"Adam's Breed" by Radclyffe Hall

 

A bildungsroman about a member of the Italian immigrant community in London. Winner of the 1926 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Gian-Luca is a lonely little boy. His father is unknown, his mother died in childbirth as a result of which his grandmother, though she helps raise him, cannot show him affection. Technically English, he is sent to an English school but the boys there see him as Italian. He loves reading but he can't write. He isn't a member of the Catholic church and can't believe in God. After school he works as a waiter so he is an observer of but not a participant in high society. This is the story of someone who feels himself to be an outsider.

I swiftly developed a strong bond of empathy for Gian-Luca, suffering in his trials, always afraid of what might happen to him in the future. Many of the other characters were also beautifully brought to life: Teresa his grandmother, hollowed by grief, driven and determined; Fabio his compliant grandfather; the wonderful Mario whose hopes always exceed his abilities, boastful even when humiliated - “Mario bragged from self-abasement; Mario had long ago realised himself, and he lied from the humidity of failure.”; 1.11); the butcher Rocco who always misunderstands; and Maddalena who loves GL as a wife and maternally even though GL can never quite love her back.

This is also a fascinating portrait of an immigrant community employed in the way such communities often are: as shopkeepers and restaurateurs. There is poverty, there are tribulations, but there is support from the other members of the community. In the end, there is mutual love, respect and understanding.

It is peppered with Italian words which add a further layer of verisimilitude to what already seems hugely realistic. Congratulations to the publishers, Renard Press, for including full translations as end-notes (footnotes would have been even better, avoiding the need for two bookmarks and flicking back and forth).

It was written in 1926, a time when the novel was rapidly evolving (for example: James Joyce's Ulysses was published in 1922, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway in 1925, and Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett in 1925) but stylistically it dates back to the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. It reminded me of New Grub Street by George Gissing and the H G Wells social novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr Polly. But is is not nearly as heavy-going as some of that style of book can be; it is beautifully written and I kept turning the pages to learn more about poor Gian-Luca. 

And in book 3 chapter 2 a brilliant twist that I never saw coming at all.

The author gives the recipe for success in Book One, Chapter 13: “There are three very vital things: quality, variety and originality ... A dinner should have, like a book or a picture, good workmanship, plenty of light and shade, and above all that individual touch, that original central idea.” (1.13) On these criteria this novel is very much a hit. 

Further congratulations to the publisher from running the chapter numbers at the top of each page which is so much more useful than just being repeatedly told of the title of the book.

Selected quotes:

• “His natal village had consisted of one street, whose chief characteristic was a smell.” (1.4)
• “He was very much a Latin - he kept two distinct Gian-Lucas: one for beauty, one for business; and so far they had never collided.” (1.9)
• “It is said that in each man there lurks the hunter: the hunter of money, the hunter of lions, the hunter of fame, the hunter of women.” (1.13)
• “In the spite of his success he would feel so very lonely, so very much in need of being loved.” (2.2)
• “The spring is perhaps the time of all others when the lonely most realise their loneliness.” (2.3)
• “She was piously shrewd and shrewdly pious; she gave, as a rule, that she might receive.” (2.3)
• “Sisto had so many sins to confess that he needed the church very badly; indeed, he used it as a spiritual lifebuoy to keep his soul from total immersion.” (3.7)
• “He was seeing the hideous struggle for existence, with its cruelty, its meanness and its lusts.” (3.12)

Radclyffe Hall's stepfather was from Dalmatia so she must have known something about immigrant communities. Her mother made it clear that she was an unwanted child. Adam's Breed was a critical and commercial success but it was overshadowed by the scandal surrounding Hall's next novel, The Well of Loneliness, a novel about lesbian love, which was banned in the UK as obscene.

First published in the UK in 1926 by Cassell

My edition issued by Renard Press in 2024

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