"Lolly Willowes" by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Laura Willowes is a single lady in the early years of the twentieth century. She grows up in the countryside with her family and then, after her parents are dead, she goes to live with her elder brother and his wife in London. For twenty years she is the poor relative, the maiden aunt, looking after her nieces, resisting any attempt to marry her off. Then she decides to move to a little village in the Cotswolds and begins a second career as a witch.

So what starts as a Jane Austen-style comedy of manners suddenly lurches into fantasy. Although, as one of my U3A reading group pointed out, one can read all the strange events, even the encounter with the devil, as real world occurrences happening to a woman whose imagination has perhaps run away with her. 

The writing is elegant and witty and beautiful; it reminded me of the work of Jane Austen and E M Forster. It was STW's debut novel and published in 1926 and I was a little surprised that it contained no trace of the great modernist novels that were being published around that time, such as Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier (1915), Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce or even Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf. Apart from the plot twist of witchcraft (which is carefully foreshadowed, even in the first half of the book which deals with her repressed upper middle class life), it was very conventional. But the prose, as is shown time and again in the selected quotes, is wonderful. 

I was less enamoured of the propaganda aspect of the novel. It is this that has earned the author the acclaim of being a (proto) feminist. But it seemed to me that she is very unreflective. At one point she criticises a character thus: "He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to everyone who supported a better case than he.” But this is exactly what the author herself does. Virtually all the characters, women as well as men, apart from the protagonist, are weighed and found wanting. 

But the main character herself could be considered to be a self-centred parasite. In the first part of the book she is given bed and board with her brother's family and feels repressed and taken-for-granted when she is expected to contribute to the household by looking after her nieces. She longs for independence and, eventually, she goes off to the countryside where she has her bed and board provided by a lower class landlady in exchange for her modest private income. In other words, she seeks all the benefits of the world without wishing to incur any of the obligations. She contributes nothing. And it is the other characters who are held up to ridicule!

Similarly, the author repeatedly extols the virtues of the countryside and denigrates London. But hers is a very romantic version of the countryside. Her protagonist takes long walks in the country but never (except briefly and temporarily when she works with hens, a little like the way women during the first world war were briefly and temporarily employed, as the author herself was, in munitions factories) gets involved in it. She produces nothing. She never even gets muddy.

I understand the author became a communist. Recently I read The Patrician (published in 1911) by John Galsworthy, the author who wrote Forsyte Saga, and he was able to see and present arguments both for and against the establishment: I couldn't decide which side of the fence he was on until over half way through.  (though I think in the end he is fundamentally conservative). In Lolly Willowes I can discern not even a glimmer of class consciousness. 

I suppose the issue that I have isn't with this book, because I think it is beautifully written and an interesting story and I am keen to read other books by this author. But some people seem to like or dislike a book because of what it says rather than how it says it. That shouldn't be a basis for judgement. 

Selected Quotes:

