Harriet Devine's Blog

Best Intentions

I can't honestly remember how I acquired this novel, though I expect it came as a review request. It has been lying around for a while, and it beckoned to me a few of days ago when I was feeling in need of something relatively undemanding. I'd never heard of Emily Listfield, though I gather this is her seventh novel. She's a New York author, an ex-magazine editor, and writes of the world of which she knows. All this sounds a bit patronising, perhaps, but it's not meant to. Within its genre this is a readable book and I rather raced through it because I was enjoying it.

The novel centres on the lives of a group of friends who have known each other since college. All are much of an age, and therefore looking forty rather apprehensively in the face. Lisa, who narrates the novel, works in PR, while her husband Sam is a successful investigative journalist. Money is never very freely available in their household, but they have managed to put both their daughters, aged 11 and 13, into an expensive private school. Lisa's best friend, Deirdre, has never married, though she has had numerous affairs and is now involved with Ben, a well-known fashion photographer. But she has never forgotten her old lover from college, Jack, who is even now about to reappear on the scene, causing her, and indeed Lisa, to feel distinctly nervous. But Lisa has bigger problems in her own life. She and Sam seem to be drifting apart, and several suspicious occurrences seem to suggest very strongly that he is having an affair. And to make matters worse, her firm is taken over and her job, which has always seemed very secure, suddenly seems to be under threat. However all this pales into insignificance when a terrible and sudden death puts everyone under suspicion.

So is this a murder mystery? Actually no, not really. The murder does not happen until about three-quarters of the way through the novel, and the focus is much more on its effect on the other characters than on the solution of the crime, though of course that does get solved in the end. But the real strength of this book is in what it has to say about relationships -- about trust, and about the fact that although we may think we know our nearest and dearest friends and family, secrets and concealments can emerge at any time and throw all our certainties out of the window. All this is really rather well done. So if this sounds like your kind of book, do give it a go.

Housekeeping

Some months ago I read Marilynne Robinson's second novel, Gilead, and really loved it. I knew that it had been eighteen years since she published this one, her first, and I acquired it some time ago, but the time never seemed right to read it. Now I have, though it has taken me quite a long time to get through it. Not, I hasten to say, because I didn't like it. On the contrary, it is a truly remarkable novel, but one that you can't rush. In fact I found a few pages a day were enough. I've been thinking for a few days now about how to write about in on here and am still not sure. I can tell you the story, but that will not begin to give you a sense of what is so extraordinarily impressive about it.
Anyway, Housekeeping is the story of a family, told by a young girl, Ruth. Set in a remote town called Fingerbone, it begins with past generations -- the grandfather, who died when his train was derailed and sank to the bottom of the nearby lake -- the grandmother, who brought up her three daughters alone -- the mother, one of those daughters, who married and moved away to Seattle, only to return years later with Ruth and her sister Lucille, and then, leaving them with her mother, drove to the lake a drowned herself. The two girls, brought up first by their grandmother and then by two great aunts, end up in the care of their aunt Sylvie. Now their lives, always unusual, become increasingly stranger and stranger, as Sylvie has a complete disregard for conventions and rules. Lucille, unhappy with the disorder and confusion, moves out, and Ruth is left behind, increasingly influenced by her eccentric foster mother.
So what is so great about this novel? The language is wonderful, the images are beautiful, and the atmosphere created by these things is extraordinarily seductive. In fact I found the experience of reading it was more like reading a poem than a novel, though the narrative itself is also fascinating and I became increasingly anxious to know what would become of Ruth, Lucille and Sylvie. I suppose you could describe it as sad, but I'm not sure that I found it so. I'm not at all surprised that the Observer put it on the list of the best 100 novels of all time -- I would probably put it among the best ten I've ever read. Amazing.

