"Candide" by Voltaire

Is it a (picaresque) novel? Is it a work of philosophy. This best-selling and highly influential work by French savant and philosophe Voltaire set out to ridicule the philosophy of Optimism, formulated by Liebnitz, which suggested that because God is good therefore all is for the best. Voltaire, writing in 1759, four years after the Lisbon earthquake destroyed 85% of Lisbon's buildings and killed about 15% of its inhabitants, many of them in church celebrating All Saints' Day; the earthquake is referenced in the book: “The sea boiled up in the harbour and broke the ships which lay at anchor. Whirlwinds of flame and ashes covered the streets and squares. Houses came crashing down. Roofs toppled onto their foundations, and the foundations crumbled. Thirty thousand men, women and children were crushed to death under the ruins.” (Ch 5). Also referenced under rather greater disguise was the Seven Years War which had started shortyly before the book was published. Voltaire's greatest creation was Dr Pangloss who repeatedly insists that "all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds" despite being confronted with tragedy and calamity.

But to talk about philosophy makes the book sound difficult and serious. In fact it is short, easy to read and often farcically comic. Characters frequently come to sticky ends, their deaths clear and evidenced, and then reappear later; there is a convoluted and highly improbably narrative which 'explains' how they escaped.

Fundamentally this is a bildungsroman following the adventures of the young Candide who "combined sound judgement with unaffected simplicity.” (Ch 1), cast out of a paradisical garden and forced to wander the world, usually with companions, always seeking to be reunited with the love of his life, Cunegonde. He suffers war, observing the rape and murder of civilians and gets enlisted in both the opposing armies. He is in Lisbon with Pangloss when the earthquake strikes. Pangloss is subsequently executed by the Inquisition; Candide is 'only' flogged. He murders the Grand Inquisitor and then travels across the Atlantic (with Cunegonde with whom he has been reunited despite reports of her death) to put down a Jesuit rebellion in Paraguay. There, the governor is determined to have Cunegonde as a mistress and Candide has to fo a runner with his servant Cacambo. They go the the Jesuits where they discover that the Father-Provincial is Cunegonde's supposedly-dead (of course) brother. He objects that Candide is insufficiently aristocratic to marry his sister, they fight, Candide kills him, and Candide and Cacambo steal some horses and ride off. They are captured by cannibalistic savages who release them on discovering that Candide has killed a Jesuit. They have a difficult journey through the wilderness but arrive in El Dorado. The streets are literally cobbled with nuggets of gold and there are precious stones all over the place. The King gives them untold riches and they travel away from Eldorado. Candide then sends Cacambo back to Buenos Aires to kidnap Cunegonde from the governor while Candide will travel to Venice and wait for them. But Candide is cheated by the captain of the ship who sails off as soon as all the treasure is on board and has to take passage for Bordeaux with a new companion called Martin who is as pessimistic as Pangloss was optimistic. Arriving in France he goes to Paris and then, seeking the elusive Cacambo and Cunegonde, to England (but refuses to set foot in that country) and so to Venice. Everyone there professes to be miserable. They are reunited with Cacambo and travel to Turkey.  En route they discover Pangloss (his execution by the Inquisition was botched) and Cunegonde's brother (the one who became a Jesuit and was killed by Candide but who actually recovered from his wounds) as galley slaves; Candide pays for them to be freed. Finally he discovers Cunegonde but she is now hideously ugly. Nevertheless the newly wealthy Candide proposes to free her (she too is a slave) and marry her but he can't do the latter becayse her brother (also freed by Candide) still objects that Candide is not aristocratic. They end up (most of them) working on a small-holding that Candidfe has bought. Back in the garden. As Candide concludes: “Oui, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.” (Ch 30, last words)

You couldn't make it up. But Voltaire did.

The plot is farce and Candide's companions are, if anything, even more farcical:

• Candide's tutor is Dr Pangloss: “He proved incontestably that there is no effect without a cause, and that this is the best of all possible worlds ... our noses were made to carry spectacles, so we have spectacles. ... pigs were made to be eaten ... all is for the best.” (Ch 1) When Pangloss catches syphilis, we are told: “He had had it from an old countess, who had had it from a cavalry officer, who was indebted for it to a marchioness. She took it from her page, and he had received it from a Jesuit, who while still a novice, had had it in direct line from one of the companions of Christopher Columbus.” (Ch 4)
• The Old Woman is repeatedly raped, except by the eunuch, and enslaved; she even has a buttock removed. She would have killed herself but she was too much in love with life. “Persuade every passenger to tell you his story, and if you even find one who has not cursed his life and told himself that he is the most miserable man alive, you can throw me into the sea head first.” (Ch 12)
• The Baron (Cunegonde's brother) who became a Jesuit because “You know ...what a good-looking boy I was: well, I grew up more handsome still, and the ... the father superior of the house took a fancy to me.” (Ch 15) and later, in Turkey, was sentenced to the galleys because “I met a handsome young lad who was one of the Sultan’s pages. It was very hot, and the young man wanted to bathe, so I took the opportunity of bathing to. I did not know that it was a capital offence for a Christian to be found naked with a young Mussulman.” (Ch 28)
• Martin is the epitome of gloom: “When I survey this globe, or rather this globule, I am forced to the conclusion that God has abandoned it to some mischievous power ... I have scarcely seen a town which does not seek the ruin of a neighbouring town, not a family that does not wish to exterminate another family. You will find that the weak always detest the strong and cringe before them, and that the strong treat them like so many sheep to be sold for their meat and wool. A million regimented assassins surge from one end of Europe to the other, earning their living by committing murder and brigandage in strictest discipline, because they have no more honest livelihood; and in those towns which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace and where the arts flourish, men suffer more from envy, cares, and anxiety than a besieged town suffers from the scourges of war ... I am forced to believe man's origin is evil.” (Ch 20)

Selected quotes:

• “Those who have never see two well-trained armies drawn up for battle, can have no idea of the beauty and brilliance of the display. Bugles, fifes, oboes, drums, and salvoes of artillery produced such a harmony as Hell itself could not rival.” (Ch 3)
• “He reached a neighbouring village ... It was now no more than a smoking ruin, for the Bulgars had burned it to the ground in accordance with the terms of international law. Old men, crippled with wounds, watched helplessly the death-throes of their butchered women-folk, who still clasped their children to their bloodstained breasts. Girls who had satisfied the appetites of several heroes lay disembowelled in their last agonies.” (Ch 3)
• "I have had to trample on the crucifix four times in various trips I’ve been to Japan. I’m not the man for your Universal Reason." (Ch 5)
• “I know how the Reverend fathers govern ... There are thirty provinces in their kingdom, and it is more than three hundred leagues across. The Reverend father own the whole lot, and the people own nothing: that's what I call a masterpiece of reason and justice.” (Ch 14)
• “Why should you find it so strange that in some parts of the world monkeys obtain ladies’ favours? They are partly human, just as I am partly Spanish.”  (Ch 16)
• “The laws of nature teach us to kill our fellow creatures, and that is what happens in every corner of the earth.” (Ch 16)
• “Do you mean to say you have no monks teaching and disputing, governing and intriguing, and having people burned if they don't subscribe to their opinions?” (Ch 18)
• “For clothing, we are giving a pair of canvas drawers twice a year. Those of us who work in the factories and happen to catch a finger in the grindstone have a hand chopped off; if we try to escape, they cut off one leg. Both accidents happened to me. That's the price of your eating sugar in Europe. ... Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are much less miserable than we are. The Dutch fetishes, who converted me, tell me every Sunday that we are all children of Adam, black and white alike. I am no genealogist; but if these preachers speak the truth, we must all be cousins. Now, you will surely agree that relations could not be treated more horribly.” (ch 19)
• When, in a sea battle, the ship of the Dutch pirate who robbed Candide is sunk. Candide observes that “crime is sometimes punished” because the Dutch pirate had drowned. Martin replies “why should the passengers have perished too? God has punished a scoundrel, but the devil has drowned the rest.” (Ch 20)
• “Wherever you go in France, you will find that the three chief occupations are making love, backbiting, and talking nonsense.” (Ch 21)
• “I know Paris ... It's chaos, a mob of people all out for pleasure, and scarcely a soul who finds it. ... I am told that there are some people in that city noted for their good manners; I wish I could think so.”  (Ch 21)
• “‘But what was this world created for?’ ... ‘ To drive us mad’” (Ch 21)
• “Do you think ... that men have always ... being false, cozening, faithless, ungrateful, thieving, weak, inconstant, mean-spirited, envious, greedy, drunken, miserly, ambitious, bloody, slanderous, debauched, fanatic, hypocritical, and stupid?” (Ch 21)
• “Imagine every possible contradiction and inconsistency, and you will find them in the government, the law-courts. The churches, and in the whole life of this absurd nation.” (Ch 22)
• “He’s an evil-minded fellow ... who earns his living by damning every play and every book. He hates successful writers, just as eunuchs hate successful lovers. He is one of those snakes of literature who feed on dirt and venom. He’s ... a journalist.” (Ch 22)
• “dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.” In this country it is good to kill, from time to time, an admiral to encourage the others. (Ch 23)
• “What a genius this Pococurante is! Nothing can please him.” (Ch 25)
• “Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.” (Ch 30)