• “She thought of the street lamps, so impartial, so imperturbable in their stately diminuendos, and felt herself abashed before their scrutiny. Each in turn would hand her on, her and her shadow, as she walked the unfathomed streets and squares ... complying with the sealed orders of the future.” (part one)
• “Finding their well-chosen wood and well-chosen wine improved with keeping, they believed that the same law applied to well-chosen ways. Moderation, civil speaking, leisure of the mind and a handsome simplicity were canons of behaviour imposed upon them by the example of their ancestors.” (part one)
• “One of her earliest pleasures had been to go with Everard to the brewery and look into the great vats while he, holding her firmly with his left hand, with his right plunged a long stick through the clotted froth.” (part one)
• “He observed gloomily that daughters could be very expensive now that so much fuss was being made about the education of women.” (part one)
• “She had thought that sorrow would be her companion for many years, and had planned for its entertainment. Now it visited her like sudden snowstorms, a hastening darkness across the sky, a transient whiteness and rigour cast upon her.” (part one)
• “Time went faster than the embroidery did. She had actually a sensation that she was stitching herself into a piece of embroidery with a good deal of background.” (part one)
• “Laura, opening the third drawer of the large mahogany wardrobe, had commented upon the beautiful orderliness with which Caroline's body linen was arranged therein. ‘We have our example’, said Caroline. ‘The grave-clothes were folded in the tomb’.” (part one)
• “The law had done a great deal to spoil Henry. It had changed his natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating indifference to other people's point of view. He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to everyone who supported a better case than he.” (part one)
• “A kind of pity for the unused virgin beside her spread through Caroline's thoughts ... she felt emotionally plumper than Laura. it was well to be loved, to be necessary to other people.” (part one)
• “She compared herself to the ripening acorn that feels through windless autumnal days and nights the increasing pull of the earth below.” (part two)
• “ the recumbent autumnal graces of the countryside.” (part two)
• “Even Henry and Caroline ... were half hidden under their accumulations - accumulations of prosperity, authority, daily experience. They were carpeted with experience.” (part two)
• “It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions.” (part two)
• “She had no thoughts; her mind was swept as clean and empty as the heavens.” (part two)
• “So had Adam been the noblest work of nature, when he walked out among the beasts, sole overseer of the garden, intact, with all his ribs about him, his equilibrium as yet untroubled by Eve.” (part two)
• “This new year was changing her whole conception of spring. She had thought of it as a denial of winter, a green Spear that thrust through a tyrant's rusty armour. Now she saw it as something filial, gently unlacing the helm of the old warrior and comforting his rough cheek.” (part two)
• “The cult of the summer months was a piece of cockney obtuseness.” (part two)
• “He liked it because he was in possession.” (part three)
• “The first hour was well enough, but after that came increasing listlessness and boredom; the effort, when one danced again with the same partner, not to say the same things, combined with the obligation to say something rather like them.” (part three)
• “Not one of the monuments and tinkering of man could impose on the Satanic mind. The Vatican and the Crystal Palace, and all the neat human nest-boxes in Rows, Balham and Fulham and the Cromwell Road ... they went flop like card-houses ... Wolves howled through the streets of Paris, the foxes played in the throne room of Schonbrunn, and in the basement at Apsley Terrace the mammoth slowly revolved, trampling out its lair.” (part three)
• “Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so dependent on others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance.” (part three)
• “Sin and Grace, and God ... and St Paul. All men's things, like politics, or mathematics.” (part three)
• “One doesn't become a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick.” (part three)
• “I encourage you to talk, not that I may know all your thoughts, but that you may.” (part three)

There were many beautifully written passages. I'm keen to read more by this author. In fact, I've just finished After the Death of Don Juan.

Robert McCrum rated LW 52nd on The Guardian's best 100 novels of all time.

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

"The Carhullan Army" by Sarah Hall

 'Sister' (we never learn her real name) escapes a town under authoritarian rule, where toiling but redundant workers subsist on meagre rations in overcrowded and squalid tenements and reproduction is controlled, to seek out Carhullan, the semi-mystical feminist hill-farm commune. But can the women learn to defend themselves if and when the urban Authority seek to extend their rule?  And in what way is the frequently tyrannical leader of Carhullan any more moral than the more anonymous rulers of the Authority?

This is classic dystopian fiction. What distinguishes it from the pack is the astonishing descriptions which are lyrical, detailed and original and which convey a huge amount of verisimilitude. The first quarter of the book is stuffed with these and the world-building is carefully drip-fed in but the reader is motivated to keep reading because ambiguous and perplexing hints as to what might happen next are provided. This is achieved because, although the story is told in retrospect, we discover the action as if the narrator is living through it, learning the mysteries of her new life bit by bit.