The Little Stranger

I was away in France all last week and I thought I deserved a treat -- I'm in the throes of moving house and every day seems to bring an avalanche of to-dos -- no sooner do I get rid of one list than another springs up in its place, longer and more scary than the first. And I haven't even started emptying the cupboards yet. Anyway, I found this in the airport and snatched it up to take with me. I am a huge fan of Sarah Waters and indeed her last novel, The Night Watch, is possibly the only book I have re-read the minute I finished the first reading -- for reasons to do with the structure and its impact on the story, which you will understand if you have read it yourself. So I was longing for this one and I wasn't disappointed. Yes, it is a book that moves slowly through its over five hundred pages, but I was quite happy with that and in fact took several days to read the last hundred because I really didn't want to finish it. As most people will know by now, this is billed as a ghost story, and so indeed it is, of a particularly unsettling kind. But it is a number of other things as well. Set in 1947, in rural Warwickshire, it tells of the decline of a house, and of a family. The Ayres have lived for generations in their beautiful eighteenth-century mansion, Hundreds Hall, but money is now short, the family is reduced to one servant, fourteen-year-old Betty, and the house is literally falling apart, damaged by rain, damp, and the simple inability to keep it repaired. The widowed Mrs Ayres, a fading beauty, and her two adult children Roderick and Caroline, struggle to keep up appearances but things are getting pretty grim.

As the novel begins, the local doctor, Dr Faraday, is called up to the house to see Betty, who is confined to bed with very bad stomach pains. This is his first visit since he was a boy, at which time his mother was one of Mrs Ayres nursery maids. He is keenly conscious of the class differences between his own family and the one he has been called to attend -- only, of course, because their own doctor is away. But slowly a sort of friendship begins to develop, and even more slowly he comes to realise that he is attracted to, perhaps in love with, the plain and sensible Caroline. Meanwhile the family is becoming increasingly reliant on him, and when Roderick, already physically damaged by the war, starts to deteriorate mentally, Faraday is on hand to help to get him committed to a private asylum. But Roderick's decline is, so he claims, connected with a series of strange and disturbing happenings in the house -- he believes there is a malignant force at work there, and indeed there seems to be some evidence of this, strange markings appearing on walls, fires breaking out unexpectedly, a gentle dog turning savage. The rest of the family slowly come to think this may be true, but Faraday remains determinedly rational and dismissive. But as things go from bad to worse, more tragedies ensue...

Dr Faraday is the narrator of this novel. I have seen a few reviews which describe him as boring, and so, in some ways, he is. His concerns are limited, though none the less important to him -- his lack of money, of social graces, his anxieties about what the new National Health Service will do to his career. His relationship with Caroline brings him some temporary happiness, and he is gratified by Mrs Ayres increasing dependence on him. His absolute refusal to admit the possibility of any kind of supernatural agency becomes increasingly infuriating, or it did so to me. But wait till you get to the end, and then think about the novel in retrospect, at which point it may -- should -- appear in a rather different light.

It's maddening not to be able to say more! I long to be able to talk about this at length with someone else who has read it. And I am seriously tempted to repeat my Night Watch experience and re-read the whole thing. This is a hugely clever, subtle, thought-provoking book which has stayed with me for several days since I finished it, with more "oh yes"s popping up from time to time. See if the same thing happens to you. Highly highly recommended.

By the way, if you know that great novel of Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair, you may discern some echoes in The Little Stranger. Sarah Waters admits this was an important source for her. You can read an interesting interview with her, in which she talks about the writing of the novel,  here.

What happened to the music?

Apologies to anyone who has been enjoying the music. There seems to be some kind of belated copyright problem. I'm trying to find out if I can still use it, or some of it.

Girl Sewing at a Window

Another painter not familiar to me -- Henri Lebasque (1865-1937). Should you wish to know more about him, you can read his biog on Wikipedia.

Woman Reading

Here is one by a painter I have never heard of -- Alexander Deineka -- born in Russia in 1899 and died in 1969, apparently. This was painted in 1934.

