the children must now live within their means and plan for the future. Harry, on the other hand, is intent on enjoying life to the full. Having secured a stint as an assistant stage manager and a small part in a play, Harry falls in with the theatre crowd, regularly inviting them back to the cottage for parties he can ill afford to fund. Meanwhile, Francis is finding his feet as an office boy in the chalk business, a job secured for him by Uncle Preston.

Harry, in particular, resists Sophia’s attempts to ‘manage’ him, especially as far as money and late-night parties are concerned; and the situation is further complicated when Harry befriends a sophisticated banker, Juan, and his glamorous sister, both of whom prove distracting. When Sophia returns from a week away to find the cottage in chaos, she realises her vision of happy families is falling apart. In short, something will have to give…

One of the most enjoyable things about this novel is Gibbons’ portrayals of the Garden relatives, particularly Uncle Preston, whose imaginings of all the terrible goings-on at the cottage provide much of the book’s humour. He really is a hoot!

He suspected that Things Went On there. There were cocktails, he suspected, and what he vaguely but disapprovingly thought of as Jazz. He did not know that cocktails cost too much for the cottage to make a habit of buying them. Like the editors of newspapers he had only to mutter ‘Cocktails’ to himself to see an awful symbol, an alcoholic Scarlet Woman whose number was 666, instead of a joyless and nasty drink which costs from 1/6 to 3/– a small glass. (p. 225)

There’s also a hilarious set-piece, in which all the relatives are invited over to the cottage for afternoon tea, only for Sophia’s makeshift table to collapse, scattering prawns, chocolate eclairs and cups of tea everywhere, not least over Uncle Preston!

Gibbons also writes lovingly about London, particularly at night, with its smoky beauty glimpsed through twinkling lights. Finally, the novel has some interesting things to say about the early years of adulthood with all the promise, opportunity and responsibility this holds. In particular, the challenges of having fun while living within one’s means are well explored, as are the family dynamics between the three siblings. In short, then, Enbury Heath is a thoroughly enjoyable comfort read, especially for the autumn when the nights start drawing in.

Enbury Heath is published by Vintage; personal copy  

Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen

Initially published in 1968, Eva Trout was Elizabeth Bowen’s final novel, written when the author was in her sixties. I pulled it from my shelves because someone on Twitter (I can’t recall who) suggested it for Nora’s #SpinsterSeptember, but having read it, I’m not sure it quite fits. Bowen’s protagonist – the endlessly fascinating Eva Trout – is twenty-four when we first meet her and thirty-three by the story’s end, which seems a little too young to be considered a spinster. Either way, this is a brilliant, complex, beautifully written character study, and I’m delighted to have read it!

Tall, gawky and oddly naïve, Eva has somehow managed to survive a traumatic childhood, and this turmoil in her formative years partly accounts for her challenging behaviour in early adulthood. Her mother, the charming but maniacal Cissie, bolted shortly after Eva’s birth, only to be killed in a plane crash soon afterwards. Consequently, young Eva was raised by a succession of governesses appointed by her father, Willy, who recently took his own life. During adolescence, Eva spent some time at an experimental boarding school funded by her father, and Bowen reveals much of this background through flashbacks and reflections on past events in the novel’s early chapters.

A spell at an English boarding school followed, and it was here that Eva met the dazzling teacher, Iseult Smith (now Arble), who continues to be an important influence on her life. An impulsive girl by heart, the teenage Eva was an original thinker, often coming up with striking thoughts in isolation from one another. At school, Iseult encouraged Eva to follow through on her fragmented ideas and develop them into hypotheses or conclusions rather than randomly jumping from one impulse to another. For all Eva’s difficulties and capacity for wreaking havoc, there was (and still is) a vulnerability under that exterior, something Iseult tried to uncover while coaching the girl.

The giantess, by now, was alone also: some way along the edge of the water she had come to a stop – shoulders braced, hands interlocked behind her, feet in the costly, slovenly lambskin bootees planted apart. Back fell her cap of jaggedly cut hair from her raised profile, showing the still adolescent heaviness of the jawline. […] Is she thinking? Mrs Dancey thought not. Monolithic, Eva’s attitude was. It was not, somehow, the attitude of a thinking person. (p. 12)

Throughout his daughter’s youth, Willy was in a same-sex relationship with Constantine, an odious, self-interested man who is currently overseeing Eva’s considerable inheritance. Eva will inherit a substantial fortune when she hits twenty-five, which is only a few months away when the novel opens. In the meantime, Constantine is happy to put some distance between himself and Eva while she stays with her former teacher, Iseult, and her husband, Eric Arble, at their home, Larkins. How much Eva actually knows about the circumstances leading up to her father’s death remains somewhat unclear; however, Constantine agrees to this living arrangement, paying the Arbles a much-needed allowance for the girl’s keep.

In reality, though, the situation is far from ideal. Eva’s presence at Larkins is adding to the strain on the Arbles’ marriage, already under some pressure from Eric’s failed attempts at a fruit farm and Iseult’s abandonment of a promising teaching career. Eva too is no longer dazzled by Iseult. If anything, she feels abandoned by her former mentor, led on and betrayed, having previously opened up to her at school. Consequently, Eva spends much of her time at the local vicarage with the welcoming Dancey family, whose twelve-year-old son, Henry, becomes her closest friend.

When Eva informs Constantine that she wishes to leave Larkins, Constantine summons Iseult to London for a meeting…

Eva’s capacity for making trouble, attracting trouble, strewing trouble around her, is quite endless. […] The Trouts have, one might say, a genius for unreality: even Willy was prone to morose distortions. Hysteria was, of course, the domain of Cissie. Your, er, generous defence of Cissie won’t, I hope, entirely blind you to how much of what was least desirable in Cissie is in her daughter. Eva is tacitly hysterical. (p. 44)

With a little help from Henry, Eva escapes to Broadstairs, where she rents a rather undesirable house, Cathay, from a local estate agent, Mr Denge. Bowen’s talent for social comedy is on full display in this novel, and Eva’s odd mix of naivety, intolerance and impulsive behaviour provides plenty of suitable material. In this scene, Eva, who cuts a striking figure with her penchant for ocelot furs and other such outfits, is desperate to be rid of Mr Denge after he escorts her to Cathay. Mr Denge, however, insists on showing his tenant all the facilities – and well he might because she hasn’t a clue how anything works!

