"Rip Tide" by Stella Rimington

 Stella Rimington was the Director General of MI5; she now writes spy novels featuring a female MI5 operative. She can hardly be accused of writing about what she doesn't know!

The book is in the classic thriller mould. It uses the past tense with told by an omniscient narrator who adopts multiple-perspectives - I counted fourteen separate characters who acted as a third-person narrator. This enables the author to keep the story moving along; the next bit of the narrative is always available because somebody can tell that segment of the story. However, there are two disadvantages of multi-PoV. Without using an unreliable narrator (which might be regarded as 'cheating' in this genre) the author cannot narrate from the PoV of one of the baddies ... so the reader can cross each narrator off from their list of suspects. The second disadvantage is, for me, more critical: only an exceptional author would be able to create fourteen characters sufficiently distinctive that they can convincingly narrate. 

It was interesting to note that wherever Rimington does describe the traits of a character it is almost always by saying what one of the other characters thinks of them, as if the author believes that the dictum 'show don't tell' can be circumvented by having one of the fictional characters do the telling.

I understand that a novelist isn't obliged to give a balanced account of the socio-political structure of the world . There were moments when Rimington tried to offer a balance, for example when it was explained why Somali pirates were forced into piracy and when the villains were allowed to offer justifications (though these seemed shallow, the platitudes of fanatics, rather than any sort of personal soul-searching) but these were momentary paragraphs, lost in the bulk of the book, and had the appearance of unconvincing tokens. I reiterate that it isn't the function of a novel to offer balance. But the best spy novels (eg those of John le Carre and Graham Greene) are able to be intensely personal accounts of individuals seem from only their perspective and yet can still suggest that the world of espionage (like the world itself) is full of moral ambiguities. This book reverts to a simplistic division between goodies and baddies; the baddies are almost all dyed-in-the-wool villains and the only possible criticism that can be levelled at a goody seems to be that he (or, more rarely she) is incompetent or inefficient. 

But character doesn't really matter in this genre. The plot is everything, and Rimington has constructed a workable if fairly standard plot. It gets off to a slow start with the inciting incident being delayed until the end of chapter two but again that is standard within the genre; there is almost always a little bit of scene-setting first.

Despite the jarring use of the word 'expatiating' in the second sentence, there is little to object to in this book. It was a thoroughly competent example of the genre; the story rattled along in 63 short chapters (averaging less than six pages each chapter).

But if there is little to object to, equally, there is little to celebrate in this book. 

Fundamentally, this novelist can't seem to see that there are always many more than two sides to every story. That's a deficiency for a novelist (and scary in a spymaster) but perhaps it's inevitable if you have fourteen viewpoints.

Selected quotes:

• "He'd be a self-proclaimed 'straight shooter', which really just meant he not only lacked sophistication but was proud of the deficit." (Ch 28)
• "Tall, dark and not entirely handsome." (Ch 55)

The story rattles along, told in 63 short chapters. A perfect example of the genre. Think of it as a burger from a fast food outlet. There's a lot of skill goes into making food that millions of people enjoy. It's cheap and easy to eat and the flavours are unsubtle and utterly predictable, which often adds to the appeal: you know exactly what you will get. But I prefer meals with more complex flavours. Fast food is forgettable; I like memorable meals. I doubt I'll ever read another Rimington.

October 2023; 369 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"As Starlight Grows Cold" by Conrad Xavier

This is a no-holds-barred account of life in an impoverished town in south-east England in the late 1990s. Karen 'Starlight' McCarthy lives with her alcoholic father; her friends are lesbian Rebecca and stripper Linda. Stalker and his gang of skinheads beat up Asian men and subscribe to Nazi ideologies. At the local hospital, porter Jonboy and manager Peterson (who has a weakness for cocaine and underage girls) vie for the affections of nurse Jenny Jenkins. 

It's raw, it's visceral, it's in your face. There are countless uses of the c-word and the f-words; there are scenes of racial abuse; there is endless misogyny and (mostly abusive) sex. This is not a book for those who are easily offended. 

There's a lot of dialogue which means that it often carries the burden of the narration. This often meant that the dialogue felt stilted and artificial, reducing the feeling of verisimilitude. There were dialogic markers to distinguish some characters (Jonboy, for example, had a distinctive way of talking) but by and large the characters sounded much the same. 

There was a clear distinction between 'goodies' and 'baddies'. This gave a feeling of one-dimensionality. Perhaps the only slightly complex character was Stalker who was a brutal thug but capable of surprisingly articulate argument but his intellectual side was only apparent so late on in the book that, rather than adding to his character it sounded out of character. With this exception, no-one had a character arc. These weaknesses tended to undermine the power of the narrative.

It might have been a better book if the cast of characters had been reduced so that the author could have concentrated on bringing them to life. There was a lot of incident, it was certainly action-packed. I read the book very quickly so it was, for me, a page turner.

Selected quotes:

• "I've walked through the turnstiles of life, seen the match and now I want a bleeding refund." (Ch 1)
• "The once thriving shopping centre had a large number of empty premises whilst those that still traded had worried owners staring out at each passer-by as if willing them to come in." (Ch 7)
• "A bare lightbulb hung precariously from the ceiling illuminating a landscape of broken boxes, castaway furniture, pieces of old piping, chains and a few long blades." (Ch 8)

Although I never quite believed in any of the characters, this is down-to-earth fiction with attitude. It's honest and brutal and packs a punch. 