The Idiot

If you've been visiting here lately, you may remember that I had started reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot on my ipod. After what seems like weeks I have finally finished it, and what a remarkable book it turned out to be.The "idiot" of the title is Prince Myshkin. Severely epileptic as a child, he has been raised, and more or less cured, in Switzerland, by a wise and humane doctor. The severity of his illness was such that he missed out on most of his early education, though he has made up some of the lack by a great deal of reading. This perhaps accounts for the unusual way in which he views the world. For Myshkin is that strange and exceptional character, a truly good man. To those who meet him for the first time he appears childlike, almost simple-minded, but in fact he is intelligent, thoughtful, honest, loving, and constantly engaged in a struggle to do the right thing in a corrupt and materialistic world.  When the novel begins he is just returning to Russia, curious to see again the country of his birth. Although he is initially scorned by many of the people he meets, this soon changes when he is discovered to be the heir to a sizeable inheritance, though of course he becomes a prey to fortune hunters. However those who take the trouble to get to know him quickly come to love him, though some find his naivety sometimes embarrassing or irritating. His final downfall -- because ultimately this book is a tragedy -- is the love of two women. Nastasia Filipovna, who he encounters early in the novel, is a fallen woman. A great beauty, pursued by many men, she develops a powerful attraction towards Myshkin and some kind of short-lived relationship evidently takes place between them, though Myshkin describes his love for her as arising from pity. Later he meets a young girl, Aglaya, and falls in love with her. But Aglaya, though evidently reciprocating his feelings, is awkward, skittish, moody, and constantly testing Myshkin in ways that he, in his innocence, is unable to understand. You will have to read the novel if you want to know how things finally work out, but I can tell you that it is all very sad.

The novel is full of the most wonderful characters, and is a fascinating picture of Russia in the late nineteenth century. But above all it is a deeply serious and thought-provoking examination of the nature of goodness, and the apparent impossibility of sustaining it in a world which misunderstands and often despises it. Wonderful.

New Colour

Not sure if it's staying, but I thought I'd try a change of colour.

Woman Drawing

'Young Woman Drawing', painted in 1801 by Marie-Denise Villiers (France, 1774-1821)

Homage

Some years ago I read, and very much enjoyed, Julian Rathbone's The Last English King. I had no idea he had branched into crime fiction but here is his first go at the genre, which I picked up last week after someone had left it in my French house. Clever stuff, and very enjoyable. The hero/narrator is Chris Shovelin, an English private eye. Described in the blurb as "reformed alcoholic, ageing hippy, victim of a dysfunctional marriage", Chris, as the novel begins, has flown to San Diego in response to an appeal from his old friend Jefferson, also a private detective, who seems to need help on a case. But when Chris arrives at the apartment, he finds Jefferson dead, a bullet hole in his temple. Shortly afterwards he is contacted by Jefferson's erstwhile employer, the glamorous and wealthy China Heart, who wants his help in finding her missing brother Jerry Lennox, and is prepared to pay handsomely. Soon Chris is racing between San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with a short and educational trip to Tijuana thrown in for good measure. A gorgeous girl flings herself at him -- a plane explodes in mid-air -- various people try hard to murder him -- terrifying plots involving illegal weapons are uncovered -- and all Chris's deductive powers are strained to the very limit. Nobody is what they seem, and no one tells the truth. All the ingredients for a really exciting thriller, in other words. Julian Rathbone has brilliantly adopted the style of a hard-boiled American noir detective fiction, though he plays it with a nice touch of tongue in cheek. The title says it all, I suppose -- Homage is both the name of the ranch where some of the main protagonists hang out and an acknowlegment of Rathbone's practice in writing in this way. Chris is an appealing character -- over 50, off the booze, he swings wildly between genuine excitement at being in California for the first time, the misery of jet lag, the incredible elation of being seduced by a beautiful twenty-year-old, and sheer terror of all that the case throws at him. But ticking away underneath is a sharp deductive mind that stands him in good stead in the end. Great stuff.