[Eva:] ‘—Thank you. I expect that you must be going?’

[Mr Denge:] ‘Toilet in order?’ He reached past Eva and gave a tug to a chain. The resultant roar, cataclysmic, stampeded Eva, who pushed nay fought her way violently past him shouting: ‘This is enough! Go – go away at once! You take liberties!’

Mr. Denge was no less outraged. He went crimson. What could or did she imagine, this she-Cossack? Cautionary stories raced through his brain. Fraught though his calling was with erotic risks, nothing had so far singled him out. A frame-up? Blackmail? This could be the end. This could be all round town. He should not have bought sheets with her without Mrs. Denge. (pp. 80–81)

As the first section of this two-part novel draws to a close, Eric Arble and Constantine trace Eva separately to Cathay, but their arrival one after another on the same evening leads Constantine to conclude that Eva is having a relationship with Eric. Moreover, Eva deliberately misleads Iseult about this, dropping a bombshell in a terrible act of betrayal.

In part two, set eight years later, Eva, now thirty-three, has acquired a young boy, Jeremy, during an extended stay in America. No precise details are given about this ‘adoption’; however, we are led to assume that money may have changed hands. Interestingly, Jeremy, who is deaf and mute, is much better cared for by his adoptive mother than Eva was herself. Parenting (or the lack of it) is one of the novel’s central themes, and it’s touching to see how Eva invests time in playing with this boy, helping him to appreciate the world through images and visual activities.

As the rest of the novel plays out, there are further complications for Eva as her attraction to Henry deepens. Moreover, she is drawn once more into the affairs of Iseult and Eric – now separated but not divorced – not to mention those of Constantine, now in thrall to a priest, Father Tony.

The novel’s power rests in the strength of Bowen’s characterisation and the quality of her writing, both of which are superb.

Eva is a fascinating character, undoubtedly damaged by her traumatic youth, but there’s also the suggestion of inherited mental health issues in the mix. Certainly, she has a habit of wreaking havoc almost everywhere she goes, sometimes deliberately. Misunderstandings and miscommunications are threaded through the narrative, many of them seeded or aggravated by Eva’s cavalier actions. Nevertheless, like any damaged individual, she has her vulnerabilities and redeeming features, too. While others may consider Jeremy the latest in a long line of Eva’s whims and peccadillos, the relationship between the boy and his adoptive mother is more loving than one might expect, especially given her earlier disruptive behaviour. Moreover, it’s interesting to consider how Eva might have turned out had she not been abandoned by Iseult at school. (We are largely reliant on Eva’s side of the story here, so the actual situation may have been somewhat different.) The supporting players are also excellent, from the rather pompous Constantine to the enigmatic Iseult.

As always with Bowen, the writing is top-notch. Her style takes a bit of getting used to at first, but it more than repays the reader’s concentration, especially with a protagonist as erratic as Eva. I especially love Bowen’s eye for detail, which she often uses to reveal insights into character.

Iseult took a sip at the cigarette, then rested it on the lip of the ashtray in order to draw off her right-hand glove. The gloves, fairly fine black suede, were not lost on Constantine: undoubtedly they were new. There had, then, been a moment to shop on the way here?  A less wise woman would also have chanced a hat bar; Mrs Arble had kept her head and stuck to her sleek-feathered turban, which – dating back though it might be a year or two – still was in good shape (not many outings, probably?) and showcased the forehead loyally: nothing like an old friend. (p. 35)

The novel ends with a startling denouement, which, with the benefit of hindsight, seems tragically inevitable. It’s a powerful conclusion to this thoroughly absorbing book – another strong contender for my end-of-year highlights.

Eva Trout is published by Vintage Books; personal copy.

Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (tr. Benjamin Moser)

I’ve always been a little intimidated by the prospect of reading Clarice Lispector, the Brazilian writer whose novels and short stories are much admired in literary circles. My only previous experience with her work was back in 2015 when I read her debut novel, Near to the Wild Heart – a book I admired rather than loved despite its dazzling, poetic prose. Now in 2024, I’ve returned to this critically acclaimed author with her last novel (a novella, really), Hour of the Star, first published in Portuguese in 1977. Like Lispector’s debut, Star is an intriguing but challenging book, a metafictional text with multiple facets and layers.  

Ostensibly narrated by Rodrigo S. M. – a rather self-absorbed, philosophical writer originally from the poor northeastern region of Brazil – Star tells the story of Macabéa, an impoverished, uneducated girl from humble beginnings, now trying to eke out a living as a typist in Rio. Alongside narrating Macabéa’s story, Rodrigo is also creating it as he goes along, so the text is interspersed with his observations on Macabéa’s character, the questions he is wrestling with as the narrative develops (some of these are quite amusing) and his ruminations on the writing process in general.

…I have to speak simply to capture her [Macabéa’s] delicate and vague existence. I humbly limit myself—without trumpeting my humility for then it wouldn’t be humble—I limit myself to telling of the lame adventures of a girl in a city that’s entirely against her. (p. 7)

In fact, the novella starts with quite a long series of reflections about the challenges of writing such a story and the questions this raises. For instance, there might be certain responsibilities or obligations involved. Characters must be created and conveyed to the reader in meaningful ways to trigger recognition or appreciation while also being true to the (fictional) figures themselves. Moreover, the writer holds the characters’ destinies in his or her hands, which confers a sense of responsibility for their fates. The obligation to portray these stories accurately/appropriately may also be a consideration, even in fiction, especially if the author is writing about subjects outside their sphere of personal experience.

