Category: Fiction

The Spoilt City by Olivia Manning

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

The Spoilt City was first published in 1962, published by Arrow Books in 2004. 295 pages.

It is the second in Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy. (I wrote about the first book The Great Fortune here.) It continues the story of Guy and Harriet Pringle’s life in Bucharest during 1940. The ‘Phoney War’ is now over and the invasion by the Germans is ominously threatened causing much unrest and uncertainty.

Harriet and Guy’s ideas clash; with Harriet longing to return to England and Guy determined to stay in Bucharest. The difference in their characters is also developed. Harriet is more critical of people than Guy, who prefers to like people, knowing this is the basis of his influence over them. Her criticism troubles him, but he recognises that she is stronger than him in some ways and he is influenced by her. Harriet takes a more general view than Guy and has ‘rejected the faith which gave his own life purpose.’

Guy is however, pragmatic and sees religion as ‘part of the conspiracy to keep the rich powerful and the poor docile’. He is not interested in ‘fantasy’ but in‘practical improvement in mankind’s condition.’ Harriet is not so practical, but she comes to appreciate that Guy is right: ‘Wonders were born of ignorance and superstition. Do away with ignorance and superstition and there would be no more wonders, only a universe of unresponsive matter in which Guy was at home, though she was not. Even if she could not accept this diminution of her horizon, she had to feel a bleak appreciation of Guy, who was often proved right.’

Guy’s generosity to everyone frustrates Harriet in her attempts to survive and indeed to leave the country. They are ordered to leave but he persists in staying put as the escape routes were being blocked. As Guy argues the case for staying ‘we represent all that is left of western culture and democratic ideas”, Harriet begins to think that even though they have only been married for one year that the bonds between them are loosening.

Once again Yakimov comes to the fore, providing some comic relief. He is one of the people that Guy tries to help. He visits Von Flugel, a Nazi and an old friend in Cluj. Von Flugel thinks Yaki is a British spy, but even so he gives him 25,000 lei to return to Bucharest to buy an Ottoman rug for him. When he gets to Bucharest he finds everything has changed for the worse, the army has been called out and an attack on the palace is expected. He quickly packs up and leaves on the Orient Express for Istanbul using the money from Von Flugel.

As the blitz on London begins Harriet increases her efforts to leave the country but Guy still wants to stay. They go for a short ‘holiday’ in Predeal in the mountains and Harriet becomes increasingly critical of Guy and feels bored in his company. As both their relationship and the situation in Rumania deteriorate Guy persuades Harriet to leave without him after their flat is raided and ransacked.

This is a bleak story and as I was reading it I thought it was not as good as the first book in the trilogy, The Great Fortune, but thinking about it now, that maybe because it is set in such an adverse situation set against the backdrop of war. I became increasingly critical of Guy and impatient for him to agree with Harriet. Perhaps that is the measure by which I should consider the book – it certainly seemed real to me and conveyed the tension and fears of living in Rumania at that time as well as chronicling the Pringles’ marriage. As with The Great Fortune there is a great deal of information about the political situation, which was new to me and at times I did find that difficult to follow, which didn’t help with my enjoyment of the book. What I did enjoy was the character development and their relationships. I also enjoyed Olivia Manning’s descriptive writing eg:

‘The air was furred with heat. On the pavement the Guardist youths with their banners and pamphlets, were still trying to rouse revolt. Although a sense of revolt agitated the nerves like an electric storm that would not break, the city was lethargic, the palace dormant, its white blinds drawn down against the tedium of the afternoon. … The height of summer was past. The dahlias were ablaze in the Cismigiu. Up the Chaussee, the trees were parched, their few leaves dangling like burnt paper, as they had been the first time she saw them. The brilliant months had gone down in fear and expectation of departure.’

The story is continued in Friends and Heroes, the third book in the trilogy. The Outmoded Authors Challenge finishes at the end of this month and it’s not looking as though I’ll read the third book before then, but I will definitely read it before long.

The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

An intriguing book. This is the first book I’ve read for the From the Stacks Challenge.

I finished reading The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson at the end of November and have now got round to writing about it. I started it with great enthusiasm and found it a compelling book to read. It is a psychological mystery concerning the nature of belief, faith, and truth. It starts with an account of the disappearance and death of Gideon Mack and the discovery of a manuscript written by him shortly before he was last seen. It is clear right from the start that there is mystery and uncertainty surrounding his disappearance, death and the discovery of his body. The book centres on the manuscript with an epilogue containing ‘notes’ written by a journalist investigating the mystery, considering whether the manuscript was ‘anything other than the ramblings of a mind terminally damaged by a cheerless upbringing, an unfulfilled marriage, unrequited love, religious confusion and the stress and injury of a near-fatal accident?’