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Sir Charles Dilke: A Victorian Tragedy" by Roy Jenkins

This is one of those biographies which seems to be intended for a select readership: those who are already in the know. Roy Jenkins has written a book which demands at least a working knowledge of the personalities and politics of late-19th century Britain. He's a bit better when his hero goes abroad but he doesn't explain who, for example, the Prince Imperial is. He compounds the mystery by quoting chunks of foreign Language, usually French, without translation. Books should be about communication and I would have thought that Mr Jenkins as a well-known and successful politician would be a great communicator. Perhaps he thinks I read French. Perhaps he doesn't want me to understand. Perhaps he has written this book purely for his own amusement.

Sir Charles Dilke was a Victorian with a baronetcy and a private income who became a Liberal MP, on the radical wing of the party, and soon attained Cabinet rank under Prime Minister Gladstone. He was then named as a co-respondent in a divorce case and, despite his name being apparently cleared, was judged by the establishment to be guilty. He lost his position, he lost his influence, and he lost his seat (although after some time being ostracised by society in general he got another constituency which he represented as a back-bencher to the end of his life).  

Of course it was the scandal that prompted me to read the book and I wasn't prepared for wading through the masses of biographical detail about his early life and his gradual gaining of political influence. As I say above, to properly appreciate what was going on you need to have a decent understanding of late Victorian politics. I don't, so most of the names passed me by in a blur.

Even when I recognise a name, it seems that Jenkins wants to try to keep me in the dark. He mentions Leslie Stephen as a influence on Dilke at Cambridge University without telling us that this man was the father of Virginia Woolf. (He does tell us that Dilke's second wife was, in an earlier marriage, thought to be the model for Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch.)

By now I'm bored.

Then come the court case(s). Jenkins trawls through the testimony. There's a lot of detail. Too much. I drown. More of a blur.

Even when we get to the chapter that suggests there might have been a conspiracy, every little thing is told to us. There is no smoking gun. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence. There are hints that could be used to suggest theories but Jenkins fails to draw out any generalities from the stodgy mass of evidence. He is too serious a scholar to speculate.

What did I learn? Little, except that Queen Victoria meddled in government far more than is generally allowed. 

Selected quotes:

• "He thought a thirty-mile walk the most agreeable way of passing a quiet Sunday afternoon, and he was known on occasion to walk from Cambridge to London during the day, attend a dinner in the evening, and walk back during the night." (Ch 1) It is over fifty miles from Cambridge to London; Google reckons that would take twenty hours. To do it in ten hours would require a walking speed of five miles per hour which is scarcely credible. Has anybody ever checked this 'fact'?
• "He had a horror of 'soft' climates and of the easy, purposeless living to which he thought they gave rise. The banana, the most typical product of such a climate, he regarded with particular horror." (Ch 2)
• "Stanley, the explorer, came on one occasion, but he struck Dilke as 'brutal, bumptious, and untruthful." (Ch 4) This autobiography of Stanley makes it clear that he was exceptionally brutal and a pathological liar.
• "He possessed to an unusual degree the essential ingredients of moral intolerance - he was a puritan fascinated by sex." (Ch 12)
• "The Congo Free State, under the personal suzerainty of the King of the Belgians ... was intended to be a spearhead of civilisation in Central Africa. By the middle of the 'nineties, however, the spear looked somewhat blunted. Slave dealing persisted and the army of the Free State ... had been fed for long periods by means of a system of organised cannibalism." (Ch 18) Another fact that might need checking.
• "In these later years he much enjoyed going to plays in Paris, but however satisfying he found the performance he always left after the first act. He was not bored, but thought that one act of a play was enough." (Ch 19)

Jenkins says that the speeches the Dilke made in the House of Commons were typified by by very long and lacking in oratory but thoroughly thorough, full of facts and evidence. This biography is much the same. There are a lot of facts (though I think some needed treating rather more sceptically) but the overall impression is one of tedium.

October 2023; 418 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Four Just Men" by Edgar Wallace

Royal Courts of Justice, London

The Four Just Men (actually there are only three of them but they have recruited a fourth for the purposes of this particular novel) are self-appointed judges administering a vigilante justice to those who are above the law, such as "a capitalist controlling the markets of the world, a speculator cornering cotton or wheat whilst mills stand idle and people starve, tyrants and despots with the destinies of nations between their thumb and finger". (Ch 7) They threaten to murder a government minister unless he withdraws a proposed law which will enable the extradition of aliens who, in modern terms, have sought political asylum in the UK. Their code of honour requires that they offer repeated warnings so their designated victim has plenty of opportunity to  comply with their demands. Can they carry out their plans when the whole of Scotland Yard's finest are ranged against them?

It's one of those morally dubious books that has you rooting for the killers, for those outside the law, for what would then be called anarchists and now be called terrorists.