Some examples of the descriptions:

• "It was a wet rotting October when I left. In the town the leaves had begun to drop and their yellow pulp lay on the ground. The last belts of thunderstorms and downpours were passing through the Northern region. Summer was on its way out. The atmosphere felt as if it was finally breaking apart, and at night and in the mornings something cooler had set in. It was a relief not to wake up sweating under the sheet in our room in the terrace quarters, coming out of some hot nightmare with milky dampness on my chest." (FILE ONE COMPLETE RECOVERY)
• "Each year after the Civil Reorganisation summer’s humidity had lasted longer, pushing the colder seasons into a smaller section of the calendar, surrounding us constantly with the smog of rape and tar-sand burning off, and all of us packed tightly together like fish in a smoking shed." (FILE ONE COMPLETE RECOVERY)
• "The van disappeared behind the tangle of waxy green bushes lining the road. I heard it stall, and its ignition turn over phlegmatically, like the congested coughing of the town’s sick dogs." (FILE ONE COMPLETE RECOVERY)

Other selected quotes

• "You don’t fear possibility when you are young." (FILE ONE COMPLETE RECOVERY)
• "It was the smell of nature, untouched and original, exempt from interference. For all my weariness, it made me feel a little more alive, both human and feral together, and somehow redeemed from the past." (FILE TWO COMPLETE RECOVERY)
• "Carhullan could have been the gatehouse to Abaddon." (FILE TWO COMPLETE RECOVERY)
• "They were letting me break apart, so I could use the blunt edges of reason to stave in my mind, and the jagged ones to lance open the last blisters of sanity." (FILE TWO COMPLETE RECOVERY)
• "I’d felt like a ghost moving through the quiet loft of the farmhouse, undressed and trailing a sheet; a wisp, little more than vapour." (FILE THREE COMPLETE RECOVERY)
• "It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most that will conquer." (FILE FIVE PARTIAL CORRUPTION)
• "Revolutions always begin in mountain regions. It’s the fate of such places. Look around you. Look where you are. These are the disputed lands. They have never been settled. And those of us who live in them have never surrendered to anyone’s control. Nor will we ever." (FILE SEVEN PARTIAL CORRUPTION)
• "It was the anatomy of a fanatic." (FILE FIVE PARTIAL CORRUPTION)

A beautifully written novel which kept me hooked to the end.

April 2022

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

"The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan

This is a book about mothers and daughters. Four Chinese women, living in San Francisco, meet every week to play Mah Jong and to discuss their jointly invested shares as members of the Joy Luck club. This book holds their stories and, for each woman, a story of one of their daughters. The book is in four quarters, each quarter having four stories although not all of the characters is represented equally. There is no formal plot to the book: each story is complete in itself, but each connects with the others of its dynasty, and together they combine to create a sort of bricolage on the theme of the experience of the Chinese woman, especially regarding those who live in America.

As an example of ethnic literature it reminded me very much of There, There by Tommy Orange who uses a similar collage-type effect to chart the lives of American Indians in modern urban America, although in Orange's book all the stories interweave to form a more conventional plot.


There are a lot of Chinese proverbs and ways of putting things:

• "The doctor said she died of a cerebral aneurysm. And her friends at the Joy Luck Club said she died just like a rabbit: quickly and with unfinished business left behind." (1.1)
• "We were a city of leftovers mixed together ... Everybody looked down on someone else. It didn't matter that everybody shared the same sidewalk to spit on and suffered the same fast-moving diarrhea. We all had the same stink, but everybody complained someone else smelled the worst." (1.1)
• "You think you can see something new, riding on top of a new cart. But in front of you, it is just the ass of the same old mule. Your life is what you see in front of you." (4.1)
• "Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth." (4.1)

There are some delightful descriptions:

• "A summer night that was so hot even the moths fainted to the ground, their wings so heavy with the damp heat." (1.1)

Other wonderful moments:

• "My mother used to say, 'Auntie Ying is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening'." (1.1)
• "After the baby died, my mother fell apart, not all at once, but piece by piece, like plates falling off a shelf one by one." (2.2)
• "Faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control. I found out the most I could have was hope." (2.3)
• "As if inspired by an old, unreachable, itch." (2.4)
• "We expect the best and when we get it we worry that maybe we should have expected more" (3.1)
• "All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way." (4.1)

A beautifully written book with some wonderful characters but the sixteen stories are hard to comprehend as one so, for me, no overall picture emerged from the collage.