Gideon Mack was a minister in the Scottish Church, even though he did not believe in the existence of God. He simply didn’t discuss religion and discovered that ‘it was possible to be a Christian without involving Christ very much’. He concentrated on works rather than on faith and threw himself into raising money for charity. One of his fundraising events was running in the London marathon and he found that running made him ‘immune to the world and its problems.’ Whilst out running in the woods he came across a standing stone that he was sure had not been there before. It is this stone that drew him further into the mysterious events that led to his disappearance. He took photographs of the stone, but they failed to come out. It is not clear whether the stone was actually there or not, any more than it is not clear what actually did happen to Gideon Mack.

Be aware: there are possible spoilers ahead:

As well as being a faithless minister Gideon was married to a woman whom he did not love and he was in love with Elsie, his best friend’s wife. As I read the book I realised that it’s just not clear whether Gideon’s account is truthful and how much of it can be believed. Did he have an affair with Elsie or not? Did he see the standing stone, or was it just a figment of his imagination? Was he mad or deluded or what?

What is clear is that he fell into a ravine, trying to rescue a dog that fell into the Black Jaws and he was ‘churned and spun like a sock in a washing-machine, carried along by an immense, frothing, surging force.’ He thought that he ‘couldn’t possibly have survived the fall’ but even if he had ”the river would have killed’ him. He thought he must be dead. And it is at this point that he found he had been rescued by the Devil and spent three days with him before he eventually returned home. He claimed the Devil had healed his leg, broken from the fall, discussed the nature of belief and God with him and swapped his trainers for Gideon’s shoes. Are the trainers proof that the Devil does exist? When Gideon saw the trainers they triggered his memory – but is his memory reliable? What is real, what is imagined and what is illusion?

The question of whether Gideon believes in God and the Devil as a result of his experience is not answered directly, although in remembering his near-death experience Gideon thought ‘there really is something good on the other side. I don’t know what, but it’s not the end.’

The book kept my interest to the end. I wanted to know what happened to Gideon, why he became a minister when he didn’t believe in God, how he coped with living with the Devil when he had previously believed him to be a figment of his imagination, what was real, what was legend and are myths just metaphors. Like Surveillance this book is open ended. As Gideon said, ‘You either believe or you don’t.’

Remainder by Tom McCarthy

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From the back cover of Remainder – ‘œMcCarthy has a precision, a surreal logic and a sly wit that is all his own. It will be a long time before you come across a stranger book, or a truer one.’ Rupert Thomson, The Observer.

Yes, a strange book indeed. I started to read it in August and at first I was interested because it explores the nature of memory, identity, human nature and behaviour. There is very little plot and the main character is a man who, after an accident, is suffering from amnesia and brain damage. We never find out any details of the accident that nearly killed in and left him in a coma and somehow it’™s unimportant, because what is important is what happens to him when he recovers. He receives eight and a half million pounds as compensation and embarks on a series of actions in an attempt not only to regain his memory but also to feel natural when he does things.

I think this is fascinating part of the book. The way we perform our actions is spontaneous without thinking how we actually move and do things, but as that part of his brain that controls the motor functions of the right side of the body had been damaged he had to learn how to move by first visualising a movement, then understand how the tendons, muscles and joints work and in what order, before actually performing a movement. What is even more fascinating is that having done this he realised that his actions and movements weren’™t seamless and natural ‘“ he was having to think each movement through before he could perform them.

I was fine with this and felt the book was going to be really good, but gradually as he goes over and over everything in his mind and tries to reconstruct his former life from fragments of memory it became tedious. Then it moved into realms of fantasy, but dull, banal fantasy in which he hires people to act or rather re-enact time after endless time certain scenes, cats falling off a roof, a woman frying liver and a pianist practising a piece of music etc, etc. It becomes increasingly unreal as he tries to be more real.

McCarthy explained the title in a press release: ‘œThe hero, his body and his mind are a remainder, what the accident leaves,’ explains McCarthy. ‘œThe world he reconstructs is a remainder, made up of fragments left over from his ideal ‘˜remembered’™ world. And I love the provocation of calling a book Remainder.’