It is a simple and short story told (Wallace doesn't really adhere to 'show don't tell') in very simple prose and sentences and paragraphs that are short and punchy. The plot seesaws: both sides have successes and failures. There is a significant reliance on impenetrable disguises and the FJM are incredibly well-informed about the police, though how they know what they do seems to be a mystery. The three core members of the FJM have private incomes and are extraordinarily well-educated, quoting classical authors, and being wonderful chemists: they're a sort of Marty Stu melange of Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, The Saint, Lord Peter Wimsey and James Bond. The new recruit is a sneak thief, a coward, and a potential Judas recruited solely because he has the skills for this one particular job. In other words, no character is at all well-rounded. I would have said that it would be impossible to recreate Wallace's success because the modern public would not be so naive but the continuing success of thriller fiction proves me wrong.

Wallace was one of the most prolific (over 170 novels) and successful writers of the twentieth century; The Four Just Men, published in 1905 when he was just 30, was his first successful novel. Previously he had been a soldier and a newspaperman and his journalistic experience is clear both from the content of this novel and its style (very tabloid). He went on to write Sanders of the River (distressingly racist and colonialist but with a much more interestingly complex protagonist) and the first draft of King Kong. 

Selected quotes:

• "He sat at a little table, this man, obviously ill at ease, pinching his fat cheeks, smoothing his shaggy eyebrows, fingering the white scar on his unshaven chin, doing all the things that the lower classes do when they sudden;y find themselves placed on terms of equality with their betters." (Ch 1) Wallace was an illegitimate child born to an actress and fostered; he played truant from school; and yet he still swallowed wholesale the English class system.
• "Poiccart was a chemist, a man who found joy in unhealthy precipitates, who mixed evil-smelling drugs and distilled, filtered, carbonated, oxydized [sic], and did all manner of things in glass tubes, to the vegetable, animal, and mineral products of the earth." (Ch 9)

October 2023; 108 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Judgment of Paris" by Gore Vidal

 A rich (of course), good-looking (of course) young American boy spends a year in Italy, Egypt and France, mingling with the cream of decadent society. He encounters three women: Regina (Latin for Queen, standing in for the Queen of Olympus) who tempts him with thoughts of political power, Sophie (Greek for Wisdom) who is into amateur archaeology and, from her name alone, tempts him with wisdom, and Anna who is very lovely. Guess who he chooses! In Paris! This concept reminded me very much of a chapter ('The Judgement of Bally') in my novel Bally and Bro in which my (poor, good-looking) eponymous hero has to choose between June (aka Juno) who offers him riches, Sophie who offers to teach him, and lovely Helen who offers him a shag. Guess who he chooses!

Young Philip spends most of his time at parties being wooed by both  men (Europe appears to be crammed with homosexuals) and women. Some of the happenings are weird, such as the enormously obese man who wants to die and the detective novelist who agrees to try and murder him, and the English/ Welsh Lord (there seems to be some confusion here) who enlists Philip in a conspiracy to restore the royal house of Savoy to the Italian throne, and later tries to enlist him in a quasi-religious cult worshipping a hermaphrodite. It's not just funny peculiar, there are also a few funny haha moments. But all this fun isn't enough to leaven the dough of politics and philosophy and posturing in Philip's endless discussions with his playmates. There were more than a few bits I scan-read; towards the end I skipped whole paragraphs. 

The trouble is that Vidal is extraordinarily learned and he doesn't want to waste any opportunities to demonstrate his learning: "The perfect pearl of the Renaissance was misshapen by a rigid manner and the baroque was born of that tension between nature and artifice. Philip wondered if he would have the opportunity to tell Mr Norman that the word baroquie came from the Spanish word barocco which meant a misshapen pearl." (Ch 1) Philip never gets the chance ... but Vidal won't waste it.

It is conventionally written in the third person past tense; there are moments when the author's own voice intrudes, such as: "Part of the pleasure one gets from reading novels is the inevitable moment when the hero beds the heroine or, in certain advanced and decadent works, the hero beds another hero in an infernal glow of impropriety." (Ch 3)

I've read and adored a number of Gore Vidal novels. I love his historical novels: the series starting Burr and continuing with Lincoln, Empire and Washington DC. His Roman novel Julian is also great. I have been less impressed by The City and the Pillar and Myra Breckinridge, and the apocalyptic Kalki has moments of great silliness. This is my least favourite. Mostly boring and pompous.

Selected quotes:

• "His body ... was well-formed and greatly admired by the not inconsiderable company which had, at one time or another (and on some occasions at the same time) enjoyed it." (Ch 1)
• "He could scuttle the bark of others with some torpedo of esoterica ... it was he knew the surest way to total unpopularity in a pretentious age." (Ch 1)
• "'I want to look nice,' he added simply, expressing his philosophy in five words." (Ch 1)
• "For young men ... the body ... gives no trouble and, served properly, can be the best of all possible toys." (Ch 3)
• "Her face was lifted once a year until now it was almost totally expressionless, as though fixed for all time by some Medusa, in a mood mid-way between surprise and doubt." (Ch 4)
• "He did things to a soft-poached egg which Philip never wanted to see done again." (Ch 8)

October 2023; 316 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

I read this many years ago. At the time, the revelations burst upon me one by one and, having wept near the ending, I considered this a hugely powerful piece of fiction which was nominated for the 2005 Booker Prize, and, almost alone, justifies Ishiguro's 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Now, re-reading it, I'm not so sure. Knowing the plot from the start, it had less power to surprise me. But what I can appreciate is his development of character. There are three main characters who grow up together in a sort of boarding-school. Kath, the narrator, is extraordinarily perceptive about the emotions and motivations of the people she observes. Tommy is a lonely little boy: he's often bullied and he has tantrums. Ruth's powerful imagination, her determination, and her sometimes bitchy behaviour make her a natural leader. Together with the other members of their peer group, they go through all the pangs of growing up, the shifts of loyalty, the squabbles and the reconciliations. 