What I write is more than mere invention, it’s my obligation to tell about this one girl out of the thousands like her. And my duty, however artlessly, to reveal her life. (p. 5)

As this discursive initial section unfolds, it becomes increasingly apparent that Lispector herself, the author of the book we are reading, is also entering the frame. Like Rodrigo, Lispector is also grappling with some of the points alluded to above, and the answers are not cut and dried. In fact, it’s not entirely clear how much of this section is Lispector speaking directly to the reader vs Lispector’s creation, Rodrigo, or indeed, if such distinctions matter. Interestingly, the above quote from p. 5 also reminds me of how Annie Ernaux describes the desire to find and convey something universal from her personal experiences, almost like a calling or an obligation.

So, as a novella, Star comprises three interconnected layers: a) Lispector, the author; b) Rodrigo, the creator and narrator of Macabéa’s story; and c) Macabéa, the protagonist herself. In his excellent introduction to Star, Colm Tóibín describes the novella using the following metaphor, which seems remarkably apt.

…Hour of the Star is like being brought backstage during the performance of a play and allowed odd glimpses of the actors and the audience, and further and more intense glimpses of the mechanics of the theatre—the scene and costume changes, the creation of artifice—with many interruptions by the backstage staff. It is to be told in ironic, maybe mocking, whispers by the box office on the way out that those glimpses were in fact the whole performance, plotted out with care and attention by a writer who is still nervously watching from somewhere close, or somewhere in the distance, who may or may not even exist. (p. x)

Focusing on Macabéa for a few moments, she leads a narrow life, seemingly lacking purpose or agency. Her job is dull and menial, and her poor performance in the role means dismissal is a potential threat. Despite her unattractive appearance, Macabéa dreams of being a movie star – her idol is Marilyn Monroe. In the meantime, though, she tries to survive on hot dogs and diet coke while eking out a meagre existence in the Rio slums. Even her boyfriend, Olympico, is a mean, obnoxious cheat, full of grand ideas and no regard for Macabéa’s feelings.

Thoughts of Marilyn Monroe aside, Macabéa has an empty inner life and little understanding of the wider world, mostly because this impoverished existence (in more ways than one) is the only life she has ever known…

She had what’s known as inner life and didn’t know it. […] But it seems to me that her life was a long meditation on the nothing. Except she needed others in order to believe in herself, otherwise she’d get lost in the successive and round emptinesses inside her. (p. 29)

Consequently, her world has a sense of innocence and simplicity, an inner freedom unsullied by the misery of her circumstances. It’s something that Rodrigo must grapple with as he considers Macabéa’s fate.

(I could still go back and rewind the last few minutes and happily start again at the point when Macabéa was standing on the sidewalk—but it doesn’t depend on me to say that the blond and foreign man looked at her. Because I’ve already gone too far and can’t turn back now.…) (p. 70)

Hour of the Star is a fascinating book, a multilayered meditation on the writing process and some of the challenges this presents. It also offers a compelling portrayal of innocence and simplicity in a complex, brutal world. I get the sense that Lispector is grappling with various moral and ethical considerations around creating fiction here – responsibilities that come with being a successful author and the rights and wrongs of drawing on someone’s experiences in creating art. At what point, for instance, does this process cross over from illumination to exploitation? This question is not posed explicitly as such, but it seems implicit in certain threads within the text.

I’m still not entirely convinced that Lispector’s fiction is for me, especially as I may have completely misinterpreted this book; however, it’s a very intriguing read nonetheless. In some of my favourite sections, it feels as though Lispector is addressing the reader directly (without the complication of Rodrigo as a device), so I might try some of her non-fiction next.

I write because I have nothing else to do in the world: I was left over and there is no place for me in the world of men. I write because I’m desperate and I’m tired, I can no longer bear the routine of being me and if not for the always novelty that is writing, I would die symbolically every day. But I am prepared to slip out discreetly through the back exit. I’ve experienced almost everything, including passion and its despair. And now I’d only like to have what I would have been and never was. (pp. 12–13)

Hour of the Star is published by Penguin Books; personal copy.

The Misses Mallett by E. H. Young

If you follow Nora (@pearjelly_) on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll know that she’s currently hosting #SpinsterSeptember, a month-long reading event showcasing books featuring spinsters, ranging from the classic figures in 20^th-century lit to the more modern incarnations we might see in books today. As my first contribution, I’ve chosen E. H. Young’s 1922 novel The Misses Mallett (originally titled The Bridge Dividing), partly because it features two spinster sisters, Caroline and Sophia Mallett, who live in Radstowe with their beautiful, younger stepsister, Rose. At thirty-one, Rose is too young to be considered a fully-fledged spinster, but if nothing changes for the better, she might become one…

In this delightful, thoroughly absorbing novel, E. H. Young tells the story of these three sisters, who, along with their spirited niece, twenty-one-year-old Henrietta, are the Misses Malletts of the book’s title. It is a novel about love and the tension between sense and sensibility – or, put more simply, between the head and the heart.

The book is divided into three parts, with the first focusing primarily on Rose and those in her direct orbit. Rose, we soon learn, was once courted by an attractive local landowner, Francis Sales, back in the days of her youth. However, with half an eye on the wider world and all its dazzling opportunities, she turned down Francis’ proposal of marriage at the time, partly to avoid being restricted. Now, following his father’s death, Francis and his wife, Christabel, whom he met and married in the US, have come to Radstowe, bringing Rose back into contact with her old flame.

Rose feels a pain of jealousy at this new development, for while Francis might not be the love of her life, she has no desire to ‘share’ him with another woman. For a moment, Rose wishes she had accepted Francis’ proposal back when she was twenty-three – at the very least, it would have given her life some purpose and structure.