I cannot say I enjoyed this book. I found it tedious and disturbing as he descends into what I consider to be madness. I stopped reading it twice and went back to it as I did want to know what happens at the end. The ending is like the rest of the book; it’™s madness and endless repetition of the same actions over and over again and then right at the very end ‘“ well, there is a completion of sorts.

Would I read it again? No.

The Sidmouth Letters by Jane Gardam

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

The Sidmouth Letters

The Sidmouth Letters is a collection of eleven short stories. It’s a short book of just under 150 pages, so it doesn’t take long to read the whole book. With a collection of short stories I tend not to read from the start to the end, picking and choosing which ones to read, but with this one I read the stories in the order they are in the book. I was glad I did as I think the last one is the best. The stories are nicely varied in style and content with convincing and authentic characters. I liked some more than others.

The first story is ‘The Tribute’, a perceptive and amusing study of a trio of Kensington widows exposing their small-minded attitude to a former nanny, when they receive news of her death.

I wasn’t too keen on ‘Lychees for Tone’. It is written in the present tense, which I find irritating. A lonely mother lives with her son. As she waits for him to bring home a new girlfriend she ponders what she will be like and her isolation and prejudices become apparent. I thought the ending was disappointing with a predictable play on words.

‘The Great, Grand, Soap-Water Kick’ is a story about a tramp, Horsa looking for a house in which he can have a bath, which only happens every second year or so. You can imagine the state he is in and the state of the house by the time he has finished. I liked the idea and the structure of the story. Although I liked the imagery and the style of writing does reflect the character, I found it jarring and disjointed. But then I don’t think you’re actually meant to like Horsa.

Up steps smelly Horsa.
Rings bell no answer.
Ringsgain no answer.
Ringsgainturns look updown. Not living soul. Not motor car. Not bike. Only cat gatepost watch through yellow slits. Cat stands, stretches on four fat sixpences, turns round, curls upgain, goes sleep.

In ‘Hetty Sleeping’ a married woman on holiday with her two children meets a former lover, and wonders what her life could have been like.

In ‘Transit Passengers’ two young students are leaving Greece and go their separate ways. Will their love survive, or is it as transitory as their journey?

‘The Dickies’ are a married couple. Mrs Dickie is neurotic and has to suffer her husband’s infidelities. All is not as it seems, however.

I particularly liked ‘A Spot of Gothic’. A young army wife living in the remote countryside is driving home alone late one night when she encounters a woman standing in her garden waving to her. It’s the loneliest part of the road and she is shaken and frightened at the sight. She wonders if she saw a ghost. When she returns to the road the next day she feels she is being watched and sees a woman who asks her the time and walks away, leaving the young wife feeling terrified: ‘The dreadful sense of loss, the melancholy, were so thick in the air that there was almost a smell, a sick smell of them.’ Who has she seen?

The last story ‘The Sidmouth Letters’ deals imaginatively with Jane Austen’s love life. Annie meets a former professor who had claimed credit for her work when she was a student. He has discovered that love letters, supposedly written by Jane Austen have been found and he sends Annie off to Sidmouth with instructions to buy the letters. The story reveals how Annie gets her own back on the professor. The question is – did Jane Austen write the Sidmouth letters? This story was the reason that I read the book and it didn’t disappoint.

Playing with the Moon by Eliza Graham

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Playing with the Moon is Eliza Graham’s first novel and it’s very good.

It begins when Minna and Tom, who are staying at a cottage in an isolated village on the Dorset coast east of Lulworth, discover a human skeleton on the beach and dog tags inscribed LEWIS J CAMPBELL and a number. American military officials confirmed his identity as Private Lew Campbell, believed to have died in 1944 during training exercises for the Normandy landings.

Minna and Tom are trying to come to terms with the death of their baby. Tom is struggling to carry on with his business, which is in financial difficulty, and Minna, who is recovering from a breakdown, is unable to talk to him about her grief. She becomes absorbed in finding out what had lead to Campbell’s death, when she meets Felix an elderly woman who had lived in the village during the war. A fascinating story slowly emerges. Moving from 1943 to the present, the story of Felix and the American GI is interwoven with the story of Minna and Tom and the events that lead to the death of their son. Each story is mysterious and tragic. Both Minna and Felix are overcome by their grief and as they tentatively get to know each other they pour out their stories and draw comfort from each other.

The book deals with memory, the power of memory, with loss, grief and bereavement. It’s also about war, the legacy of war, and of how to make sense of our lives. I found it a compelling book to read. Although it deals with tragic events it does so gently and with compassion.