It's hugely normal and everyday and this creates huge verisimilitude so that the reader starts becoming aware of what makes these kids different at the same time as they do. Ishiguro adds the oddness in and raises the temperature in tiny increments, so that it becomes natural to talk of donations and carers, of possibles and completion and Madame's Gallery even before you really know what they mean, which is just the way a child would learn.

By the time you realise why these children will never have the opportunities taken for granted in the world at large, you are fully invested in them. You follow the roller coaster, the ups of hope and the downs of despair.

The plot is, of course, important. But it is the skill with which Ishiguro has  shown the reader the world through the eyes of Kath, so that the reader empathises and becomes one with Kath, that makes him worthy of the Nobel. He does the same thing in Klara and the Sun, a later book narrated by an android.

Towards the end there is a long intense speech which sets out the moral options and explains why the dystopian future world the Ishiguro has created is as it is.

But mostly the prose wanders back and forth as Kath narrates her story. For example: "Anyway, to get back to my point, when this sort of talk was going on, it was often Ruth who took it further than anyone." Mostly the narrative is straight-forward but every so often there are phrases like "anyway, to get back to my point ..." that ramp up the feeling that this is naturalistic dialogue. It also deflects attention away from the fact that Kath is both incredibly observant and has an extraordinary memory, repeating conversations, even from childhood, verbatim; the occasional admission that she isn't sure about something makes the reader feel that the rest must be true. This subtly used technique ramps up the verisimilitude without getting in the way of the flow of the story.

And then, again, I wept. Because, in the end, the insoluble problem faced by each of these children, is the one faced by all of us: what's the point in art or anything, or love, when in the end we will die and we will be forgotten.

Some authorities classify it as a Bildungsroman and I would concur.

This book prompted an interesting reading group discussion. Most of us, like myself, were reading the book for the second time and felt this gave us a different appreciation of it; in particular we could admire the author's artistry in the way he delicately dropped in foreshadowings. It was felt that Kath was an unreliable but not dishonest narrator: she has a very good memory for things but she often admits that her recollections do not necessarily conform to those of others. We realised that Kath's superpower (noticing and being able to understand the nuances of human behaviour) was a useful narrative device. 

One of our members suggested that the book belonged to the Gothic genre. She cited the settings: the boarding school as a sort of ruined castle set in its unkempt grounds, the removal to the Cottages (a metaphor for the barns in which farm animals are kept) which are cold and set in a barren landscape, the empty roads along which the mature and isolated Kath drives.

Perhaps Tommy, who has tantrums, is modelled after the conflicted hero of Gothic literature, the young Heathcliff. Is 'Kath' a reference to Cathy of Wuthering Heights? Is she the damsel in distress? Perhaps she is more like the heroine of Jane Eyre, who reunites with her love only after he has been crippled.

There are spoilers in the following paragraph

Or, rather than considering the Brontes, is this a version of Frankenstein? The kids are not normal human beings, looked on with dread by Madame even though she is one of their protectors and advocates; the kids are the monsters. Frankenstein, their creator, never appears, but the moral issues are very similar: even when the guardians do their best to protect to protect them, still they are human cattle exploited for the benefit of society. They leave Hailsham in the same way that Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden, to wander the earth. The difference is that the kids don't rebel against their creators (though I and all the book group were ardently wishing Kath would just run away!). The monster's angry rebuke to his creator, his God - "Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature ... Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends” - does not hold in this version of the myth. 

Selected quotes:

• "It's almost like entering a hall of mirrors. Of course, you don't exactly see yourself reflected back loads of times, but you almost think you do." (Ch 2) Nice foreshadowing
• "We certainly knew - though not in any deep sense - that we were different from our guardians, and also from the normal people outside." (Ch 6)
• "We're modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe, just so long as they aren't psychos. That's what we come from." (Ch 14)
• "She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul." (Ch 15)
• "Right from that first time, there was something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to say: 'Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a pity we left it so late'." (Ch 20)
• "However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease." (Ch 22)
• "I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold on to each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart." (Ch 23)

Also by this author and reviewed in this blog:

• Klara and the Sun: Klara is an android and this is her interior monologue as she tries to make sense of the human world.
• The Buried Giant: Ishiguro's version of fantasy? An old man and his wife leave their mediaeval village to embark upon a quest.
• When We Were Orphans: Celebrated private detective, Christopher Banks, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his parents.
• The Unconsoled: a Kafkaesque masterpiece

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier

"Last night I dream I went to Manderley again" is the first line of this book, made famous by being the first (voiceover) line of the Hitchcock film (which, being made just two years after the book's publication, and starring Laurence Olivier, and winning the Oscar for Best Picture, was probably responsible for the book's enormous success but has subsequently coloured many people's reading of the book). 