A classic work of philosophy, tremendously influential. It's view of the Problem of Evil (why did God allow people to die in the Lisbon earthquake?) was perhaps when the Enlightenment started along the road towards atheism and is responsible for our modern largely godless society. It's depiction of priests as mercenary and lustful was highly influential in the abolition of religious houses during the French revolution.

But more than that, for those who like their humour on the ridiculous side, it is hilarious.

And it isn't difficult to read! Have a go.

Other books by French authors which have been reviewed in this blog can be found here.

October 2020

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Country Wife" by William Wycherley

A Country Wife was written by William Wycherley, himself a noted Restoration rake, and perhaps based on a Roman play, the Eunuch by Terence.

I saw it at Southwark Playhouse Saturday (matinee) 14th April 2018 in a production that (slightly weirdly) transferred the costumes to the 1920s but left the dialogue in 1675 (good: don't mess with dialogue!!) The production brought out the bawdy farce elements and added some wonderful moments of physical humour: we all loved the character hiding behind the screen. There was a generally strong cast with some outstanding performances by Sparkish and Pinchbeck, Alithea and Margery.

Horner, a rake, spreads the rumour that he has caught an STD and been rendered impotent. As a result Sir Jaspar Fidget decides to trust Hormer with his wife and daughter and their friend. Meantime Pinchwife's new wife, just up from the country, has seen Horner at the theatre and wants to have an affair with him. Meanwhile Pinchwife's sister, Alithea, is engaged to marry Sparkish whose best friend Harcvourt has fallen in love with her. This is a farce of true love versus cuckoldry, reputation versus honour, and trust versus betrayal.

Lots of innuendoes and double entendres and a fair amount of farce.

Some great lines, although they are often uncomfortably un-politically correct:

• “Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding, and a man is often mistaken.”
• “Your old boys ... who like superannuated stallions are suffered to run, feed, and whinny with the mares as long as they live, though they can do nothing else.”
• “A mistress should be like a country retreat near the town; not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.”
• “‘Tis as hard to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of women, as ‘tis to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of money.”
• “For my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk and there is slovenly.” 
• “He can no more think that men laugh at him than that women jilt him, his opinion of himself is so good.”
• “Most men are the contraries to that they would seem.”
• “The little, humbly fawning physician with his ebony cane is he that destroys men.”
• “A marriage vow is like a penitent gamester’s oath, and entering into bonds and penalties to stint himself to such a particular small sum at play for the future, which makes him but the more eager, and not being able to hold out, loses his money again, and his forfeit to boot.”
• “If a woman wants wit in a corner, she has it nowhere.”
• “A beauty masked, like the sun in eclipse, gathers together more gazers then if it shined out.”
• “Nothing makes a man hate a woman more, than her constant conversation.”
• “Loving alone is as dull as eating alone.” 
• “Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.”
• “A secret is better kept ... by a single person than a multitude”

Other plays reviewed in this blog may be found here.

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

"Aunts aren't gentlemen" by P.G.Wodehouse

Bertie Wooster has spots on his chest and his doctor advises him to go down to the country for peace and quiet and fresh air and exercise. But at the cottage organised by his Aunt Dahlia he becomes embroiled in trying to fix a horse race by stealing a cat whilst simultaneously trying not to get married to an ex-fiancee who wants to improve him. In the end it takes his man Jeeves to sort out the mess.

Written as last as 1974 yet presumably set in that innocent inter-war period when it still mattered if you had been to Eton, this is classic Wodehouse. The joy is that it is written in the voice of Wooster, chivalrous but hapless man about town, who dilettantes about with foreign expressions and snatches of poetry but has never heard of Tolstoy. Time and again Wodehouse raises a chuckle by transforming the English language.

Cliches are renewed, often by the simple expedient of Wooster applying abbreviations, as when he explains how Porter "earned the daily b"; "so far ... so g".

He also renews cliches by simply replacing words so that 'I shuddered from head to toe' becomes "I shuddered from hair-do to shoe-sole".