She laughed at this decline in her ambition; she no longer expected the advent of the colossal figure of her young dreams; and she knew this was the hour when she ought to strike out a new way for herself, to leave this place which offered her nothing but ease and a continuous, foredoomed effort after enjoyment; but she also knew that she would not go. She had not the energy nor the desire. She would drift on, never submerged by any passion, keeping her head calmly above water, looking coldly at the interminable sea. This was her conviction, but she was not without a secret hope that she might at last to be carried to some unknown island, odorous, surprising and her own, where she would, for the first time, experience some kind of excess. (pp. 47–48)

When Christabel is severely injured in a riding accident (an accident that Rose might have been able to prevent), Rose feels a strange combination of annoyance and pity. Moreover, the accident throws her feelings for Francis into sharp relief. Now she is in love with him, a more passionate, tender type of love than she could have imagined back in her youth. And yet, Christabel remains in the way…

Into this mix comes the sisters’ niece, Henrietta, who at twenty-one is spirited, impetuous and a little naïve. When Henrietta’s widowed mother dies, leaving the girl in poverty, the Mallett sisters happily carry out their late sister-in-law’s wish by offering Henrietta a home in their comfortable Radstowe house. She is, after all, their brother Reginald’s daughter, even if Reginald himself was foolish and irresponsible. The sisters also grant their niece a decent allowance for clothes and social activities, giving her a degree of independence and responsibility in her sophisticated new life.

While Caroline is of the belief that the Mallett women don’t marry, Henrietta, with her youth and impulsive nature, has other ideas…

‘…The Malletts don’t marry, Henrietta. Look at us, as happy as the day is long, with all the fun and none of the trouble. We’ve been terrible flirts, Sophia and I. Rose is different, but at least she hasn’t married. The three Miss Malletts of Nelson Lodge! Now there are four of us, and you must keep up our reputation.’ (p. 79)

When Henrietta encounters Francis, she falls under his spell, and he too seems interested, as far as she can tell; but the situation is further complicated by unfinished business between Francis and his old flame. Despite his marriage to Christabel (now an invalid following her riding accident), Francis is still in love with Rose – a fact Henrietta correctly intuits when she observes them from a distance. For a moment, Henrietta despises and pities Francis, who it seems has no eyes for her youth; but then she remembers ‘his look of arrested interest’ during their previous meeting, and her hopes of romance are rekindled.

As the remainder of this intricate story plays out, Rose must balance her feelings for Francis with her own values and principles. In her wisdom and maturity, she knows Henrietta should be protected; but how best to manage the situation without forcing a crisis? Plus, there are her own feelings for Francis to deal with, complicating the situation for all concerned.

But Rose was conscious of the working of four minds: there was her own, sore with the past and troubled by a present in which her lover concealed his discomfiture under the easy sullenness of his pose. He, too, had the past shared with her to haunt him, but he had also a present bright with Henrietta’s allurements yet darkly streaked with prohibitions, struggles and surrenders, and Rose saw that the worst tragedy was his and hers. It must not be Henrietta’s (p. 172)

In the hope of securing an appropriate resolution, Rose enlists the help of a local boy, the gentle, unconventional Charles Batty, who has fallen for Henrietta, adding another layer of intrigue to the mix.

Something E. H. Young does particularly well here is to differentiate between the four Misses Mallett. While Caroline is lively and fun-loving, her sister, Sophia, is cautious, reserved and something of a dark horse. Rose, on the other hand, is more mysterious and controlled than either of her stepsisters, while Henrietta – the youngest of the four – is wilful, impulsive and independent. In fact, Henrietta doesn’t quite know what to make of Rose, who, compared to her sisters, seems enigmatic and opaque. This lack of openness in the relationship between Rose and her niece further complicates the intricate web of interpersonal dynamics at play here.

The novel also invites us to draw comparisons between the situations of unmarried women at three different stages of the lifecycle – from Henrietta at twenty-one to Rose at thirty-one to Caroline and Sophia in middle age. For Caroline and Sophia (both accomplished flirts in their youth), the days for romance have passed, while for Henrietta, they are yet to come. Rose, on the other hand, lies somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, caught between the anticipation of youth and the resignation of confirmed spinsterhood with everything this entails.

Alongside the drama of these relationships, the novel is flecked with moments of humour, illustrating Young’s sharpness and powers of description.

It was […] pitiful to see Aunt Sophia keeping up her dignity among black-clothed, black-beaded relatives who seemed to appear out of the ground like snails after rain and who might have been part of the undertaker’s permanent stock-in-trade. (p. 211)

The Radstowe setting, modelled on Bristol’s Clifton, is also beautifully evoked, particularly the surrounding countryside through which Francis and Rose ride while Henrietta walks.

All in all, this is a thoroughly immersive novel with a compelling storyline and great characterisation. The Rose-Francis-Henrietta love triangle becomes a little too convoluted towards the end, but that’s a fairly minor criticism in the scheme of things. The novel also offers some interesting insights into life for unmarried women in the 1920s. Neither Caroline nor Sophia ever married, but their wealth has cushioned them to a certain extent; less fortunate women might have been forced into marriage to survive. As for Rose and Henrietta, I’ll let you discover their fates yourself, should you read the book.

My edition of The Misses Mallett was published by Virago Press; personal copy.

Appointment with Yesterday by Celia Fremlin

Last summer, I read and loved Celia Fremlin’s 1959 novel Uncle Paul, a wonderfully compelling story about what can happen when our imagination runs wild, conjuring up all sorts of nightmare scenarios from our fears and suspicions. Faber’s latest Fremlin reissue, the 1972 novel Appointment with Yesterday, shares something of that earlier book’s themes, exploring as it does the damaging impact of paranoia in domestic settings. It’s a very cleverly constructed story in which Fremlin gradually reveals information to build terror and suspense, all set against the backdrop of a dismal London basement, a windswept seaside town and a series of cluttered kitchens.

When we first meet Fremlin’s protagonist – an unhappily married woman in her early forties – she is riding the London underground on a continuous loop, stuck in a kind of daze. It soon becomes clear that this woman is on the run, having fled her home before dawn with nothing more than a handbag and the clothes she happens to be wearing. What or whom she is running away from remains a mystery for now, but we can tell she feels threatened and is probably suffering from shock.