The novel is narrated by the never-named protagonist (all we are told, in chapter 4, is that she has "a very lovely and unusual name") in the first-person, past-tense. It is introduced (it's a sort of framing device, excpet that in the end we don't return to the frame) by her living abroad in a hotel with a man for whom she cares. She tells her story. As an orphaned young companion to a wonderfully spiteful old woman, she is staying in Monte Carlo when she meets Maxim de Winter. They fall in love and marry; he then takes her back to England where he lives in Manderley, a stately home. She finds it difficult to assume the role of chatelaine of the manor, especially since she has stepped into the shoes of the first Mrs de Winter, the eponymous Rebecca, a woman whom, it seems, the servants and the local community adored; the narrator assumes her new husband is still in thrall to his deceased first wife. Rebecca's shadow hangs heavily over the house, there are even suggestions that her ghost haunts it. There is tremendous conflict, especially from Mrs Danvers, the uber-competent housekeeper, who is still in mourning for the dead Rebecca. And there is a mystery about how Rebecca died.

The book is powered by the character of the narrator. She is an imaginative woman and this leads her to imagine what people are thinking and sometimes her assumptions are wrong, leading her into wonderful faux pas. She is also, at least in the first part of the book, hugely intimidated by the servants, leading her to do things like concealing little mistakes she makes. But when the chips are down, she becomes a tower of strength, powered by her love. (This character arc reminded me of that of the easily-bullied protagonist of my novel The Kids of God, although that takes a rather darker and, I think, more realistic turn.)

The first chapter provides the hook and acts as a sort of prologue or a framing device (without, however a corresponding epilogue to complete the frame).  The narrator has a dream of her past life; presently she is living with an unnamed male companion in a sort of exile. Then she starts remembering what happened and the next sixth of the book describes how Prince Charming meets Cinderella while Cinderella's employer provides the ugly stepmother who seeks to prevent the blossoming romance. 

The next part of the book, the main part, is a classic Gothic novel. Cinderella becomes the Damsel in Distress, transported to the Big House, whose West Wing is disused. Prince Charming is now the Brooding Hero-with-a-Mysterious-Past and the Housekeeper (described at first sight as "tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great, hollow eyes gave her a skull's face, parchment white, set on a skeleton's frame" Ch 7) is the villain who has the Damsel in her power (though this is topsy-turvy in that the Damsel technically employs the villain). The half-ruined house, isolated in a brooding landscape (all those bloody rhododendrons!) is haunted by the memories of Rebecca: there is the classic Gothic trope of the past infecting and contaminating the present. There's even a mad peasant on the seashore who makes cryptic comments which the reader just knows must be crucial to the plot!

Then comes the final quarter of the book which is almost a thriller.

At the heart of the novel, there is a wonderful set piece: the fancy dress balll. It is one of those moments when the reader is ahead of the narrator and understands exactly what the consequences will be. Du Maurier takes her time building up the suspense,  putting in delay after delay: I was reading this section as fast as I could. It was glorious. It is also characteristically Gothic: Ann Radcliffe, who wrote A Sicilian Romance, amongst many other books, suggested that terror was created by suspense.

There is some very cleverly constructed dialogue. In a number of scenes, when there is a secret of which some of the participants are unaware, the conversation is wonderfully one-sided. The innocent blather on about trivialities (the weather, social issues) and sometimes tangentially refer to the secret they don't know, while those in on the secret are restricted to replying almost in monosyllables, eg "'Yes,' I said." This device is repeated several times and works very well.

Like in her novel Jamaica Inn, Du Maurier milks the pathetic fallacy to the max. The weather in Cornwall always seems to mirror the narrator's mood, whether providing sun or (far more frequently) rain and, when needed, mist. Nevertheless, du Maurier gets away with this because of the brilliance of her descriptions of the countryside in all its meteorological moods. In her dream at the opening of the book, the narrator imagines a Manderley without its gardeners, where the tamed nature surrounding it has grown wild and reclaimed it; this is a trope of Gothic fiction.

The only bit that slightly let the novel down, I thought, was the rather over melodramatic scene in which the housekeeper, now apparently a madwoman, tries to persuade the narrator to jump out of the window. But all the best Gothic novels have moments of melodrama. 

Jane Eyre

The parallels between Rebecca and Jane Eyre are obvious. An orphaned young girl with little social standing meets a wealthy man haunted by his past. He proposes. In JE the marriage is interrupted by the news that the first wife is still alive; in Rebecca they marry but the early days of the marriage are haunted by the memories of the first wife. In the end, after the stately home has burned down, the protagonist becomes carer for the physically (JE) or mentally (R) crippled man.

Maxim de Winter
Maxim de Winter, the Prince Charming/ Man with a Past, is  what E M Forster in Aspects of the Novel describes as a ‘flat’ character. Perhaps DdM realised the contradictions inherent in such a character: he is the man who married foolishly and then permitted his first wife to be as unfaithful as she liked until he believed that she had cuckolded him and Manderley, the real love of his life, would be inherited by a bastard at which point he killed and covered up the murder. Then he buggered off to Monte Carlo and (guiltless?) married again, this time to a woman half his age whom he treats as a child. Swanning back home he almost disappears from the pages of the book until he confesses to his new wife that he has murdered his first. Seemingly unafraid of him, she now contrives to cover up his crime, virtually without his help, until they go abroad and he is reduced to a helpless shell of a man. It would be difficult to portray such a man as a ‘round’ character. He is more of a plot device than a character. Some of the book group members suggested that he was a villain and that maybe he exercised coercive control over the 2nd Mrs deW, but it seems to me that he is a helpless victim of his position in the caste system and the responsibilities imposed upon him as owner of Manderley (and the wickednesses of Rebecca and the ongoing schemes of Mrs Danvers whose first act in the book is to marshall the servants in direct opposition to his orders); it is Rebecca and Mrs Danvers who are the villains and it is they who exercise coercive control (and Mrs Danvers also gaslights the narrator).