He uses English history to illustrate concepts. When trying to make the point that red hair is associated with high blood pressure he says: "The first Queen Elizabeth had red hair, and look what she did to Mary Queen of Scots."

On the other hand he is sometimes hilariously ignorant. When asked if he has read 'Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son' he reflects "well, of course I hadn't. Bertam Wooster does not read other people's letters. If I were employed in the Post Office, I wouldn't even read the postcards."

He exaggerates images. A dour doctor has a face which resembles "a frog which has been looking on the dark side since it was a slip of a tadpole"; if Aunt Dahlia "ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know." "He couldn't have been more emotional if he had been a big shot in the Foreign Office and I a heavily veiled woman diffusing a strange exotic scent whom he had caught getting away with the Naval Treaty"; "Talk of drawing his fangs. His dentist will have to fit him with a completely new set"; "Cook in his present frame of mind wouldn't recognise reason if you served it up to him in an individual plate with watercress round it".

He pretends not to know things. The blood pressure sphygmomanometer becomes "that rubber thing around my biceps"; "I wasn't a modern Casa something. Not Casabianca. That was the chap who stood on the burning deck. Casanova. I knew I'd get it.".

He interrupts the narrative to ask questions directly of the reader: "And with no further ado - or is it to-do? - I never can remember".

He can mix metaphors with aplomb: "What asses horses are"; "I am a good mixer who is always glad to shake hands with new faces".

He becomes literal with metaphor. ""She has been known to ask me if I have a home of my own and, if I have. why the hell I don't stay in it".

He is also literal with the English language: "there happened at the moment to be no passers-by but if any passers had been by ..."

These are just a few examples. The book is stuffed as full of these things as a goose whose liver is destined for foie gras. When you add in the elements of a classic farce and some utterly preposterous characters, Wodehouse is pure, escapist, comic gold.

Other books by P G Wodehouse reviewed in this blog can be found here.

August 2016; 184 pages

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

"Volpone" by Ben Jonson

I saw Volpone performed by CandleLight Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in north London at the matinee on 13th February 2016. They managed to communicate the humour of the play (though with perhaps more physical comedy than Jonson might have approved) while keeping true, so far as I could ascertain, the the majority of the text. Significant changes were in staffing: Volpone's dwarf, hermaphrodite and eunuch were compressed int the dwarf; the rather redundant 4 Avocatori were reduced to a single judge and the crowd of Act Two became audience participation! It was an energetic performance, especially from Volpone. The only reason why Ben J might have turned in his grave was that the ten strong cast outnumbered the audience.

This is my review of my reading of the script of this play

Volpone is written in a variety of forms. Volpone himself uses blank verse, as do most of the others, but there are moments on unevenly scanned rhyming couplets (it is as though Jonson seeks either rhyme or scansion but sees both as a luxury to be doled out as meagrely as might be, for example in the Epilogue) and occasionally prose.

Volpone, the Fox, loves gold. The very first two lives are:

Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!

Open the shrine that I may see my saint.

There follows a paean to gold:

Thou canst do naught and yet mak'st men do all things

He gets it by fraudulence. He pretends to be "turning carcass" on his death bed. His servant, ("his parasite") Mosca, the Fly, persuades Volpone's even more avaricious friends to give Volpone presents with the aim of inheriting Volpone's fortune.

In Act One the friends approach Volpone one by one. The first is Voltore, the Vulture, a lawyer with a keen nose for death. The second is old, partly deaf Corbaccio, the raven, the bird of death, who tries to persuade Mosca to give Volpone some medicine which Mosca fears is poison. Mosca persuades Corbaccio to write a will disinheriting his own son and naming Volpone as the sole legatee; after all the invalid Volpone is bound to die before Corbaccio. The third is Corvino, the Crow.

Mosca has some fine lines is cynicism:

Hood an ass with reverend purple,

So you can hide his two ambitious ears, 

And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.

gentle sir,

When you do come to swim in golden lard,

Up to the arms in honey, that your chine

Is borne up stiff with fatness of the flood,

Think on your vassal; but remember me.

Those filthy eyes of yours, that flow with slime

Like two frog-pits, and those same hanging cheeks,

Covered with hide instead of skin ...

That look like frozen dishclouts set on end!

Brilliant stuff!

In Act Two, Volpone pretends to be a famous doctor (a 'mountebank', so called because he stands upon a bench) and tries to persuade the gullible to buy his quack remedy. Peregrine observes:

I have heard they are most lewd imposters, 

Made of all terms and shreds

At this time lewd meant ignorant. The terms and shreds sounds like an echo of Autolycus in The Winter's Tale.