Nobody, she reflected, ever brings their real selves with them on to a tube train. None of us have. We have all left our identities behind in some vast spiritual Left Luggage office: and no one could guess—no one, possibly could ever guess, just by looking—that there is one among all these glazed faces that has left its identity behind not just for the duration of the tube journey, but for ever. (p. 1)

In an effort to do something, the woman makes her way to Victoria station where she boards a train to the first destination suggested by the ticket clerk – a coastal town named Seacliffe. Here, she chooses a new name, Milly Barnes, secures a job as a cleaning lady for a desperate housewife and finds lodgings in a friendly boarding house. If resourcefulness is the key to reinvention, Milly has it in spades.

As Milly begins to establish a new life for herself, including a credible backstory to explain her lack of money and ID, Fremlin gradually lets us in on the events leading up to Milly’s daybreak flit and her fear of being traced. Much of this information is woven into the story through flashbacks as Milly reflects on her first marriage to Julian, an attractive, wildly successful doctor who left her for a younger woman, and her hasty second marriage to Gilbert, an older man she doesn’t love. In short, Gilbert was purely a way for Milly to get back at Julian for his patronising dismissal of her during their alimony settlement. Far from being over the hill at forty, Milly was more than capable of attracting a distinguished husband, and her marriage to Gilbert proved it. 

“I am returning your cheque,” she had written [to Julian]—and the composing of this letter had given her, perhaps, the most exquisite ten minutes of her whole life. It seemed, looking back, that it was just for this ten minutes that she had undertaken the whole thing [marrying Gilbert]: had bartered, knowingly, the whole of her future life, with no doubt at all that a lifetime of frustration and boredom was a small price to pay for ten minutes of triumph so perfect and so complete. (p. 34)

Unfortunately for Milly, marriage to Gilbert was not simply boring and frustrating; it was downright terrifying instead! Looking back, she wonders when the alarm bells first started ringing for her. Maybe it was the first night or the second? Either way, it was almost immediately after the wedding…

Was it the first evening, for instance—or the second?—or maybe later still?—that she had first noticed the earliness of the hour at which Gilbert was accustomed to lock up for the night? She remembered listening to the pad-pad of his ancient gym shoes as he roamed from room to room, locking the doors, drawing the hinged wooden shutters across the windows, fastening the great bolts, and only after he had finished, and had settled down in his big leather chair, with the green-shaded reading-lamp casting a strange cat-glitter into the gloom of the great room—only then did it dawn on Milly, with a sickening stab of sheer horror, that outside the sun was still shining…through the heat of the late afternoon. (p. 94–95)

As the weeks slipped by, Gilbert became increasingly paranoid to the point where Milly was only allowed to leave the house for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. As far as he was concerned, Milly was trying to poison him. All a delusion of course, but there was no way of getting through to Gilbert by that point; his mind was too far gone.

It was just as if he was still there, waiting for her, in the black, bottomless past; waiting, in the quiet certainty that, in the end, she would lose her footing in the bright, precarious present, and come slithering back: back into the darkness, into Gilbert’s own special darkness, which at first had seemed to be merely the darkness of a gloomy London basement, and had only later been revealed as the black, irreversible darkness his own disintegrating mind. (p. 130)

I won’t reveal precisely what happened before Milly fled for Seacliffe, but save to say she still fears being traced…

After three weeks in Seacliffe, Milly is back on her feet. Word has spread about her efficiency as a cleaning lady, and she now has three ladies who depend on her for help. (As a slight aside, there are some very amusing observations on the power dynamics between domestic cleaners and their middle-class employers in this novel. Reliable home helps are like gold dust, and Milly finds herself much in demand!) Moreover, her fellow lodgers, Jacko and Kevin, soon become friends, helping to fight Milly’s corner when things get tricky.

By week four, though, Milly senses that her old life is rapidly closing in. Mysterious callers come looking for her at the boarding house, and there are phone calls to her employers, too. As Milly’s mind goes into overdrive, Fremlin cleverly explores another instance of how our fears can run wild. It’s different from Gilbert’s deranged paranoia, but Milly is terrified nonetheless.

I thoroughly enjoyed this clever exploration of fear and paranoia, which gripped me throughout. Some readers may question a certain element of the ending, possibly projecting 21^st-century values onto a 1970s protagonist in the hope of a different outcome, but to my mind it fits with the times. Fremlin’s evocation of Milly’s horrific existence with Gilbert – the dark, claustrophobic basement flat, all shuttered up like a prison – is brilliantly done, and the details of her new life in Seacliffe add light to the shade. As ever with Fremlin, the build-up of tension is beautifully controlled, keeping the reader in suspense about the outcome for Milly till the very end.

All in all, it’s another excellent reissue from Faber, and I look forward to reading more Celia Fremlin in the future! (My thanks to the publishers for kindly providing a review copy.)

Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda (tr. Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent)

Widely regarded as one of the most influential Catalan writers of the 20^th century, Mercè Rodoreda lived in exile in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War. While there, she wrote many novels and short stories, including the 1967 novel Garden by the Sea, set in a Catalan coastal villa over six consecutive summers in the 1920s. It’s an evocative, beautifully written story of a glamorous, wealthy couple, Senyoret Francesc and Senyoreta Rosamaria, and their equally privileged friends – narrated by the household’s middle-aged gardener, a quiet contemplative man who has lovingly tended the villa’s garden for most of his adult life.

At night, from the mulberry and linden tree promenade, I would often find myself looking up at the masters’ bedroom window. I have always enjoyed walking in the garden at night, to feel it breathe. And when I grew tired I would amble back to my little house, reveling in the peaceful existence of all that was green and filled with color in the light of day. (p. 6)

Much of the story is told through the unnamed narrator’s observations of events unfolding around him, supplemented by his conversations with the other employees at the villa, including Quima, the household cook and a major source of gossip. While the gardener is a proud and private man, more interested in the well-being of his garden than in the personal lives of his employers, he cannot help witnessing various developments in the villa. Others sometimes use him as a sounding board or an opportunity to vent – and in some instances, he is called upon to act as a mediator, someone reliable and independent to set things right.