Is Mrs Danvers in love with Rebecca?
Did Mrs Danvers have a sapphic desire for Rebecca. There is a key scene (ch 14) where the narrator goes to Rebecca’s room in the west wing and is discovered there by Mrs Danvers. Mrs Danvers says: “That was her bed. It’s a beautiful bed, isn’t it? ... Here is her nightdress ... You’ve been touching it, haven’t you? ... Would you like to touch it again? ... Feel it, hold it ... I haven’t washed it since she wore it for the last time ... this is her dressing gown ... Put it up against you ... She had a beautiful figure ... Put your hands inside her slippers.” It’s quite creepy. It is certainly possible to read a (one-sided and latent, unreciprocated) lesbian infatuation into that. 

Another suggestion was that the narrator and Rebecca are mirror images. In the Ch 14 scene, the narrator actually sees herself in Rebecca’s dressing-table mirror, and of course in the pivotal fancy-dress ball the narrator is duped into dressing up exactly as Rebecca had a tear before. In other ways, however, they are contrasts. The narrator is smaller than Rebecca was and has limp hair. The narrator comes from a social class that hasn’t been bred to run a stately home. And, of course,the narrator is in love with, and faithful to, her husband.

Miscellaneous points:

• The poetry book given by Rebecca to Maxim falls open at The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson.
• The medicine Taxol, which Mrs Van Hopper takes in the book, was an effervescent salt similar to Eno's; Taxol is now the brand name for an anti-cancer drug which hadn't been discovered when Rebecca was written.

Major turning points (spoiler alert):

• Max asks the narrator to marry him 15% of the way through the book. In a delightful foreshadowing, she is eating a sour tangerine which leaves a bad taste in her mouth.
• They arrive at Manderley at the 17% mark.
• Narrator discovers Rebecca's room in the West Wing: 25%
• Beatrice explains about Mrs D: 27%
• Narrator discovers the cottage in the cove: 30%
• Narrator meets Jack, one of the villains: 42%
• Mrs Danvers suggests a costume for the fancy dress ball: 53%
• The costume creates a sensation: 57%
• The scene in which a hysterical Mrs D tries to persuade the narrator to jump out of the window: 65%
• Maxim explains what happened to Rebecca: 71%
• They find out about the doctor: 92%

Selected quotes:

• "A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils around the pair and made them prisoners."  (Ch 1) A dreamed metaphor for Mr and the second Mrs de Winter trapped by the malevolent ghost of Rebecca?
• "We can never go back, that much is certain." (Ch 2)
• "Not a single well-known personality. I shall tell the management they must make a reduction on my bill. What do they think I come here for? To look at the page boys?" (Ch 2)
• "I could tell by the way the sauce ran down her chin that her dish of ravioli pleased her." (Ch 2)
• "I remember a well-known writer once who used the dart down the Service staircase whenever he saw me coming. I suppose he had a penchant for me and wasn't sure of himself." (Ch 3)
• "They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word." (Ch 5)
• "The past had blown away like the ashes in the waste-paper basket." (Ch 6)
• "I was not sure what he meant by modesty. It was a word I had never understood. I always imagined it had something to do with minding meeting people in a passage on the way to a bathroom ..." (Ch 11)
• "I had been selfish and hyper-sensitive, a martyr to my own inferiority complex." (Ch 11)
• "I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone." (Ch 13)
• "He went on looking me up and down in his amused way with those familiar, unpleasant blue eyes. I felt like a barmaid." (Ch 13)
• "Now that I knew her to have been evil and vicious and rotten I did not hate her any more. She could not hurt me." (Ch 21)
• "Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows born, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed." (Ch 26)

October 2023; 302 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Bell" by Iris Murdoch

 I read this book many years ago and I had remembered very little.

It is set in a sort of commune of Christians who live in a posh country house in the middle of the countryside (Swindon seems to be the nearest town) and support themselves by running a market garden and are 'attached' to a local convent which contains an enclosed and unviewable order of nuns. They are gearing up for the presentation of a new bell to the convent to replace the one that was lost in the middle ages. The discovery of the old bell, whose tolling is said to portend a death, is the turning point in the centre of the novel. 

The story is told (in third person, past tense) from the points of view of Dora (described as a "child-wife"; Ch1: echoes of Dora in David Copperfield?), a flighty young woman who is returning to her husband after leaving him, Toby, a sexually innocent eighteen-year-old who is spending his summer holidays helping out at the community prior to going up to university, and Michael, the leader of the community, a closet homosexual. Other major characters include Paul, Dora's bullying and controlling husband, James, the strait-laced number two in the community, gossipy Mrs Mark, and alcoholic Nick, a figure from Michael's past. Nick's twin sister Catherine plays an important part at the end of the plot which I didn't think was fully justified given her shadowy presence earlier. The mostly off-stage Abbess is a sort of cross between a wise-woman and a witch (specifically from Macbeth, at one stage she quotes the line about "when the hurly-burly's done").