Volpone fulminates, in prose, against rival medicine men:

Those turdy-facey-nasty-patey-lousy fartical rogues ... want not their favourers among your shrivelled, salad-eating artisans which is a great insults! These physicians prescribe nothing but water cocted with aniseeds. This term cocted means boiled as, presumably in concoct.

Celia, wife of Corvino, sees Volpone from the window of her room and throws down money in exchange for a bottle. He sees her and falls in love. Corvino, not penetrating Volpone's disguise, is furious with his wife for her immodesty at showing herself, he calls her a whore and promises to lock her up.

Death of mine honour, with the city's fool? 

A juggling, tooth-drawing, prating mountebank

And at a public window? Where, whilst he

With his strained action and his dole of faces

To his drug lecture draws your itching ears,

A crew of old, unmarried, noted lechers

Stood leering up like satyrs?

...

Well, you shall have him, yes!

He shall come home and minister unto you

The fricace for the mother [a massage for hysteria]. Or, let me see,

I think you'd rather mount? Would you not mount? 

And he proposes drawing a line around her like a conjuror would around a spirit (as in Dr Faustus by Marlowe) so she is trapped within the magic circle.

However, Mosca persuades Corvino that Volpone is recovering his health and so less likely to die and leave his money to Corvino; the only solution is to furnish Volpone with a young lady (Mosca pretends that Volpone is impotent); Corvino hits on the scheme of pimping his own wife and, having berated her for immodesty, tells her to dress herself gorgeously for a feast with Volpone.

Mosca begins Act Three with some classic lines:

I fear I shall begin to grow in love

With my dear self ...

... I know not how,

Success hath made me wanton. I could skip

Out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake,

I am so limber. Oh, your parasite

Is a most precious thing

He then persuades Bonario, a good person and Corbaccio's son, to hide in a balcony so he can observe his father disinheriting him. Meanwhile, Corvino tries to persuade Celia to sleep with Volpone. Dragging her to the house he tries to force her into Volpone's bed. She is incredulous. Does he intend to watch her make love to Volpone?

Celia: Before your honour?

Corvino: Honour! Tut, a breath.

There's no such thing in nature; a mere term

Invented to awe fools. What is my gold

The worse for touching? 

...

I grant you, if I thought it were a sin 

I would not urge you. Should I offer this

To some young Frenchman or hot Tuscan blood

That had read Aretine, conned all his prints, [Aretino had published pornographic sonnets which accompanied erotic prints]

Knew every quirk within lust's labyrinth

And were professed critic in lechery,

And I would look on and applaud him,

This were a sin; but here 'tis contrary,

A pious work, mere charity, for physic,

And honest polity to assure mine own.

She is still reluctant so he threatens her with terrible tortures and tries to bribe her with promises of jewels, asking (with heavy irony)

Will you disgrace me thus?

He is persuaded by Mosca to leave her there so that the husband might not witness the wife's shame. When he is gone, Volpone leaps off his couch, reveals himself as the mountebank, and tries to seduce Celia but she still resists. In the nick of time Bonario intervenes, wounding Mosca in the face and running off with Celia.

Act Four. Bonario and Celia are on trial accused by Volpone, in absentia, represented by Voltore; Corbaccio and Corvino are the perjured witnesses, trying to cover up their shame by heaping guilt upon son and wife. They prevail, Bonario and Celia are taken away to be sentenced.

Act Five. Volpone now dreams up his final jest: he will 'die' having written a will in favour of Mosca. In an echo of Act One the suitors each come to see Mosca only to discover that they have been left nothing. Reeling from the disappointment, Voltore now goes back to court to retract the statements he made but Volpone, revealing only to Voltore that he is actually alive and therefore still able to name Voltore his heir, persuades Voltore to fake a fit and pretend to have been possessed, so retracting his retraction. Keeping up? Mosca continues to say that Volpone is dead. Volpone realises that he has tricked himself out of his own fortune by leaving it to Mosca; in revenge he reveals himself to the court. Mosca is sentenced to the galleys, Volpone to imprisonment, Voltire is debarred, Corbaccio forced to leave his fortune to Bonario and retire into a monastery and Corvino is made to divorce his wife, returning her to her father with three times her dowry.

It's not Shakespeare but it is a damned fine romp and full of many delightful touches (foreshadowings, ironic twists etc) that turn this farce into dramatic art.