Over the course of the novel, there are lavish dinners and parties, dalliances between Francesc and a provocative housemaid, Miranda, brief separations and reconciliations, and various other occurrences. Moreover, the narrative is laced with beautiful descriptions of these events, showcasing Rodoreda’s eye for detail and painterly prose style, giving the story a visual, cinematic feel.

The electricians had been by two days earlier to string up lights in the garden, and the week before, Senyoreta Maragda, the seamstress, had a group of girls from her shop come to the house and they all holed up on the second floor making dresses for the party. And there was a lot of dashing down to Barcelona to buy lace and ribbons; something or other was always missing, and Quima and Mariona were in a frenzy with all the work that had suddenly landed in their laps. (p. 12)

Rodoreda’s evocative descriptions of the villa and its gardens add another layer to the text. The narrator, a widower, cares deeply about his work, tending the garden with a degree of devotion unmatched by those around him. For instance, he laments his employers’ decisions to sacrifice certain sections of the garden to make room for tables and socialising areas during the holidays, all of which take significant time and effort to repair. This disregard for the value of the natural world is a running theme throughout, questioning the values of the privileged classes who often prioritise short-lived frivolities over enduring beauty. As the novel unfolds, we also learn a little about the narrator’s backstory – in particular, memories of his late wife Cecilia, a former housemaid at the villa, who lives on in spirit.

The usual pattern of summer events is somewhat disturbed when the neighbouring land is sold to a wealthy newcomer, Senyor Bellom, who commissions a lavish new villa to be built for his daughter, Maribel, and her husband-to-be. Initially, this prompts Francesc to order an upgrade to his own summer house – complete with stables and a trainer for the horses – to avoid it looking second-rate compared to the neighbouring estate. However, more troubling is the identity of Senyor Bellom’s son-in-law, Eugeni, who turns out to be Rosamaria’s former fiancé. As with most of the scandal involving the Senyorets, our narrator hears about it from Quima…

[Quima] “…His name is Eugeni. And at one time he was engaged to Senyoreta [Rosamaria]. It’s like in the movies.”

[Narrator] “And what do the Senyorets say?”

“Nothing. It never happened. I’m sure Miranda has overheard a lot, but she’s keeping mum. I found out through Mariona. If you could have seen the dinner they gave to celebrate the young people’s arrival! Senyoreta wore her best dress. And the other lady… Maribel, her name is Maribel, in a sequined dress, tight, black, and her hair like a curtain of rain. A diamond the size of a plate, the two of them flaunting themselves. Senyoret [Francesc] was as stiff as an asparagus over dinner…” (p. 106)

It’s a development that ultimately ends in tragedy, heightening the sense of loss and unfulfilled desire that runs through this poignant story.

This is a subtle, evocative novel in which events unfold at a leisurely pace. While things happen, it not a plot-driven narrative as such; rather, the emphasis is on atmosphere, mood and the beauty of Rodoreda’s prose. The format of the story, in which developments are conveyed through a combination of observations from the sidelines, secondhand reports and hearsay, requires some reading between the lines. However, the rewards are there for patient readers to enjoy.

I’ll finish with a final quote, one that seems to capture something of the spirit of this wistful, melancholy book. This is my first experience of Rodoreda’s work, and I’m very much looking forward to more.

In fair weather they breakfasted outside, beneath the magnolia trees. When the weather was bad, they took their breakfast on the veranda. The windows there were hung with blue silk curtains, and in the summer, when a breeze made them shiver ever so gently, they looked like flags. They referred to the veranda as the steamship, and all the windowsills were ringed with blue hydrangeas on the inside, the fountain in the center too, but it was almost never turned on. Seynora Pepa preferred to have late tulips there, the ones with the ruffle. (p. 26)

Garden by the Sea is published by Open Letter; personal copy.

The Mahé Circle by Georges Simenon (tr. Siân Reynolds)

While Simenon is probably best known for his Inspector Maigret novels, he also wrote many darker novels, often referred to as his romans durs or ‘hard’ psychological novels with an existential edge. I’ve read quite a few now and would definitely recommend them. Interestingly, the following questions arise on a regular basis. What prompts a seemingly ordinary, respectable man to suddenly rebel against convention, abandoning all judgement to embark on a path of self-destruction? What causes him to actively seek out the shameful, the ruinous or the dangerous in search of a fictitious freedom until his actions end in near-inevitable catastrophe? It’s a theme Simenon returns to again and again.

First published in French in 1946 and translated in English in 2014, The Mahé Circle belongs to this genre of Simenon’s work. Darker and more brooding than the Maigret mysteries, this tightly wound novella is a quick, compelling read, powered by the author’s depiction of an everyman in crisis.

The story opens with a fishing trip. Dr François Mahé – Simenon’s unfortunate protagonist – is holidaying on the island of Porquerolles with his placid wife, Hélène, their two young children and housemaid, Mariette. While the others amuse themselves on the beach, Dr Mahé has enlisted one of the island’s fishermen, Gène, to take him out on a boat. However, what the good doctor cannot understand is his lack of success with the fish. While Gène reels in péquois by the bucketload, Mahé catches nothing of value, only diables, those ‘nasty fish covered in spines’ that must be thrown back in the water. No doubt the islanders have the knack when it comes to fishing, some secret they’re unwilling to share with outsiders…

Despite being on holiday, Dr Mahé is far from relaxed. There is something deeply unsettling about the island, which radiates a strong sense of unease. By day four, the doctor is exhausted, worn down by a relentless combination of the blistering heat, a persistent headache, the threat of scorpions and his inability to land a fish.

He raised his head and sighed. He found it impossible to stay long peering deep into the water. His heart was palpating. He had a pain in the back of his eyes and a headache. It was becoming a nightmare. (p. 2)

Moreover, with the island’s regular doctor away on a trip, Mahé is soon called upon to attend a dying woman nearby. On his arrival at the woman’s makeshift home – an abandoned hut that belongs to the army – he sees an adolescent girl in a red dress crouching in the corner, staring at the visitors. Something about the image of this girl in the red dress unsettles Mahé, and from this point onwards he becomes fixated with the teenager, Elisabeth, occasionally catching glimpses of her during the remainder of his holiday. It’s not a case of love or desire as such, more an inexplicable obsession – so mysterious and powerful that it prompts him to return to the same island year after year.