April 2020; 288 pages

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

"Out of time" by Lynne Segal

I was delighted to receive for Xmas a book about getting old. It captured me from the off when it pointed out that very few old people thought that they were old ... so if I protest that I am not yet old enough for this book I suppose that means that I probably am. I am 58. Judge for yourself.

More challenging is that the book is written from a feminist perspective. I am a man. So I have to be careful not to feel alienated and to try to listen to what this book is saying with an open a mind as too much testosterone will allow. Well, I tried. But what annoyed me more than anything else was how slender her evidence base was when it came to making generalisations about all men: most of what she says about men is based on the work of a handful of novelists. A different selection may have given a different result although I feel sure that it would have changed her opinion: she believes men are obsessed with their penises and that this leaves them little room to think of anything else. Her discussion of ageing women, on the other hand, scarcely mentions vaginas.

Chapter One: How Old Am I?

Segal's refusal to cast her net wide is emphasised on page 13 when she points out that there are many terrifying old women in myth: "the hag, harridan, gorgon, witch or Medusa". Firstly, Medusa was a gorgon and therefore included in the list twice. Secondly, Ovid describes Medusa as a beautiful young woman and a brief glimpse of Google Images for Medusa confirms that she is generally thought of as young. Thirdly, why has Segal restricted herself to the myths of the classical ancient world? There are certainly old men (and old women) to be found in Voodoo; Odin is usually an old man.

I love the idea Segal floats on page 19 that old people have access to "all the selves we have been". She develops this idea on page 24 in terms of people being haunted by their memories (and by the memories that others leave with us).

I am less happy with the ideas that old people are less creative and "educable" than young people. Segal mentions these myths without aligning herself for or against. How true are they? I am presently studying for a PhD at the age of 58 and I think I am learning as fast as I was when I was 20. I have more stamina than when I was younger, I am better at organising my time and I am more patient (although I am, perhaps, quicker to discontinue a non-productive activity so in a sense I am less patient; I think I am more easily bored than I was; I certainly am less tolerant of trashy TV). I also have far more experience to compare new learning with; until a few years ago I could never have invoked the Voodoo counterexamples above and therefore I think that I can do the 'mix' bit of 'rip, mix and burn' learning better than I could. Since I believe that creativity is governed by similarly 'mixing' experiences, the more experiences that I have the more creative I can now be. At the same time, I am better able to endure the hard and boring work that is need to transform mixed ideas into burned new products.

On page 35, Segal says that on the whole "men see themselves faced with the challenge of how to keep desire visibly alive, many seeking assistance for maintaining the sexual potency of youth." It is certainly my experience that erections are slower to arrive and harder (not quite the right word!) to maintain as I get older. But desire, lust, is still strong. In fact, this year I have experienced upsurges in horniness such as I cannot recall since puberty (but perhaps that is just my autobioheimers kicking in).

Chapter Two: Generational Warfare

The inescapable truth is that the old are luckier than the young because the old have been young while the young might not grow old. This is not how Segal sees it.

She kicks off, in both senses of the phrase, by describing "the war between the generations, or the baiting of older people" (p 40), immediately signifying her bias. In Greek culture, she remarks (and it is surprising how monocultural her references seem to be), "all heroism, beauty and sweetness resided in youth" (p 41)although wisdom was seen as a preserve of the old. Perhaps different generations do indeed have different strengths.

But on the whole, in the past, old people were better respected than they are now. A reason for this might be that "where there is a mass of elderly people there is less respect than in societies where there are few, especially when in the past it was more likely to be only the relatively powerful and affluent who survived into old age." (p 40) That seems a valid point worth investigating.