February 2016; 208 pages

Other plays reviewed in this blog can be found by clicking here.

I also saw the RSC production of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist at the Barbican Theatre (close to Blackfriars, where it is set) on Saturday (matinee) 17th September 2016

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

"Skios" by MIchael Frayn

Longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize.

This is a classic farce. Oliver Fox, floppy haired charmer, pretends for a moment to be Dr Norman Wilfred. He is whisked off to a Foundation for Civilisation with twenty four hours to go before he gives the keynote lecture on Scientometrics. Meanwhile the real Dr Wilfred is taken to a remote villa where he finds Oliver's girlfriend.

And it progresses. Bedrooms are hopped. Identities are confused. More girlfriends and boyfriends arrive. Sinister Russian oligarchs are building mysterious swimming pools. Spiros and Stavros are interchangeable Greek taxi drivers.

It should be a play. There are only three scenes: the airport at the start and then the Foundation and the Villa interchangeably.

It is all a little predictable. There are the usual jokes at the expense of academics and anyone rich who spends time at Foundations and Conferences. There is humour mined from the confusion between Greek and English. All the characters are stereotypes: the chef, the American lady who used to be a dancer and married the rich man who bequeathed the money to the foundation, the slightly sad professor, the good time girl, the crisp, cool PA etc.

It becomes interesting for a moment at the start of chapter 48 when the author discusses how the storylines are about to come together in a great denouement and suggests alternative endings. This suggests that Netownian determinism is impossible because of the inherent impossibilities of understanding any single initial state, a theme Frayn also touched upon in his philosophical work 'The Human Touch' (which I disliked). He suggests that only probabilities exist and then casts doubt even on this. This theme of the book has been manifest throughout: Oliver's penchant for pretending to be someone he is not and thereby throwing spanners into all sorts of works and Dr Wilfred's essential belief in predestination.

Skios is quite fun. It is easy to read and lightly humorous. But it is a farce of the old school.

I've also seen Frayn's theatrical farce, Noises Off. 

April 2013; 277 pages

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

"Vacant Possession" by Hilary Mantel

Deputy Headteacher Colin has a dysfunctional family. Teenage son Alastair and the vicar's son Austin sniff glue and burgle. Wife Sylvia embraces good causes. Undergraduate daughter Susannah gets pregnant by the husband of the woman whom Colin had a fling with ten years ago and leaves university to live in a squat. Mad mother is booted out of her geriatric hospital to live next door with his unmarried sister, Florence.

And Muriel Axon, the previous occupant of the house he now lives, in has been discharged from mental hospital and now, a mistress of disguise, has come to seek revenge.

But revenge for what? Muriel's problems come from her mum who was mad and kept her in the haunted house. The one time she escaped she was made pregnant (by the father of the woman Colin had an affair with); her mother then persuaded her to drown the child in the canal.

This is a black comedy. The characters lead meaningless lives against the bleak backdrop of unemployed Britain in the seventies and eighties. Their lives are tightly and intricately intertwined; coincidences abound. And Muriel isn't mad or stupid, she is wicked.

The one clue to what this all means is given when Sylvia reviews her decaying home and says that it is like the  Fall of the House of Usher to which Colin replies it is more like the fall of the House of Atreus. The House of Atreus was cursed by the Greek Gods because Tantalus cooked and served his son Pelops in a pie to the Gods. From there the crimes spread. Thyestes, twin brother of Atreus, had an affair with Aerope, wife of Atreus and unsuccessfully challenged Atreus for the throne of Mycenae. Aegisthus, son of Thyestes, killed Atreus, who had adopted him. Aegisthus then went on to have an affair with Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, son of Atreus. When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan war Clytemnestra and Aegisthus murdered him; Aegisthus usurped the throne. Later Orestes, Agamemnon's son, murders Clytemnestra and is punished by the Furies for his matricide.

But I suspect that Mantel does not intend her book to mean anything. She creates this tight knit cohort of saddoes and the she manipulates the coincidences and the crimes of Muriel until we build to a potentially horrific climax. The only logic to this is the mad perversities of Muriel (although we can feel that in some ways she is also a victim). And what happens next surely has to be in the sequel.

Black. Not really a comedy, not really a farce.

Mantel has written better books. Similar to this is the wonderfully funny Beyond Black, about a medium who really does interact with the spirit world even though she would rather not, and (of course) the brilliant Booker winning Wolf Hall and its Booker winning sequel Bring Up the Bodies.

August 2012; 239 pages