It seems to me that Playing With the Moon captures what life was like during the 1940s. It was quite by coincidence that I read this book just before Remembrance Sunday and not long after I’d read One Fine Day. There is a recurring theme here and it has set me off on a trail to find out more about the Second World War.

Crossing To Safety by Wallace Stegner

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Crossing to Safety was Wallace Stegner’s last novel published when he was 78 years old. It’s a beautiful, and thought provoking novel and I loved it. Unusually for me I read it straight through, on its own, abandoning the other books I’m reading to concentrate on just this one book. It was well worth it. I was engrossed in the story and felt as though I was part of it – such is the power of Stegner’s writing.

It is a story about love, marriage, friendship, relationships, ambition, illness and death; in other words it’s about life and death. I’ve read a lot of good books recently, but without a doubt this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It has so much to say on many different themes that I’m lost where to start in describing and considering its impact on me.

In essence, the novel recounts the lives of two couples who first met during the Depression in 1930s America and the joys and difficulties they encounter throughout their lives. Larry Morgan is the narrator and the events are seen through his eyes. Both he and Sid Lang have jobs in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin and their lives are intertwined from the moment they meet, when both their wives are pregnant. At the start of the novel we are told that Charity, Sid’s wife is dying. Sally and Larry have travelled to Battell Pond in Vermont for a reunion with the Langs. Sally is in a wheelchair and from that point Larry looks back over their lives.

Whereas in Angle of Repose Stegner depicts the American West, Crossing To Safety is set mainly in the landscape of northern New England, where the wilderness is seen as no less dangerous than in the West, particularly in the camping trip the Langs and the Morgans take. I had to get the atlas out to see where Wisconsin and Vermont are, as I had no idea of the distance between the two, nor the difference in the landscape.

Charity and Larry are the dominant characters. The Morgans’ lives are changed by Sally’s illness and at different stages in the book I thought, ‘this is what happened to Sally’, but it’s not clear until about halfway through the book precisely why Sally is paralysed. Charity is the strong, ambitious, self-confident organiser, not only of her own life, but also of those of her family and friends. She take the direct ‘compass’ direction in whatever she does and her confidence is not undermined by others’ doubts or different ideas. She knows what she wants and imposes her ambitions on Sid. However, she is also generous and wants her friends to share in their success and helps Larry and Sally both financially and socially.

As well as the low points of their lives the novel also recounts the happy and joyful experiences the couples encounter. The novel explores the complexity of human nature and meditates on the drama of everyday experience in quiet ‘ordinary’ situations – the stuff of life, how to live through the difficulties that life and death throw in all our paths. Most poignant, to me at least, are the descriptions of how the couples deal with ambition, the disappointments of failed ambition, illness and death.

Larry meditates:

Ambition is a path not a destination, and it is essentially the same path for everybody. No matter what the goal is, the path leads through Pilgrim’s Progress regions of motivation, hard work, persistence, stubbornness, and resilience under disappointment. Unconsidered, merely indulged, ambition becomes a vice; it can turn a man into a machine that knows nothing but how to run. Considered, it can become something else, ‘a pathway to the stars, maybe.’

Larry also provides some interesting insights into writing itself. He loves writing but also writes to help boost his income, whereas Sid wants to write poetry and is held back and criticised by Charity as she does not think this will help to advance his career. Larry and Sid discuss why writers write. Larry thinks writing:

has to be free, it has to flow from the gift, not from outside pressures. The gift is its own justification, and there is no way of telling for sure, short of the appeal to posterity, whether it’s really worth something or whether it’s only the ephemeral expression of a fad or tendency, the articulation of a stereotype.

The scenes where Charity explores how to approach her death not just for herself, but also for Sid and her family are touchingly realistic and heart-rending. She seemingly pushes Sid away as she prepares for death because she cannot cope with his reaction to her death; she knows she is not only Sid’s support – she is his life. One of the most difficult questions we face is how we deal with the facts of death and the fear of death. When Sid is faced with the inevitability of Charity’s death he asks Larry ‘Could you survive without Sally?’ Whether Sid can survive without Charity is left unanswered. Although Larry hopes he will, I’m not so sure.

My copy is a library book; maybe this is a book I should buy as I would like to read it again sometime.The painful honesty of this book in portraying life’s happiness, joy, pathos and sorrow is what touched me the most and makes it a book to remember and treasure.