A point she never makes is that all old people are enfranchised while many young people are not. Recent UK referenda point out the implications of this: the Scottish independence referendum controversially extended the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds on the basis that they would be affected by the decision; the UK/EU referendum will equally controversially deny the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds despite the fact that they will be affected by the decision. Perhaps we should remove the franchise from everyone over a certain age (85? 90?) on the basis that they will only be affected by any electoral decision for a very short time while young people might be affected for longer. If the argument is about competence to make decisions it might easily be argued that a bright 16 year old is more competent than a 90 year old suffering dementia.

But her arguments do not need evidence. To argue about the unfair representation of old women in Hollywood (p 43)she relies on three films made between 1950 and 1968: hardly a representative selection of the hundreds of films made during that period or the thousands made in the 47 years since.

She talks about the "chorus of men blaming women" for the deterioration in their privileged positions without realising that feminism itself represents a chorus of women blaming men: what is sauce for the goose is indeed sauce for the gander. Clearly it is more reasonable for those without power (eg women) to fight to gain power than for those with power to fight to hang on to it. And the voices of the weak are often louder and angrier than those of the strong. But is this not the very reason why young people at the moment are angry with the old: because the old tend to be wealthier and more powerful? There are clear biases in the UK political system towards the old. The 'triple lock' guarantees that pensions will rise faster than inflation but there is no such protection for young people on low wages who rely on benefits to help them (Segal remarks that "the issue of pensions is indeed one in need of serious attention" (p 48) but she wants even better pensions than now). And is not that the reason why young people have always been resentful of the old? Isn't this exactly what happened in the Sixties?

She believes that the activists of the Sixties were defeated. But were they? In some things they lost; Thatcherism saw to that. But in other areas they were triumphant. While racism still exists it is nothing like the blatant casual racism of fifty years ago. Whilst homosexuals still suffer homophobia, gay culture is celebrated and gay rights are enshrined in law. Sexually we are much more free than before the era of 'free love'. Women have much more power and wealth than they had. In my youth, every office had girly calendars. Nowadays they have been almost completely replaced by hunk calendars and male nudity on stage is now more common than female nudity. I am not saying that the journey is complete, only that we have come a long way.

Segal believes (p 57) that "Many boomers have no good fortune at all to feel guilty about". Well they should not feel guilty. But healthcare is far better than it ever was and this is reflected in the increased life expectancy. In my youth there were regular famines in India and Africa; now these famines are fewer. Far more households around the world have access to running water and in this country far more people have refrigerators. We are much better off than we were. To say we have "no good fortune at all" is ridiculous.

Chapter 3: The Perils of Desire
Segal turns her attention to sexual desire, focussing again on "those who have a far stronger sense of their extensive past than of how they should relate to their much shorter future" (p 77) which is a lovely way of saying 'the old'.

Although she does acknowledge that the 'mid-life crisis' is essentially male and involves "periods of dramatic self-doubt, anxiety and worthlessness" (p 79), some of which relates to retirement (or when still in employment being overtaken by younger men) she does spend a lot of time looking at men's "faltering erectile capacities" (p 78), the "useless 'spigot of wrinkled flesh' between their legs" (p 84), men as "lecherous mavericks" (p 85)  full of "phallic longings" (p 86), "mortified by the 'pathetic shrunken wreck' his beloved penis has become" (p 87), "chronically depressed, self-destructive and, of course, impotent" (p 87) "as their erectile capacities falter" (p 89). In other words, she essentially defines masculinity in terms of sex. Old women, on the other hand, find themselves "free of the shackles of sexuality" (p 91); she claims that "Viagra wives" are not thrilled to be asked to resume sex lives (pp 94 - 95). Indeed, she seems to feel that while male homosexuals usually discover their homosexuality in their teenage years, lesbianism begins over a much wider age range and some seems to be a result of being less desired by men (just as some male homosexual behaviour is due to the denial of female company eg in prisons). (pp 117 - 118)

But Segal does quote Doris Lessing as suggesting that "Older women ... lose men of their own age to younger women, because such men are the inevitable prey of these younger women." (p 107)

Men, of course, kill themselves more than women. "Women on average are most miserable at age forty, whereas men's blues kick in when they hit fifty" (p 82) which may be something to do with the differing ages of menopause.