The theme of the novel is the disruption that life, specifically sexual urges, can bring to the religious life; it it the age-old battle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Dora who flip-flops between her husband and a slightly camp but heterosexual journalist is the frame story but the meat of the argument concerns the ins-and-outs of homosexuality. 

It was published in 1958 (a year after the Wolfenden report recommended decriminalising homosexuality) and seems extraordinarily dated. There is the use of the phrase "working like a black" (Ch 11). The word 'gay' means happy and care-free. Dora never seriously considers divorce, despite the obvious cruelty of her husband. The music is either jazz or classical. The innocence of eighteen year old Toby is stunning: there may still be eighteen year old male virgins but I can't imagine that anyone nowadays will be so naive about their sexuality. Toby also regrets having been a day pupil at school; it's seen as unusual. The campness of the journalist is because of the way he talks which was probably merely seen as sophisticated in those times; he also knows the Bishop from the Athenaeum. 

This datedness shows most in the arguments over homosexuality. Michael was seduced aged fourteen at school and had two "intense" affairs there; subsequently, as a teacher, he is dismissed for his homosexual flirtation with a pupil and the dismissal is covered-up so he can go on to teach elsewhere. Nowadays we wouldn't bat an eye at the homosexuality but there would be shock and horror at what would be regarded as paedophilic child sex abuse. But Murdoch is obviously sincere in trying to 'normalise' homosexual affection despite the condemnation of 'sodomy' by the strait-laced James. But it is clear that homosexuality is regarded as a major perversion, both by Michael, who sees it as a vice or weakness he must suppress, a sin which destroys any chance he has of becoming a priest, something which is incompatible with his religion ("For a creature such as himself the service of God must means a loss of personality ... or the surrender of will in an unquestioing obedience"; Ch 6; "God had created men and women with these tendencies, and made those tendencies to run so deep that they were, in many cases, the very core of the personality. ... God had made him so and he did not think that God had made him a monster."; Ch 16), and by Toby who, following the shocked realisation that Michael fancies him, fears he might be 'like that'. This implied enormity of homosexuality is at odds with any attempt to make it seem like a natural part of life: at the end Michael regrets that Toby has been sent away from the community because it means Toby might make more of what happened than he should: "almost any other way of closing the incident would have been better than this one." (Ch 25)

The weakness of the novel is that the dialogue is rather artificially constructed. It's a bit like listening to the arguments for and against a proposition at a university debating society. This is a novel of ideas and sometimes the ideas intrude. The strength of the novel is the care which Murdoch lavishes on constructing her characters; even the least important have a bit of back-story. These people may seem rather strange - giving up the world for a life of service, subjugating their sexuality to an imported moral code - but they are ordinary (if determinedly upper-middle-class). 

It has a good hook The first line is "Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason." The plot is perfectly paced: the first narrative switch, from Dora to Michael, comes around the 25% mark; the bell is found half-way through the novel; the second-half is more action-packed than the first and towards the end the twists come thick and fast. 

But how I hate books that use foreign phrases. Is the reader expected to know them? Or is the author showing off?

• "une jeune fille un peu folle" = a slightly crazy young girl. Is the English so much less posh? It certainly communicates better to English readers.
• "etourderies" = thoughtlessnesses
• "fou rire" = crazy laugh
• "malgre eux" = despite themselves
• "Quarens me, sedisti lassus; Redemisti, Crucem passus; Tantus labor non sit cassus." = Seeking me, you rested, weary; You redeemed [me], having suffered the Cross; do not let such efforts be in vain. It's a quote from the Dies Irae section of the Requiem Mass. Perhaps, in those days, everyone knew their Latin. Nevertheless, even then, a footnote translation might have been in order.
  

On the other hand I quite enjoyed the fact that Toby repeatedly used his favourite word of the moment (rebarbative) even though I had to look it up. It means unattractive to the point of being objectionable. I don't mind having to look up English words; it seems to me that I ought to know them. But foreignisms? No. (And yes, I know that in my novel Motherdarling Jack who has lived in Paris uses a whole paragraph of untranslated French but I think the reader can guess that he is using a lot of rude words.)

There's a lovely metaphor when the dog is in the punt and literally rocks the boat (Ch 10) ... as if the humans aren't doing that all the time. And there are repeated references to 'bell' (eg "as clear as a bell"; Ch10; "he heard the hand bell ringing the Angelus"; Ch 10)

Selected quotes:

• "It seemed to her that Paul was urging her to grow up, and yet had left her no space to grow up into." (Ch 1)
• "That was marriage, through Dora; to be enclosed in the aims of another." (Ch 1)
• "Youth is a marvellous garment." (Ch 1) 
• "How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life" (Ch 1)
• "It's the curse of modern life that people don't have real trades any more. A man is his work. In the old days we were all butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, weren't we?" (Ch 1)
• "The hedges, rotund with dusty foliage, bulged over the edge of the road." (Ch 2)
• "She now made out with an unpleasant shock a shapeless pile of squatting black cloth that must be a nun." (Ch 2)
• "She had retained her prejudices when she lost her religion." (Ch 2)
• "She looked back at him, uneasy, yet admiring the solidity of him, full to the brim with his love and his work and all his certainty about life. She felt flimsy and ephemeral by comparison, as if she were merely a thought in his mind." (Ch 3)
• "Ideals are dreams. They come between us and reality." (Ch 9)
• "Like all inexperienced people, Toby tended to make all-or-nothing judgements." (Ch 12)
• "Dora disliked any music in which she could not participate herself by singing or dancing." (Ch 15)
• "She listened now with distaste to the hard patterns of sound which plucked at her emotions without satisfying them and which demanded in an arrogant way to be contemplated." (Ch 15) The music in question is Bach.
• "He envied his medieval prototype who at least did not have to deal with both his lady and the adventure at the same time. For most of the operation Dora was useless." (Ch 17)
• "He remembered the souls in Dante who deliberately remained within the purifying fire. Repentance: to think about sin without making the thought into a consolation." (Ch 26)
• "There is a God, but I do not believe in him." (Ch 26)

October 2023; 329 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Changeling" by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley

 This play was probably first performed in 1622 and is often regarded as Middleton's best play (Rowley is thought to have written the first and last scenes and the 'madhouse' subplot). Middleton may have collaborated with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens.

Spoiler alert: the paragraph below describes the whole plot

Alsemero, visiting Vermandero's castle in Valencia, Alicante, Spain, falls in love with the daughter of the house, Beatrice (also sometimes called Joanna). She falls for him which is awkward since her father has engaged her to marry another man, Alonzo de Piracquo. So B-J commissions Vermandero's servant Deflores, a man she cannot otherwise stand, to murder her betrothed. Because he is in love with her, he agrees to do this. But afterwards he is offended when she seeks to pay him. He doesn't want her money, he wants her maidenhead. Reluctantly, she agrees. Deflores deflowers her. Then, realising that Alsemero might discover she isn't a virgin on their wedding night, B-J persuades her maid Diaphanta (also a maid) to sleep with Alsemero in her place - a version of the 'bed-trick' - which Diaphanta eagerly agrees to do because she fancies Alsemero. Afterwards, B-J is jealous and persuades Deflores to murder Diaphanta. In the showdown, the AdP's brother demands to know what has happened to AdP (who has disappeared). Initial investigations offer up two servants who have been hiding in a local madhouse (because they want to have sex with the madhouse keeper's wife - this is the comedy subplot) but then Deflores confesses, implicating Diaphanta. They are locked in a closet from which are heard groans. Are they having sex? No, they are stabbing one another to death.

Production:

I saw this play performed by the Lazarus company at the Southwark Playhouse on Saturday (matinee) 7th October 2023. It was a tremendous production, in the round, with superb performances from Alex Bird playing Alonzo, Jamie O'Neill playing Deflores, Henrietta Rhodes playing a superbly sexy and saucy Diaphanta, and Colette O'Rourke playing Beatrice Joanna. The lighting, sound and effects worked perfectly. It included three songs (Mikko Juan had a brilliant voice) which replaced the sub-plot of the lunatics; otherwise (except for some necessary alterations consequent upon the gender swap of Vermandero to Vermandera and the addition of one or two modern words) the text was fully respected. My full review is here.

The dating of the play:

• It refers to the Battle of Gibraltar between the Spanish and the "rebellious Hollanders" (1.1) which was in 1607; it therefore post-dates this. 
• The testing of Beatrice-Joanna's virginity probably refers to the scandal involving Frances Howard (whose virginity was examined prior to her being allowed to annul her marriage to her first husband on the grounds of non-consummation) and Robert Carr; they were 'in the news' when they were imprisoned in 1616 (for murdering Sir Thomas Overbury) and again when they were released from imprisonment in 1622.
• Middleton was buried in 1627, so the play must pre-date that.

Selected quotes:

"We have but two sorts of people in the house ... that's fools and madmen - the one has not wit enough to be knaves, and the other not knavery enough to be fools." (1.2)

"Every part has his hour: we wake at six and look about us, that's eye-hour; at seven we should pray, that's knee-hour; at eight walk, that's leg-hour; at nine gather flowers and pluck a rose, that's nose-hour; at ten we drink, that's mouth-hour; at eleven lay about us for victuals, that's hand-hour; at twelve go to dinner' that's belly-hour." (1.2)

"A capcase for one's conscience." (3.3)

"Do you place me in the rank of verminous fellows

To destroy things for wages?" (3.3)

"You forget yourself:

A woman dipped in blood and talk of modesty?" (3.3)

"Look but into your conscience, read me there -

'Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal.

Push! Fly not to your birth, but settle you

Into what the act has made you, you're no more now;

You must forget your parentage to me -

You're the deed's creature." (3.3)

"Can you weep Fate from its determined purpose?" (3.3)

"Murder, I see, is followed by more sins." (3.3)

It's certainly easier to understand on a first reading than a typical Shakespeare: the language is less convoluted, perhaps. The scansion of the iambic pentameters may have worked with the pronunciation of the day but there are many occasions when it doesn't work today; the verse seems more blank than free.

October 2023

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God