He wasn’t even in love, it wasn’t that. If he had been in love, the problem would no doubt have been a great deal simpler.

No, it was an obsession, that was the word, a haunting obsession. And it had started that very first day, but faintly, insidiously, like those incurable illnesses that you only become aware of when it is too late for treatment. (p. 75)

As the story unfolds, we learn more about François Mahé and the crushing mundanity of his home life back in Saint-Hilaire. On the surface, the doctor has a comfortable existence – a good job, an amenable wife, two young children, a nice home, friends who live locally, and enough free time to go hunting or fishing whenever he wishes. But in truth, he had allowed other people to dictate almost every aspect of his life from his job as a doctor to his marriage to Hélène – a docile woman chosen by his mother, not to suit François himself, but to make her own life as easy as possible. At the age of thirty-five, Mahé realises that his whole life had been mapped out, as if some ‘obscure conspiracy had been woven around him’ – moreover, he had done nothing to prevent this from happening, nothing until now…

While Mahé isn’t in love with Elisabeth, his obsession with her is symbolic. In essence, she symbolises the antithesis of his claustrophobic, conventional life, representing freedom, excitement, perhaps even danger, tapping into the uncomfortable atmosphere that emanates from the island.

…it was the disavowal of his own life, of everything his life had been, the foursquare grey stone house, as tidy as a child’s building set, with its box trees trimmed into topiary by his maniacal predecessor, the black metal gate, and himself, a fat man of thirty-five – for he was thirty-five now – playing at making his motorbike roar along the country lanes, playing at hunting partridge or rabbit, the disavowal of Saint-Hilaire and the two women sewing for him from morning to night, and telling him when to change his underwear. (p. 76)

Each year, on his return to Porquerolles, the doctor looks for Elisabeth, seeking her out but maintaining his distance. On one occasion, he even encourages his nephew, Alfred (who has joined the Mahés on holiday), to sleep with the girl, hoping this will sully his image of her. But even this attempt to stem his obsession proves futile, leaving Mahé feeling more wretched than ever.

Something that Simenon does so well here is to depict Porquerolles as an alluring but unnerving setting. While we might consider an island off the south of France an idyllic location, Simenon’s Porquerolles has a radically different atmosphere. To Mahé, the island is a hostile place, intense and unforgiving – nevertheless, he is drawn to it like a magnet, both longing for it and loathing it in roughly equal measure.

Down there in the south was a hostile world, a world so foreign to him that he felt quite lost. The island itself. Its throbbing heat as if in a belljar under the sun, the scorpion in his son’s bed, the deafening sound of the cicadas. (p. 55)

Throughout the novella, Simenon makes excellent use of the natural world to reinforce this impression of danger and hostility. For instance, the sun is frequently portrayed as intense, blistering and ferocious, mirroring Mahé’s rejection of safety and protection. There are hints too of a brewing storm as great purple clouds gather ominously in the sky, augmenting the tension.

They had been waiting for this storm for a fortnight. All day, every day, the sky had been as heavy and leaden as skies in Africa, the dazzle from the sea hurt your eyes and gave you a headache after a while. As evening came, great violet clouds piled up in the purpling sky. They swelled almost directly above the island, like tumours ready to burst. (p. 60)

As the story plays out, there is a sense of creeping dread, and we fear for Mahé’s safety, not to mention his sanity. The doctor’s nights are haunted by disturbing dreams, highlighting the suffocating nature of his existence. In one dream, he is in a public square, surrounded by members of the Mahé family and associated community standing in a circle. When he tries to push through, he is unable to escape, trapped by the Mahé circle and the claustrophobic conventions of society.

Nobody moved. They were like statues. And he went round the circle. He was sweating with anxiety. He knew that he absolutely had to get out urgently, minutes counted. He went red in the face and became really angry.

‘Do you think this is clever? Are you going to let me through, yes or no? You know it is absolutely imperative that…’

And suddenly it was no longer men and women who surrounded him, but tombstones standing in a circle, and yet these stones were recognizable, they still bore the features of the persons they represented. (p. 140)

In summary then, The Mahé Circle is a compulsive, highly compelling read, a vivid portrayal of a seemingly ordinary man trapped in a stifling existence and his futile quest for freedom. Once again, Simenon demonstrates an innate ability to mine the darker sides of humanity, exploring the forces that can drive us to self-destruction. Like a car crash unfolding in front of our eyes, it’s hard to look away.

The Mahé Circle is published by Penguin Books; personal copy

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

First published in 1965, when Britain was in the midst of significant social change, The Millstone is a thoughtful, thoroughly absorbing story of a well-educated young woman who falls pregnant after her first sexual encounter. For a novel written sixty years ago, it feels remarkably progressive, partly due to the refreshing attitudes of Drabble’s engaging narrator, Rosamund Stacey, a Cambridge graduate writing her doctoral thesis on 16^th-century poetry.

Rosamund enjoys relationships but is rather fearful of sex, to the point where she is seeing two very different men, Joe and Roger, but sleeping with neither. (Each one is convinced that she is going to bed with the other, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth!)

My crime was my suspicion, my fear, my apprehensive terror of the very idea of sex. I liked men, and was forever in and out of love for years, but the thought of sex frightened the life out of me, and the more I didn’t do it and the more I read and heard about how I ought to do it the more frightened I became. (pp. 15–16)

One night, Rosamund lets down her guard with another friend, George, an effeminate announcer for the BBC, whom she assumes to be gay; nevertheless, they end up having sex back at her flat, partly because she feels so comfortable with him. Fearful of revealing her true feelings, Rosamund allows George to slip away without hinting that she’d like to see him again. Equally, he makes no move to continue their relationship, leaving Rosamund wondering whether he slept with her out of curiosity, embarrassment or a desire not to offend.