In other words, Segal's arguments on the effect of ageing on sexuality do not offer a clear cut message. Although for men ageing is all about impotence it is much more complicated for women. Again, I feel that Seghal is not even-handed. For example, her evidence about ageing men derives almost entirely from the fictional works of Roth, Updike and Amis whilst she has a much broader evidence base, both fictional and non-fictional, for women. And if men are essentially playthings of biology with the urge to reproduce at every opportunity, can we use that same biology to analyse women after reproduction is no longer possible? Segal doesn't attempt this.

Chapter 4: The Ties that Bind
I was less interested in this chapter although it was again noteworthy that her understanding of the male perspective relies entirely on her analysis of fiction writers, here expanded to include Julian Barnes, whilst her feminine perspective is largely based on factual writings, especially memoir. Why is there this difference? And to what extend does such a limited and anecdotal evidence base devalue the validity of her conclusions?

Chapter 5: Flags of Resistance
There were some very interesting points made, although the evidence base is still rather thin. Does she really think that a handful of novelists represent the spectrum of opinions across all men?

"Biologists have revealed that ... (Class) differences are clearly evident even at the cellular level." (p 175). I'd love to see the evidence for this. She cites Thomas von Zglinicki (ed) Aging at the Molecular Level, New York, Springer, 2003

"Striving for agelessness is thus in one sense a rejection of life ... it is also quintessentially shallow, self-centred and elitist in its refusal to engage with the suffering and helplessness of others ... It is a form of imaginative impoverishment to refuse to accept the tragic." (p 179) This is a nice counterblast to all those 'think positive' self-help people.

"pondering over all the ways the past has impacted upon the present." (p183)

"Contemplating ageing might include mourning the roads not taken." (p 183) It's not so much regret because it is not possible (nor desirable) to take every road but a gentle sense of the inevitability of one's limitations.

Take a stoic view: "the fleeting strength or beauty of youth ... Is best seen as something that never truly belongs to its bearer, who should remain indifferent to it." (p 190). Perhaps stoicism is a sensible, non-religious, westernised alternative to Buddhism. Perhaps I should read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

Chapter 6: Affirming Survival
Coupledom
One of the problems of old age is that one's kids may have moved away and one's partner may have died; this of course is a fundamental flaw of the nuclear family and Segal explores alternative living arrangements, concluding that communal living rarely works after one has reached middle age. This reflects her own experience: she lived in a shared household (although she owned the house) until her son was in his late teens and about to move away when she started living in a couple with a man who, fifteen years later, left her to have his own children so she was then alone. She realises that 'coupledom' is what most people want (she rather regrets that gays want to get married) and hypothesises that "The comfort of marriage, or long-term partnerships, in so far as they remain monogamous, is precisely that they usually remove us from the intense jealousies that always shadow desire, even if they inevitably moderate or dramatically decrease desire in the process." (p 246)

Failure
She quotes Samuel Beckett: "Fail again. Fail better" (p 247)
and Quentin Crisp: "If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style." (p 247)

Dependency
"When you are seen as 'dependent' you are always in danger of being ignored, patronized or pitied, seen as having no secrets."  (p 260) It is this last that Segal most deplores.
She does recognise the difficulties involved in a son or daughter switching roles to become the carer which can be "all the more challenging if the earlier relationship with the parent was tense or ambivalent". (p 261)
Dependents "may feel simply a burden on those very people whose wellbeing was always dearest to them." (p 261)
She quotes John Moore, Thatcher's Secretary of State for Social Security as stating: "A climate of dependence can in time corrupt the human spirit. Everyone knows the sullen apathy of dependence and can compare it with the sheer delight of personal achievement." (p 262)

This book had some great points in it but it is a very personal viewpoint.

Note that the following picture was taken a few years ago. But I still look like that. More or less. 

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God