Weeks later, when Rosamund discovers she is pregnant, she doesn’t try to find George and tell him the news; rather, the situation is hers to deal with, and she will do so on her own. Initially, there is a half-hearted attempt at a self-induced termination with a hot bath and some gin, but nothing comes of it, and Rosamund is soon of the opinion that she will have the baby and raise it herself.

Thus, as the novel unfolds, we follow Rosamund’s attempts to navigate the NHS as an unmarried expectant mother, highlighting the responses she encounters both from the medical profession and from her friends and family. Luckily for Rosamund, her middle-class status and independently-minded approach to life cushion her to a certain extent. Plus, she has a comfortable Marylebone flat at her disposal while her parents are away in Africa for a few years. Nevertheless, there are multiple challenges for Rosamund to deal with as her pregnancy evolves.

While we might think of the 1960s as a time of sexual liberation, the prospect of raising a child as a single mother was still considered socially unacceptable by some, and Drabble is excellent at teasing this out within the context of the story. When Rosamund goes to see a GP – her first encounter with the NHS for several years – the response she is met with seems indicative of the times.

He told me to sit down and asked me what he could do for me, and I said that I thought I was pregnant, and he said how long had I been married, and I said that I was not married. It was quite simple. He shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger, and said did my parents know. I said yes, thinking it would be easier to say yes, and not wishing to embark on explaining about their being in Africa. (p. 40)

A trip to the ante-natal clinic also proves rather depressing, particularly as all the other mothers look so despondent and exhausted…

As at the doctor’s, I was reduced almost tears by the variety of human misery that presented itself. Perhaps I was in no mood for finding people cheering, attractive or encouraging, but the truth is that they looked to me an unbelievably depressed and miserable lot. […] Anaemia and exhaustion were written on most countenances: the clothes were dreadful, the legs swollen, the bodies heavy and unbalanced. […] And there we all were, and it struck me that I felt nothing in common with any of these people, that I disliked the look of them, that I felt a stranger and a foreigner there, and yet I was one of them, I was like that too, I was trapped in a human limit for the first time in my life, and I was going to have to learn how to live inside it. (pp. 61-62)

Having been raised with strong socialist values, Rosamund has rarely called on the NHS before, but now she must get to grips with a rather unwelcoming system – one that seems to favour ease and efficiency for the nursing staff over the welfare of expectant mothers. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Sophia’s dreadful experiences of maternity wards and childbirth in Barbara Comyns’ excellent novel Our Spoons Came from Woolworths as I was reading The Millstone. Rosamund isn’t treated quite as badly as Sophia was back in the 1930s; but even so, the maternity care she receives is far from ideal.

Rosamund’s older sister, Beatrice, who is happily married and living in the Midlands with her husband and three young children, is also far from supportive. When Rosamund writes to Beatrice informing her of the pregnancy, she expects a sympathetic, encouraging response; however, the letter she receives in return is anything but.

You can have no conception of what it means to have a child, of the responsibility and the worries and the financial anxiety and the not being able to get out or do anything without planning. Believe me, I know. I just can’t see you adapting yourself to the demands it would make on you, you’ve always been so set on your independence and having your own way. (p. 86)

In short, Beatrice believes her sister is making the most terrible mistake. Not only will the child be marked by ‘the slur of illegitimacy all its life’, Rosamund too will find her life irrevocably changed – and not, in Beatrice’s opinion, for the better. It would be far more sensible for all concerned if the baby were to be given up for adoption, preferably with no ongoing involvement from Rosamund to avoid undue distress. While Rosamund is upset by her sister’s lack of support, she remains determined to proceed – if anything, it simply strengthens her resolve to keep the baby and raise it on her own.

And naturally, Drabble’s heroine is proved right. When the baby arrives, Rosamund experiences a profound connection to her daughter, whom she names Octavia after the social reformer Octavia Hill.

She put her in my arms and I sat there looking at her, and her great wide blue eyes looked at me with seeming recognition, and what I felt it is pointless to try to describe. Love, I suppose one might call it, and the first of my life. (p. 114)

As Rosamund prepares to take Octavia home from the hospital, she realises that Beatrice’s fears about social ostracization are likely unfounded. In truth, her family’s social class will cushion Octavia to a certain extent. Not that Rosamund approves of Britain’s class inequalities; but for Octavia’s sake, she is prepared to live with them.

As the months pass by, there are other challenges for Rosamund to face, but I’ll leave you to discover these yourself should you read the book. Save to say, they only serve to deepen her love for little Octavia, making the novel a kind of love letter to the joys of motherhood with all its highs and lows.

Something that works so well here is Rosamund’s wonderful tone of voice. As the well-educated daughter of socialist, middle-class parents with a comfortable home, Rosamund is fully aware of her advantageous position compared to other less fortunate single mothers; and yet, she never actively uses her class to circumnavigate the system or to distance herself from other women. Despite her initial naivety, Rosamund demonstrates a resilience and determination to exert her independence without ever coming across as superior or preachy. There’s a lovely thoughtfulness and seam of dry wit in this novel, largely due to Rosamund’s engaging personality and manner. She is a pleasure to spend time with.

The novel also offers a fascinating insight into the NHS and its rather patronising treatment of mothers in the 1960s. At one point, an overbearing Ward Sister tries to prevent Rosamund from seeing Octavia when she falls ill, failing to treat a concerned mother with the humanity and compassion she deserves.  

The lady in white embarked upon a long explanation about upsetting children, upsetting mothers, upsetting other children, upsetting other mothers, justice to all, disturbing the nurses’ routine, and such topics. As she talked, in her smooth even tones, all kinds of memories filtered back into my mind, memories of correspondence in The Times and the Guardian upon this very subject, composed of letters from mothers like myself who had not been allowed in. (pp. 145–146)

In summary, then, this is an excellent, thought-provoking portrayal of a young unmarried mother’s determination to raise her baby alone in the face of significant opposition. Sixty years on, it remains a compelling feminist story and a poignant tribute to the joys of motherhood despite its many challenges. Very highly recommended indeed – another sharply observed novel by this underappreciated writer. 

The Millstone is published by Canongate; personal copy.